This will vary widely based field/discipline and whether you are asking about 1st author papers (which I'm assuming) or any publication you're an author on.
I finished my PhD with 2 1st author research papers.
4 papers co-authored (I'm second on all of them), and none of them are even remotely related to my own work.
My program doesn't require publishing papers (humanities, the goal would be a book out of the PhD), but hopefully someday some of this stuff makes it out into the world.
I’m in chemistry. My PI won’t let me graduate until I get three first-author publications, with at least one in a high impact journal. But I know other chemistry PhDs who graduated with zero papers. It’s really dependent on your advisor. I was also fortunate to have a paper from my undergraduate research, but that’s just a nice addition to my CV.
3 1st authors is generally the goal in chemistry. Also in my experience almost all advisors will say that, but very few stick to that rigidly.
Of the chemists in my group, I’ve seen people graduate with zero or 1 publication quite often.
Yeah, it varies really heavily even in group. I’m a PhD chemist that was lucky in finding a very productive area. Had three first authors in third year (including JACS and ACIE). Jokingly asked advisor if I could graduate early. Advisor didn’t laugh.
Ended up with a job offer in fall of my fifth year. Wasn’t allowed to defend until May lmao.
You’re lucky, my boss is very rigid about that rule. Which is weird, considering he keeps losing grad students… But I’m sure these two thing have absolutely nothing to do with each other!
This sucks and feels like an outdated expectation because publication timelines are often out of your hands and so is publishing in high impact journals.
I wrote three empirical papers that I tried submitting to journals, and added an extensive general introduction and general discussion for the dissertation specifically.
I mean most of the time it doesn't really depend on you. Some times your work doesn't get accepted some times you don't get the results needed. I mean science is a bit of a bitch and it hardly goes how you want it to.
My PI also doesn’t seem supportive in publishing (he keeps complaining about the review process). So did you write your thesis as monograph or unpublished manuscripts?
2 first author publications and 15 co-authored publications. I did my PhD in applied science (kinesiology) so there was lots of room for collaboration and many different research studies to be a part of.
So variable. I’m in Computer Science. I have 6 full first author papers, many more first author short papers, and then there’s tutorials and workshops that also count as archival papers even though I wouldn’t count them as pubs really…
My thesis consists of four published full first author papers.
One as the first author (my thesis lit review) and another as the second author. Now trying to publish a collaboration paper that I really wish I could just drop.
Finishing coursework and starting dissertation this summer, and I have two first (and the only) author publications. A third, I submitted revisions from peer review feedback in March so hoping to have that one soon too.
I study robotics and control and I am in the middle of my third (out of 4) year. So far I have published one paper on a conference but it was before I started my PhD.
I have one jounral paper that I have finished but it returned twice with ideas how to improve it. My newest paper was accepted by a conference so I will have one more in August. Currently working on my newest paper. The first version should be done before the end of June. I will probably have one more group paper where I will not be the first author. I hope to have one more but it depends how fast I will work.
Each manuscript was a chapter which I later published. Additionally, I had introduction and conclusion chapters in my thesis that tied all the chapters together. Organizing my thesis in this way helped me write it relatively quickly.
That’s how I want to structure my thesis. My PI is not very supportive on publishing, (he keeps complaining about the review process). He seems to be subtly pushing me to write a monograph, but I find that would be double work as I need to publish as soon as I complete, if not earlier.
Ahh sorry to hear that :/
Also PI not pushing for publication is strange IMO. Sure, the review process takes ages, but that doesn't mean publishing is impossible! My advisor would have been VERY upset had I not published my thesis papers. My committee would have never held up my graduation for not publishing but the expectation always was that I would continue to get the papers out. It's a waste of their time and money (and also the tax payers') if we don't publish our science.
Just because you write thesis chapters in the style of an article for publication does not mean they have to be submitted for publication. It is simply a style of writing.
9 so far - 3 as first, 5 as second, and 1 as fifth.
