In my time in academia (~20 years) I have seen the demands and competition increase quite significantly, however talking to older researchers the this really started in the 90s the demands to demonstrate measurable outcomes increased dramatically and funding moved to be primarily through competitive grants (compared to significant base funding for researchers previously). The issue is that while previously it was common for academics to have funding for 1-2 PhD students to look into new research areas, now many researchers are required to bring in competitive grants for even covering part of their salary.
What that means is that researchers become much more risk averse, and and stay in their research area even if they believe it is not the most interesting/imapactfull. You just can't afford to not publish for several years, to e.g. investigate a novel research direction, because without the publications it becomes much much harder to secure funding in the future.
What that means is that researchers become much more risk averse, and and stay in their research area even if they believe it is not the most interesting/imapactfull. You just can't afford to not publish for several years, to e.g. investigate a novel research direction, because without the publications it becomes much much harder to secure funding in the future.