Historically, teaching and research have been the most important work roles of academic faculty in higher education institutions (HEIs), and these roles have evolved in close relationship with each other. However, due to disciplinary fragmentation and increased institutional specialization, the compatibility between teaching and research roles has decreased significantly. The institutional privileging of research over teaching has created pressure for university teachers to publish more often, and this conflict between the teaching and research roles might be a major cause of job stress. Against this backdrop we have designed a descriptive study to investigate whether research-teaching conflict is creating job stress and burnout among university teachers. For this research, we surveyed one hundred and two university teachers of Punjab, Pakistan. Our findings indicate that there is a strong positive correlation between research-teaching conflict and job stress. The results also reveal significant effect of publication pressure on university teacher stress. Based on our research findings we conclude that there is intense perceived publication pressure in academia that mediates the effect of research-teaching conflict on job stress.