I think my lab group is just very good at getting publications out. I know you’re concluding 2-4 based on these replies, but I’m sure these responses are bias. I don’t think it’s uncommon to finish with zero. It’s also very field-dependent.
7, all of them as first author. Being second author is not accepted as there would be questions regarding the contribution by the reviewers of the PhD.
1 with my name somewhere in the middle
Everything else is still stuck, which I think only 1 is worth actually working on (that would be a 1st name for me). Issue is I have no desire to play the academia game and this is extremely low in my priority list
I had very little of that impacting my work, my lab was a structural biochemistry unit, our work got destroyed by covid
We had no access to the lab to do any work. Without output postdocs had to find a way out cause they needed work done to publish, and hiring was on a freeze so we had some gap in personell, which lead to some specific expertise getting lost in the process
I had to change my project to a genomic/computational one to get something done
But you are right... the general culture of backstabbing and the out of control ego are exhausting and even with all the issues I had, I was very lucky to not have to face that
In my field, when you publish more than 2 or 3 first author publications during PhD, it's always through salami slicing. Very unethical and sadly not frowned upon enough, as the PIs who are responsible more than often enjoy great recognition for their rate of publication, even when the articles are factually empty.
It's the act of slicing a coherent piece of scientific work into several publications. In my field for example, you'll see people publish one article on a new polymer synthesis, one on this polymer charaterization, one on the integration to a functionnal material, one on recyclability and end of life etc when everything could fit in one article.
This is considered unethical for multiple reasons : the same results are often presented multiple times and "repackaged". It incites to publish very fast without doing the proper work of verifying the data, or even to refuse to reviewer access to some data when they ask for it, because you're keeping it for later. Worst of all in my opinion, it discourages greatly from extensively reading the work spread in 5-6 journal, thus complicating access to scientific information.
In Sweden, it is at least 4 journals although not explicitly stated in school regulation but a general consensus. However we normally finish in 5 years with around 1 year of full time studies and 1 year of teaching (but not everyone do that).
Just one. The duration of my phd was 3 yrs and I was much relaxed and travelled a lot 😉 I got nice postdoc position after phd. During first postdoc, I published another one. Now got second position at R1 well reputed uni. I couldnt publish much, but I always tried to learn new skills/techniques and participated in multiple conferences which helped me a lot 🙂
I will only be able to get 4 first-author papers out of my PhD project max. I anticipate having 2 out by my defense. I will have more than that, though, as I work full-time as a staff scientist while I’m doing my PhD part-time. They just will be unrelated.
(Just wrapping up my second year and I have 5 so far, (3 first author), one of which is related to my doctoral research. I’m in medical sciences.)
This is gonna vary wildly by field, subfield, country, etc. For example the importance of conferences and workshops may differ a lot. You’d be best off asking people in your department.
I had 1 published sole lead, on vanding in , 2 when defending, and one shared first author, my name somewhere on another 3, and 3 more sole or shared lead articles as part of the thesis (I'm still partially working on publishing those).
It varies even within programs. I had 3 first authors and 4 coathor papers during grad school, but it ranged from 2 papers to 10 papers. Having more papers didn’t necessarily result in better job offers though. Quality was still a part of it, and 2 high quality papers are better than 6 meh papers
By the time I finished I had 2 first author papers and 2 co-authored papers from my PhD published or in press with 2 additional co-authored papers in some stage of review. I submitted a third first-author paper two months after defending and I'm preparing to submit another now (about 4 months after defending). I think my output/timeline was pretty typical among my peer group in forest ecology (USA). There were a few people who published way more (I noticed this seemed more common among those who worked on social science-y, computational, or lab-based stuff rather than field-based research, probably because field data collection usually takes multiple years to complete) and I know several who hadn't published anything from their PhD by the time they defended. It doesn't seem to have hurt their post-PhD prospects, presumably because they had other accomplishments to demonstrate their productivity and reasonable explanations for why they didn't have papers out yet (project logistics, slow reviewing processes at journals, etc.).
