A clarification on the previous post:

I think it helps to know the rules of the system in which you are participating. If you want to be a chess grandmaster you have to know that the games you won in your dreams against Boris Spasky do not count. The rules are arbitrary and conventional. Journal X is more prestigious than journal Y. Harder to get into. You get more points for that. I see it as a game: I try to get into as many first-line journals as often as possible and award myself "points."

Your reward, if you play your cards right, is to get a job 400 miles from your spouse's place of employment in a dismal Midwestern college town, teaching students who care what's on the midterm, not how smart you are. So knowing how many points you have (in yr own mind) becomes really significant. If you keep score by your salary you'll be very depressed.

There is a journal in my field, let's call it Refereed Journal in Name Only. I've never published there. I've never cited an article published there, or seen an article from this journal cited anywhere else. Nobody I respect in my own subfield is on the editorial board. In fact, the editorial board is mostly in-house, and the home department is not an eminent one. I woudn't published there if you paid me.

But an article in RJINO counts as a publication. It's not a bird dropping, and is actually more substantial than most bird dropping type publications. There was some editorial process. For a very good department, this would count toward quantity but not quality. If all the publications were in 3rd-line journals like this there would be a problem.