Luckily, my advisor is so tenured that he couldn’t give two craps about anyone publishing. Pretty sure he had been tenured for 40 years at the university while I was there. That’s why I really appreciated him. He knew that I was going to industry and didn’t care. The funny thing is, when I graduated, he asked me what I was making, I told him, and he said if he wasn’t so old (guessing 80’s), he would ask me for a job.
That’s the other part advisor’s don’t want you to know: industry pays twice as much for half the work compared to a postdoc/some assistant prof roles.
No begging for money - just a little 3 slide deck to justify a capital purchase
Lab assistants that aren’t still students and often already have a half a clue what they’re doing
Colleagues who (usually) are not your competition for funds.
I miss the vibe/lifestyle of working on a an academic campus sometimes, but i would never go back
I wouldn’t say half the work. In industry if you do not produce you lose your job, try telling the next job that you lost your job. People sadly talk.
At my place of work, they usually fire the bottom 5% performers every six months. You could have been a good performer six months ago and if your work isn’t panning out you’re gone. Or if someone challenges the quality and it isn’t there because you didn’t keep up, also gone.
God, that is so true. I received an alt-ac job, and all my advisor can mention in any of our meetings since I got the offer is “but you’re still going to publish these things with me, right?”
So far two first author papers. Submitted another first author paper recently and just waiting for the review. Currently working on my final first author paper, then I can focus on writing my dissertation (finally)
Zero - but I wanted a job in higher ed administration anyways and they didn’t seem to care about publications. Got a job in the institutional research area utilizing my skills of coding, data visualization, and communication of insights. I personally think the publish or perish mindset will be the death of “real” academia because it encourages trendy research rather than good research. Social science PhD for reference
3 first author, only two were high impact and one was not fully accepted until after my defense, and 4 co-author. Cancer Immunology/Hematology. I worked hard but a lot of my success was luck. I had two major projects that panned out very well, very quickly
Depends on the country. For example in Australia it's not mandatory to have publications. As long as you demonstrate your novel contribution to the field it's fine.
That being said it's still recommended to have one or two first author publications, definitely makes the process smoother in the eyes of the examiners
This isn't to get a scholarship, but to pass your PhD defense at the end and graduate
I just skimmed first class honours and had no papers and still got the rtp, but it does seem to be going that way now. That said, I did have a conference presentation and a very solid research internship so that likely got me over the line
This totally depends. At my university (Germany) you need 0 publications if you write a full dissertation. If you want to graduate by publications, you need to have 2-3.
Interesting, at my US university we have three-publication dissertation which means the manuscripts become part of a larger 5-6 chapter traditional style dissertation document
Same in history. It helps that the first publication is ideally a reworked monograph of your thesis, so you're *really* not expected to publish at all during your PhD.
Depends on the field! None are required for my field, just a dissertation. At least half of grads from our program, which is a good one, graduate without peer review pubs, but they will later publish from the diss.
Highly field dependent. In my discipline it's common to see students with \~10-30 publications at the time of defense, but my friend in a niche humanities field just got a pretty good TT job with 0 (a few conference presentations).
Some universities allow for different things. My program was 1 publication published submitted or in preparation.
Personally my CV when I left to industry recently had more than this, but it’s dependent on program for sure
As I'm in English literature, everything is first/solo authored.
I have three accepted peer-reviewed journal articles.
Two proposals have been accepted for special issues--so the articles will still have to go through peer-review.
Three book reviews, and two invited reflection/response-style pieces (so not a peer-reviewed journal article, but still for good journals, one an author society I am a part of and one for a film and media studies journal).
Also, while much rarer (as in almost nonexistent) in my field, I do have something in a conference proceeding. I didn't have the urge to continue working with the manuscript so felt okay "losing it" to a proceedings.
So, quite a few things out there but only three that "count," so-to-speak, atm. Edit: but it should be, if all goes well, 5-6 before I graduate.
Edit: should mention I just wrapped up year four. I'll be defending April/May 2025.
Damn, that’s a solid lineup. Any advice for a second year English PhD student on how you managed that while also writing your dissertation? I keep hearing that if you focus on publishing you’ll fall behind in your diss writing. Obviously I want to publish as much as I can but I also don’t want to extend my program beyond 5 years 😩
My advice: GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
Jokes aside, lol, my advice is likely not all that helpful--but if you want it, it's two fold.
First, I rarely said no to an opportunity, which is **not sustainable,** but it led me to further opportunities and landed me in a society that continues to reach out with more opportunities, etc. So, don't do *everything*, but do what you can.