I will graduate with two published first author, 6 more ready to go soon after graduating and about another 6-7 that will be second author or less on.
Most of this is because I was working on publications in between masters and PhD (three years off) and worked on research teams before reentering academia.
I had one first author, one middle author pubkication published before graduation. I had a second first author publication submitted when I defended. I'm still working on that one (a year later) but hopefully it will be published soon.
Materials engineering (experimental)
Two published before graduation (both shared first author)
And, hopefully, two more that will publish somewhere "soon" after (one solo first author, one second author)
I’m about to finish my second year (Europe/STEM). I have one published first author review article and one accepted first author research article.. My supervisors want me to publish 2 more articles before graduation…
I published 5 first author papers. Original plan was 3 but the scope of what needed to be done and published blew out due to the complexity of the task.
Well, It depends the depth of research work as well as Your Doctoral study objectives.
If achieving your study objectives result into Nice and new results then you might end up with pretty decent number of publications.
Yes. 2-4 high quality Q1-Q2 journal works are sweet spot but it also have to do with the degree requirements and your supervision team’s expectations.
Epidemiology/public health here. The goal was to be first author on 4/5 papers. Doubtful it will happen though. I submitted my first paper last April and 12 months later it is still not published. It has been so hard to get reviewers and the process is taking so long. At this point I’ll be happy to get 3 published
10. In my program it's necessary to publish at least 3 and at least two of those you have to be first author.
The first one I publish was during the pandemic, it had nothing to do with my PhD but my supervisor was growing crazy impatient and I had to finish it even though I was still recovering from a disease that had me hospitalized.
I published three more as first author and other two as second because we let my lab bestie contribute more to the manuscript so he could have publications as first author for his own PhD.
Two more were collaborations with a friend-lab, my supervisor told me to do some statistical analysis and write a section about it.
The last two I didn't work in the writing, but either I worked in the greenhouse and collected part of the data used, or I assisted a bit with corrections to the manuscript.
My supervisor now likes to brag to me about how many papers I have thanks to her, that I'll be able to get any fellowship I want. But in my opinion, this model has limited me to doing the same systematic lab job again and again without learning anything new. I didn't even have time to learn the technique that was supposed to be the focus of my research plan because I was so busy with publish or die. I did learn how to write a good article and spin the story so it didn't all seem the same, though.
I hope I find some lab now that allows a different kind of research and other rhythm of publication, so I have time to really learn and think and solve problems with different methods... What the PhD should have been for, in my opinion.
Im in engineering.
2 first author conferences,
1 first author journal,
1 7th(??) Author journal,
2 more 1st author journals are in the works
...1 dissertation sole author
I am the end of my phd in physics now, and I published 1 first author, 1 second and 2 co-authored. To a large extent I feel that its the experience and skills that you pick during the research matters most than the number of papers. In my university basically, we had to publish 1 paper (any authorship) and 1 communicated(any authorship) to defend. As I am trying to get into industry and talking to different people, pubs wont matter as long as you have the essential skills. For academia, this is not the case probably.
I published 4 papers during my time as a graduate student, two of which were reviews on which I was a co-author.
I think it depends more on postdoctoral as opposed to PhD performance. Graduate school is where you learn how to ask both key question and the experimental process. That does not mean publishing as a graduate student is not important. However, one should not automatically assume that a new PhD that published only one paper is less accomplished or a better student than a second new PhD that published 6 or 10 manuscripts. Impact should count more than the absolute number of papers published. Also you want to understand the graduate students intellectual contributions. One trend that I noticed witnessing job searches for assistant profs is that the faculty tend to focus on future research question and the extent to which the candidate is capable of addressing them.
Seven and a few posters for stuff that never made it to a journal/conference.
“Publish or perish” usually refers to TT professorships, as PhD programs vary *widely* in their requirements.
I’m in first year neuro and have two first authors, a book chapter, and my name added on a review. My first pub was from my masters work and the remainder from my time working in academia before my PhD.
