Let us dive together into the depths of the very medium that fuels the academia but also the research within and that gives purpose to the research and creative work that we do – the publications. We will discuss what the purpose of the publications and the associated processes is in the academia and what measures of their correctness, validity, generality, rigour and overall value are available (we will touch scientometrics on a paper/journal/book/proceedings level as well as peer review issues). We will then try to establish a link between these “metrics” and the requirements we have on good researchers in the academia and the goals that we set ourselves for our scientific careers. This ultimately means bringing purpose, research integrity and ethics into the discussion.  In essence, the main purpose of the talk is for us all to discuss and come to the understanding why publications as the academic currency are indispensable. But also why at the same time the value of publications is potentially threatened by the publish or perish culture in the academia, which gives rise and momentum to papermills, citation rings, pay-to-publish (vanity) media and predatory journals.