It is an age-old academic aphorism that your dean can't read but he can count. In other words, at least insofar as internal matters like promotions and raises are concerned, quantity matters more than quality.
Now we have some empirical evidence that the old saying is true. Paul Caron passes along an NBER paper, which finds that:
Using evidence for academic economists, we find that, conditional on its impact, the quantity of output has no or even a negative effect on each of a number of proxies for reputation .... Data on mobility and salaries show, on the contrary, substantial positive effects of quantity, independent of quality.
In other words, prolific publication--even of crap--has a positive effect on an academic's salary. Which means deans really can count but can't read.