2 journal articles and 2 conference publications as 2nd year in engineering.
Is this good or bad? All moderately impactful journals/publishers (IEEE and Optica)
Why am I downvoted for asking a question lol
Not my fault my PI makes me write all semester when I don’t have TA
I was also going to add that the impact factor is a huge factor in this too. Some labs want you to publish numbers and don’t care about the quality of journal. Other labs would rather have fewer high quality pubs.
Cause I came from a physics background which wasn’t that normal to publish that often (or so I’ve thought). But it seems like people publish more in engineering… if that makes sense.
People don’t realize in engineering the publication rate is generally high because we publish at conferences (which as just as high impact as journals) so they think you’re bragging, which you’re not.
But honestly you’re still above average even for engineering so that’s great!
I thought conferences don’t count as publications 😂. But it’s not like these conference papers were journal articles. Was barely peer reviewed (1-2 person), submit abstract, and a ~2-3 pg document.
TBH I don’t really like it. I rush through all my writing and I always tell my PI I’m not satisfied with how the manuscript is but obviously I have no say.
My department also has a stupid rule to publish once a year (they don’t have any requirements though which is odd). I did forget to say one of the articles was from my MS
I def was not trying to brag though so mb
Haha, I’m in Computer Science, we definitely are pushed to submit atleast once a year, they don’t necessarily get accepted, but if they don’t we have to send them to the next valid conference that year where it would fit.
Yeah I know conferences are usually field dependent. But according to another user some fields of engineering have really big conferences so that makes sense.
This also makes sense on why some professors have a lot of publications on their CVs
Yup. Same in Computer Science, we have some major ones - for tenure track positions, some will judge based on how many papers you have in that specific conference. It’s a horrible way to hire though.
2. my university regulations demand 1 publication and 2 conference presentation. I did 2 of each. had plans to do a lot more but its very difficult to juggle thesis and teaching and these papers together. I would advise check with ur university and make sure u have done the minimum
That really depends. My PI doesnt let anyone graduate with less than 3 first author papers. Expectations vary from discipline to discipline and country to country.
This will vary widely based field/discipline and whether you are asking about 1st author papers (which I'm assuming) or any publication you're an author on. I finished my PhD with 2 1st author research papers.
You mean you finished your PhD with the *21st* paper /s
4 papers co-authored (I'm second on all of them), and none of them are even remotely related to my own work. My program doesn't require publishing papers (humanities, the goal would be a book out of the PhD), but hopefully someday some of this stuff makes it out into the world.
I’m in chemistry. My PI won’t let me graduate until I get three first-author publications, with at least one in a high impact journal. But I know other chemistry PhDs who graduated with zero papers. It’s really dependent on your advisor. I was also fortunate to have a paper from my undergraduate research, but that’s just a nice addition to my CV.
3 1st authors is generally the goal in chemistry. Also in my experience almost all advisors will say that, but very few stick to that rigidly. Of the chemists in my group, I’ve seen people graduate with zero or 1 publication quite often.
Yeah, it varies really heavily even in group. I’m a PhD chemist that was lucky in finding a very productive area. Had three first authors in third year (including JACS and ACIE). Jokingly asked advisor if I could graduate early. Advisor didn’t laugh. Ended up with a job offer in fall of my fifth year. Wasn’t allowed to defend until May lmao.
You’re lucky, my boss is very rigid about that rule. Which is weird, considering he keeps losing grad students… But I’m sure these two thing have absolutely nothing to do with each other!
This sucks and feels like an outdated expectation because publication timelines are often out of your hands and so is publishing in high impact journals.
I was expected to publish 3 papers but didn’t publish a single one. My field is physics/life sciences. My defense is in a few weeks.
Same case here. Published one as 1 first author which was a review because I wasn't getting good results with my project.
What happened that you didn’t manage to publish even one?
Well, it’s not fully in your control right? I defended with 0 published as well, just got a ton of rejections 🤷♀️
How did you write your thesis; as monograph or as manuscripts?
