Michael Stonebraker referred to this as "Diarrhea of papers"
https://www.idug.org/browse/blogs/blogviewer?blogkey=a7b6fe8...
And he more or less says the focus on quantity has made the academic field (databases) irrelevant, because individual papers don't tell you anything useful. (Disclaimer: My interpretation of his talk, and I don't work in that field.)