Publishing is just the way to get grants.
A PI explained it to me once, something like this
Idea(s) -> Grant -> Experiments -> Data -> Paper(s) -> Publication(s) -> Idea(s) -> Grant(s)
Thats the current cycle ... remove any step and its a dead end
It’s a problem. The previous regime prior to publishing-mania was essentially a clubby game of reputation amongst peers based on cocktail party socialization.
The publication metrics came out of the harder sciences, I believe, and then spread to the softest of humanities. It was always easy to game a bit if you wanted to try, but now it’s trivial to defeat.