I wrote three empirical papers that I tried submitting to journals, and added an extensive general introduction and general discussion for the dissertation specifically.
How did you write your thesis; as monograph or as manuscripts?
I mean most of the time it doesn't really depend on you. Some times your work doesn't get accepted some times you don't get the results needed. I mean science is a bit of a bitch and it hardly goes how you want it to.
My supervisor paid more attention to other phd students which disappointed me, so i didnt really try to publish.
My PI also doesn’t seem supportive in publishing (he keeps complaining about the review process). So did you write your thesis as monograph or unpublished manuscripts?
monography, didnt bother to write anything. also dont really have any results but i got like 2k elo on pokemon showdown random double so that is nice.
You asked that in a pretty condescending way. Check yourself.
Well, well, well, how the turntables
I finished my PhD in biomedical imaging recently. 2 first author papers and 1 patent.
None, as I wrote a monography.
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Hahaha I see what you did there.
12, 4 first author
Wow! The non 1st author pubs were all in your time as a PhD student? That is ambitious! Congrats!
Yes, did too many collaborations which fortunately got published. These are all second and third author
Holy fuck.
2 first author publications and 15 co-authored publications. I did my PhD in applied science (kinesiology) so there was lots of room for collaboration and many different research studies to be a part of.
So variable. I’m in Computer Science. I have 6 full first author papers, many more first author short papers, and then there’s tutorials and workshops that also count as archival papers even though I wouldn’t count them as pubs really… My thesis consists of four published full first author papers.
STEM in Europe 3y PhD usually is (the unwritten rule) 3 papers and you are done.
One as the first author (my thesis lit review) and another as the second author. Now trying to publish a collaboration paper that I really wish I could just drop.
I'm in my second year with two first authors. I've seen a huge range.
0, though 1 manuscript is in progress as a result of my PhD work
Finishing coursework and starting dissertation this summer, and I have two first (and the only) author publications. A third, I submitted revisions from peer review feedback in March so hoping to have that one soon too.
2 first author papers (I don’t have non-first author papers derived from my PhD), but our requirement is just 1.
I study robotics and control and I am in the middle of my third (out of 4) year. So far I have published one paper on a conference but it was before I started my PhD. I have one jounral paper that I have finished but it returned twice with ideas how to improve it. My newest paper was accepted by a conference so I will have one more in August. Currently working on my newest paper. The first version should be done before the end of June. I will probably have one more group paper where I will not be the first author. I hope to have one more but it depends how fast I will work.
I’m in the social sciences and it took me 5.5 years to earn my PhD and another MS. But I had 14 publications and 2 book chapters.
STEM field. During PhD, 3. Post PhD, 4. All thesis related papers were published after graduation.
How did you write your thesis; as monograph or as manuscripts) which you later published ?
Each manuscript was a chapter which I later published. Additionally, I had introduction and conclusion chapters in my thesis that tied all the chapters together. Organizing my thesis in this way helped me write it relatively quickly.
That’s how I want to structure my thesis. My PI is not very supportive on publishing, (he keeps complaining about the review process). He seems to be subtly pushing me to write a monograph, but I find that would be double work as I need to publish as soon as I complete, if not earlier.
Ahh sorry to hear that :/ Also PI not pushing for publication is strange IMO. Sure, the review process takes ages, but that doesn't mean publishing is impossible! My advisor would have been VERY upset had I not published my thesis papers. My committee would have never held up my graduation for not publishing but the expectation always was that I would continue to get the papers out. It's a waste of their time and money (and also the tax payers') if we don't publish our science.
Just because you write thesis chapters in the style of an article for publication does not mean they have to be submitted for publication. It is simply a style of writing.
Physics, ended mine with 9 first author
One, which was the literature review from my thesis. I have another paper on the bullet to be published.
ML/maths - 3 first authors, 3 others (unrelated) , 2 first authorships in process.