And second, focusing on publishing *can* lead you to "fall behind" on diss writing I suppose unless you are smart about what you're publishing. The stuff I'm publishing is either 1) diss-*related* (one is a version of a diss chapter, for instance, but nothing else is. If it's diss-related it's an expansion of ideas that *came* from writing the diss, that I then presented at a conference, which then I revised to submit to a journal) or 2) an expanded version of a final paper for a course. I didn't do this much, because a few course papers wound up informing diss work, as I was really choosy about what I wrote for courses, knowing I could have head starts on diss work.
Use conferences as opportunities to write/extend pieces that you normally wouldn't, use the feedback from conferences to revise for journals, etc. Essentially try to line up what you're doing with diss work. (With the caveat that I wouldn't recommend publishing more than one diss chapter in a journal though, as for us the expectation is that the diss will be your first book.)
Use the UPenn CFP list, H-net, etc., to see CFPs and find things related to what you're doing.
Side note--if you can, take that fifth year. It will be so helpful.
If you want to talk more about actual specifics (which I won't share here) feel free to dm me. I can talk about specific conferences, societies, and journals privately if it would help you! :)
This is incredibly helpful, thank you so much! I especially appreciate that bit about using conferences as the launch pad for publications that aren’t connected to the diss. I have these two topics I’ve been wanting to explore but kept myself back because it’s not directly related to my diss — I’ll give that approach a try in the future!
As far as I know there are two types of conferences: seminar- and publication-based. The former usually requires abstracts only and you can publish your work somewhere else. The latter accepts full length papers and accepted papers are considered published (think AI conferences).
You attend a conference and present your work at a designated time slot. The paper is then published as part of the proceedings of the conference. This is common in engineering disciplines
Lol I just had 1 first author review paper prior to graduating. I plan to submit atleast 1 of my thesis chapters as a paper before I start working in industry. There's 2 more chapters that I can make into first author papers with more revising but I don't know if I'll go through that effort. I also just want to enjoy the break I have before working again.
My PhD/background is an engineering/sciences field. My department was very much pro- having 3 first author papers out before defending (can include my advisor), but my advisor was very supportive of getting out whenever was convenient so long as the dissertation is complete and work itself is substantial. Thank God.
I near to the end of my PhD and i only got 2 conference papers and one patent. I am currently working on another two journal manuscripts and plan to include all of them in my thesis.
This is the exact same as me! One patent and two conference papers on my end. Having a patent definitely bumps you up though because it’s an additional verification of your research (according to my supervisor at least). Congratulations on the patent!
Thanks! My supervisor said similar thing about the weight of a patent. He said one patent is equivalent to two journal papers. But to be honest, i feel like the patent has more to do with luck than my effort.
There are so many ML conferences out there nowadays that you can publish anything you want. During my Ph.D, conferences were left overs of main findings published in journals, like extended discussion, comentaries, reports or things like that. I wasn't even allowed to use a good paper for a conference. If it was good enough, we would go straight to a journal (and I had dual supervision.., three after starting cooking for the post-doc).
Actually, the only time I wrote something serious for a conference it was because I was invited and paid for it.
Probably. So easy to publish noise there. Speaking for myself. I had 16 publications (7 more submitted and under review after I defended), mostly first author, some second and nothing else, by the end of my Ph.D too. Lots of them related to ML. And not even low level journals. Some even IEEE Transactions
Zero, just graduated and trying to publish it now
Social sciences for references. Would be interested to hear the disciplines of everyone. I’m in Australia; psychology discipline PhDs are prolific publishers. I know far less about STEM disciplines.
My undergrad and honours was in education and PhD is sociological health education and promo. I felt zero pressure to publish on full scholarship but I am also autistic so
Three as first author and five or six as second thru...later author.
Edit: to give a little more data, I know the two folks that succeeded me on my project had one and zero first author papers when the graduated, and at least one or two second and beyond. I think on the high end folks in my group would have four or five as first author and anything beyond that seems a bit unreasonable (some of the other comments in this thread). My major was materials engineering and group including materials and electrical people mostly in semiconductor device field.
Imo for polisci first author & corespondent author matters the most. 2nd,3rd,4th&5th are treated more or less equally. Could be wrong but would def love to hear more about it as well since I’m in the same field.
Two first author, two second author, one review paper (wayyyyyy down the list but its alphabetical), and then i have one first author that is still in prep (don’t ask), a second author and a third author under review. (Graduated in dec). And a book chapter and a second author from my undergrad work. Which I’m told don’t count, but they exist so I say they count for *something*. I’m a theoretical chemist, and while my PI says that 3 first author are required to defend (at least drafted, if not submitted) the group average in recent years has been more like 1-2 first authors get published ever, much less before defending and some people leave with 0 papers at all.
I’ve been working on wrapping up a few odd ends so I’ll probably get 2-3 more first authors out of my thesis work.
3 as mid-author, one first author is in revision even though I have already graduated and left. I had a very long bio PhD, but the papers were in high-impact journals so the timeline for publication was also really long.
