Quality Trumps Quantity in Research Papers?

In my tips for a great PhD thesis [here] I define:

Quality is better than quantity. Some of the best thesis’ I read have been relatively short and sharp, but where the quality is high. A good eye for moving material in appendices is important and helps the examiner. For some reason, candidates like to produce a thick thesis, and they think that the more pages there, the better the material. This is often the opposite, and a thesis written with self-contained papers for chapters — which link together — are often the best in their presentation.

Some of the best PhD thesis’ I read have been less than 120 pages long, and some of the worst ones are often the ones that just go on and on, covering things which are completely irrelevant for the key contribution. Less is best is sometimes better, and quality is much better than quantity.

And so have research publications become a big game that academia play, and where everyone just follows a given formula? As a student you quickly learn that the peer review process involves packing in the references, defining your contribution, and then spend a good deal of time showing that you have put in some work to make the paper look good. A paper littered with typos and bad grammar, too, is unlikely to go anywhere.