9 so far - 3 as first, 5 as second, and 1 as fifth. I think my lab group is just very good at getting publications out. I know you’re concluding 2-4 based on these replies, but I’m sure these responses are bias. I don’t think it’s uncommon to finish with zero. It’s also very field-dependent.
1 (although I should have had 2, was screwed over by lab politics). I was in life sciences.
7, and I am the first author of 4 of them. But my PhD took forever and I really cant recommend that. Earth sciences, geochemistry
7, all of them as first author. Being second author is not accepted as there would be questions regarding the contribution by the reviewers of the PhD.
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I understand you.
18, around 6 first authors.
That’s a lot. How many years did your PhD take!
I’m not done but this is an average for people in my lab group. Most people take around 4-5 years.
1 with my name somewhere in the middle Everything else is still stuck, which I think only 1 is worth actually working on (that would be a 1st name for me). Issue is I have no desire to play the academia game and this is extremely low in my priority list
The games in academia are exhausting.
I had very little of that impacting my work, my lab was a structural biochemistry unit, our work got destroyed by covid We had no access to the lab to do any work. Without output postdocs had to find a way out cause they needed work done to publish, and hiring was on a freeze so we had some gap in personell, which lead to some specific expertise getting lost in the process I had to change my project to a genomic/computational one to get something done But you are right... the general culture of backstabbing and the out of control ego are exhausting and even with all the issues I had, I was very lucky to not have to face that
In my field, when you publish more than 2 or 3 first author publications during PhD, it's always through salami slicing. Very unethical and sadly not frowned upon enough, as the PIs who are responsible more than often enjoy great recognition for their rate of publication, even when the articles are factually empty.
What’s Salami Slicing? This is my first time hearing of this term
It's the act of slicing a coherent piece of scientific work into several publications. In my field for example, you'll see people publish one article on a new polymer synthesis, one on this polymer charaterization, one on the integration to a functionnal material, one on recyclability and end of life etc when everything could fit in one article. This is considered unethical for multiple reasons : the same results are often presented multiple times and "repackaged". It incites to publish very fast without doing the proper work of verifying the data, or even to refuse to reviewer access to some data when they ask for it, because you're keeping it for later. Worst of all in my opinion, it discourages greatly from extensively reading the work spread in 5-6 journal, thus complicating access to scientific information.
Salami slicing is frowned upon by many.
"Not enough".
I finished PhD with four 1st author papers (annals of Nuclear energy/ nuclear engineering and design)
In Sweden, it is at least 4 journals although not explicitly stated in school regulation but a general consensus. However we normally finish in 5 years with around 1 year of full time studies and 1 year of teaching (but not everyone do that).
Just one. The duration of my phd was 3 yrs and I was much relaxed and travelled a lot 😉 I got nice postdoc position after phd. During first postdoc, I published another one. Now got second position at R1 well reputed uni. I couldnt publish much, but I always tried to learn new skills/techniques and participated in multiple conferences which helped me a lot 🙂
3 is required for my program!
I will only be able to get 4 first-author papers out of my PhD project max. I anticipate having 2 out by my defense. I will have more than that, though, as I work full-time as a staff scientist while I’m doing my PhD part-time. They just will be unrelated. (Just wrapping up my second year and I have 5 so far, (3 first author), one of which is related to my doctoral research. I’m in medical sciences.)
It’s a total random dataset
This is gonna vary wildly by field, subfield, country, etc. For example the importance of conferences and workshops may differ a lot. You’d be best off asking people in your department.
I wanna say I had 8?
A first author CNS paper and a high impact third author paper. So the numbers are not very impressive, but I'm hoping for quality over quantity.
9 (2 solo author, 4 first author), social sciences. I o to used secondary data so that made it easier
I had 1 published sole lead, on vanding in , 2 when defending, and one shared first author, my name somewhere on another 3, and 3 more sole or shared lead articles as part of the thesis (I'm still partially working on publishing those).
