Public trust in science relies on the assumption that research is conducted with honesty, transparency, and integrity. At the same time, academic careers increasingly depend on publication performance, as hiring, tenure, and funding decisions are largely based on publication and citation metrics. This reliance on bibliometric indicators, such as publication counts, h-indices, and citation rates, has turned measurable output into the central currency of academia. While these metrics promote comparability, they also reinforce competition and quantification at the expense of other scholarly values such as mentorship, intellectual risk-taking, and ethical responsibility.

The resulting “publish or perish” environment places researchers under immense pressure to demonstrate output quickly, sometimes at the cost of integrity. In response, scholars pursue strategies to maximize publication success, ranging from appropriate to ethically ambiguous practices that lie in a gray area between responsible research conduct and clear misconduct. Within this gray zone lie questionable research practices (QRPs) - behaviors such as selective reporting of findings, or honorary authorship - that may not explicitly break rules but can still distort the scientific record and erode credibility over time.

Despite growing awareness of these issues, we still know little about who engages in such practices, under what conditions, and with what consequences. Our study addresses this gap by examining whether specific QRPs and strategic research habits are associated with differences in publication outcomes, and whether certain groups of researchers systematically benefit from them. Drawing on survey data from researchers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland combined with bibliometric indicators, we ask whether the academic system itself may, unintentionally, reward behaviors that compromise integrity.

When strategic behaviors offer publication advantages, integrity risks becoming a competitive disadvantage - threatening fairness within academia and weakening science’s moral authority in society.