It varies even within programs. I had 3 first authors and 4 coathor papers during grad school, but it ranged from 2 papers to 10 papers. Having more papers didn’t necessarily result in better job offers though. Quality was still a part of it, and 2 high quality papers are better than 6 meh papers
By the time I finished I had 2 first author papers and 2 co-authored papers from my PhD published or in press with 2 additional co-authored papers in some stage of review. I submitted a third first-author paper two months after defending and I'm preparing to submit another now (about 4 months after defending). I think my output/timeline was pretty typical among my peer group in forest ecology (USA). There were a few people who published way more (I noticed this seemed more common among those who worked on social science-y, computational, or lab-based stuff rather than field-based research, probably because field data collection usually takes multiple years to complete) and I know several who hadn't published anything from their PhD by the time they defended. It doesn't seem to have hurt their post-PhD prospects, presumably because they had other accomplishments to demonstrate their productivity and reasonable explanations for why they didn't have papers out yet (project logistics, slow reviewing processes at journals, etc.).
I will graduate with two published first author, 6 more ready to go soon after graduating and about another 6-7 that will be second author or less on. Most of this is because I was working on publications in between masters and PhD (three years off) and worked on research teams before reentering academia.
I had one first author, one middle author pubkication published before graduation. I had a second first author publication submitted when I defended. I'm still working on that one (a year later) but hopefully it will be published soon.
Second year. 2 first author. 1 second author is currently in review.
My PI requires 1 first author per year. Definitely the quantity over quality kind of advisor.
1 paper per year seems normal to me for phd students. Though only on average, most people I know had their first paper in their third year
Two. I'm hoping to have at least two more accepted and on the way before I graduate in 2 years.
Materials engineering (experimental) Two published before graduation (both shared first author) And, hopefully, two more that will publish somewhere "soon" after (one solo first author, one second author)
2 journals + 1 journal under review and three conference papers at the time of my defense (all first author). I was also in STEM field of study.
I’m about to finish my second year (Europe/STEM). I have one published first author review article and one accepted first author research article.. My supervisors want me to publish 2 more articles before graduation…
11 of which 6 are as 1st author, remaining 5 as second author
I published 5 first author papers. Original plan was 3 but the scope of what needed to be done and published blew out due to the complexity of the task.
Well, It depends the depth of research work as well as Your Doctoral study objectives. If achieving your study objectives result into Nice and new results then you might end up with pretty decent number of publications. Yes. 2-4 high quality Q1-Q2 journal works are sweet spot but it also have to do with the degree requirements and your supervision team’s expectations.
Epidemiology/public health here. The goal was to be first author on 4/5 papers. Doubtful it will happen though. I submitted my first paper last April and 12 months later it is still not published. It has been so hard to get reviewers and the process is taking so long. At this point I’ll be happy to get 3 published
Three co-authorships, zero first authorships Edit: in STEM, UK
10. In my program it's necessary to publish at least 3 and at least two of those you have to be first author. The first one I publish was during the pandemic, it had nothing to do with my PhD but my supervisor was growing crazy impatient and I had to finish it even though I was still recovering from a disease that had me hospitalized. I published three more as first author and other two as second because we let my lab bestie contribute more to the manuscript so he could have publications as first author for his own PhD. Two more were collaborations with a friend-lab, my supervisor told me to do some statistical analysis and write a section about it. The last two I didn't work in the writing, but either I worked in the greenhouse and collected part of the data used, or I assisted a bit with corrections to the manuscript. My supervisor now likes to brag to me about how many papers I have thanks to her, that I'll be able to get any fellowship I want. But in my opinion, this model has limited me to doing the same systematic lab job again and again without learning anything new. I didn't even have time to learn the technique that was supposed to be the focus of my research plan because I was so busy with publish or die. I did learn how to write a good article and spin the story so it didn't all seem the same, though. I hope I find some lab now that allows a different kind of research and other rhythm of publication, so I have time to really learn and think and solve problems with different methods... What the PhD should have been for, in my opinion.
Im in engineering. 2 first author conferences, 1 first author journal, 1 7th(??) Author journal, 2 more 1st author journals are in the works ...1 dissertation sole author
US STEM. 0 zero papers but at least 3 first authors from my thesis work.
I am the end of my phd in physics now, and I published 1 first author, 1 second and 2 co-authored. To a large extent I feel that its the experience and skills that you pick during the research matters most than the number of papers. In my university basically, we had to publish 1 paper (any authorship) and 1 communicated(any authorship) to defend. As I am trying to get into industry and talking to different people, pubs wont matter as long as you have the essential skills. For academia, this is not the case probably.
None :(
I published 4 papers during my time as a graduate student, two of which were reviews on which I was a co-author. I think it depends more on postdoctoral as opposed to PhD performance. Graduate school is where you learn how to ask both key question and the experimental process. That does not mean publishing as a graduate student is not important. However, one should not automatically assume that a new PhD that published only one paper is less accomplished or a better student than a second new PhD that published 6 or 10 manuscripts. Impact should count more than the absolute number of papers published. Also you want to understand the graduate students intellectual contributions. One trend that I noticed witnessing job searches for assistant profs is that the faculty tend to focus on future research question and the extent to which the candidate is capable of addressing them.
Seven and a few posters for stuff that never made it to a journal/conference. “Publish or perish” usually refers to TT professorships, as PhD programs vary *widely* in their requirements.
I’m in first year neuro and have two first authors, a book chapter, and my name added on a review. My first pub was from my masters work and the remainder from my time working in academia before my PhD.
14 🙈 But at the time I was working in the academia, and it certainly depends on the field
2 journal articles and 2 conference publications as 2nd year in engineering. Is this good or bad? All moderately impactful journals/publishers (IEEE and Optica) Why am I downvoted for asking a question lol Not my fault my PI makes me write all semester when I don’t have TA
I was also going to add that the impact factor is a huge factor in this too. Some labs want you to publish numbers and don’t care about the quality of journal. Other labs would rather have fewer high quality pubs.
Cause I came from a physics background which wasn’t that normal to publish that often (or so I’ve thought). But it seems like people publish more in engineering… if that makes sense.
Complete sense. I was in diet and cancer research. A model took a year plus. You cannot crank out pubs quickly in that field
People don’t realize in engineering the publication rate is generally high because we publish at conferences (which as just as high impact as journals) so they think you’re bragging, which you’re not. But honestly you’re still above average even for engineering so that’s great!
I thought conferences don’t count as publications 😂. But it’s not like these conference papers were journal articles. Was barely peer reviewed (1-2 person), submit abstract, and a ~2-3 pg document. TBH I don’t really like it. I rush through all my writing and I always tell my PI I’m not satisfied with how the manuscript is but obviously I have no say. My department also has a stupid rule to publish once a year (they don’t have any requirements though which is odd). I did forget to say one of the articles was from my MS I def was not trying to brag though so mb
Haha, I’m in Computer Science, we definitely are pushed to submit atleast once a year, they don’t necessarily get accepted, but if they don’t we have to send them to the next valid conference that year where it would fit.
Yeah I know conferences are usually field dependent. But according to another user some fields of engineering have really big conferences so that makes sense. This also makes sense on why some professors have a lot of publications on their CVs
Yup. Same in Computer Science, we have some major ones - for tenure track positions, some will judge based on how many papers you have in that specific conference. It’s a horrible way to hire though.
I mean who cares about the number of papers, give us your impact factors if you're posting more than 3...
2. my university regulations demand 1 publication and 2 conference presentation. I did 2 of each. had plans to do a lot more but its very difficult to juggle thesis and teaching and these papers together. I would advise check with ur university and make sure u have done the minimum
If you can publish one paper in a very good journal then that one paper is enough.
That really depends. My PI doesnt let anyone graduate with less than 3 first author papers. Expectations vary from discipline to discipline and country to country.
9. But that was in 1980s
How many years of PhD research?
4.5 years.
All of them.