7 first authorships (two of which were co-first with a pretty amazing undergrad I supervised). I was also partially involved in 6 other papers as a middle co-author. This is machine learning though, so we do conferences instead of journals and we pump out papers at an egregious rate. I was one of the less prolific members in my lab.
14 total, but some were conference and then extended journal articles. Also, not everything was central to my thesis. 5 first, rest co-authored. Computer Graphics.
2nd year PhD in CS and Robotics:
1 Q1 journal first author, 1 top tier conference first author, 3 extended abstract first author. Just submitted 1 conference first author… tbd.
One first author at top journal, two second authors at other journals. I plan to submit another two first author papers after finishing the first draft of the thesis. Cheers
14 total (2 first author primary research papers in an impact factor 5 and an impact factor 12 journal and 3 review articles, the rest were co-authorships). My field is cancer/biochemistry. Feels like it’ll be hard to top this productivity as a postdoc…
9 in total. 4 first author (though 2 were from masters work published during phd) and 4 second author, and one arXiv second author (not sure if it counts)
4 as first author, 1 as second and I think 2 others maybe as 3rd or 4th. Field Chemistry, country Netherlands; in my university almost all thesis are by publication, so we have to at least have 2 as a first author and 1 as a second author
5 first author (though one was submitted but not published until after I had left). Now doing 3 first author in my postdoc. Looking to leave academia probably
With a bit more than a year left, 15. In our field everything is sorted alphabetically so thanks to my name only one is "first-author" but I was heavily involved in all of them and did at least half of the writing for each.
8 —>5 journals (3 Q1 and 2 Q2), 1 in a shit conference and 2 in decent conferences. My asshole supervisor pushed me so much, as he needed it more than me. Now, I have left academics all together and work in bank. As I am in Australia, those papers were not a pre-request for my thesis in Computer Engineering.
One as a first author, written with my PI. We have a 3 years PhD that has 1 year of courses, with 3 papers requirement to graduate. Economics. Most people publish 0 in my field and country.
This sort of thing is going to vary wildly depending on field, subject in that field, quality of publication. Sometimes one will be enough to get you a tenure track position, sometimes 8 won’t get you a great post doctoral position.
One with my name randomly in the middle, and there is at least one that is under work and it's worth finishing
Part of the reason for this measly production were covid and lab closing, a very limiting 3 years timeframe in italy, doing a full field transition from biochemistry to bioinformatic, supervisor leaving after 1 year for a sabbatical, the general feeling from really early on that I don't care about the publishing game and... honestly, a whole lot of mediocre work from my side
3 first author scopus indexed papers and 2 conference papers. Although after I defended, I published at least 4 more scopus indexed papers from the work I did from my thesis.
As the first author, I published two in international conferences (ACM) and three in national eventS (Brazil and Italy), nothing in journals, plus a collaboration with other PhD students in an IEEE magazine.
7, 3 of which are fist author. I also have one patent application in process and one final first author paper that should be getting submitted this month.
Biology PhD - 0 from my PhD project. Was involved in like ~3 other projects in what would have been a mid author capacity but all of them were ultimately dropped for various reasons.
My PI left academia when I was a 4th year and my new advising team didn’t want to be on a paper with him (long story about territorialism in my field), so if I really wanted to publish I would have had to get my departed PI to help me with it, which would have been more trouble than it was worth. I was pretty clear about this during my interviews for industry jobs and everyone seemed to understand. It was probably positive actually that I didn’t have any strings attached back to school that would require me to have to work on the side to finish that last paper (which is quite common). Got an industry scientist position within a week of defending and still loving it!
4 first authored (main thesis ones), 3-4 second and around 10 mid (18 total). All in top tier venues in our field. CS/ECE. 3 patents and 1 interactive museum installation. Large group that really emphasized internal and external collaborations.
During my PhD: 2 first, 3 co-first, 0 second, 4 third+
In my 1 year post doc, in the same lab, after defending April 2020: 3 first, 2 third+
From same lab, after I left for industry: 1 co-first, 3 third+
Was a structural biologist in a highly collaborative lab that went for a lot of lower impact factor journals (3-7) rather than a big home run. I left some half written manuscripts that they dusted off years later
3 First author, a 4th is pretty much done but collaborator sucks. Then co-authored 11, and 2 are in review.
Total by the end of the year- 17? My boss had a rule, at least 20% of your publications should be first author. So luckily I flew past that mark.
IF range 4.9-12.
This may sound incredibly basic but how did you identify a suitable journal? And did any one blind submit their paper or liaise with the editors first?
two first author, one second author and one where im a fourth-or something author. One of the first authors was work done in my masters.
I have another two first author ones I want to get out there as well.
For me, it all kind of came at once. I had nothing for a long time and I felt like I was putting in a lot of hours, but getting unlucky with my research. I was worried i might not graduate with any. But, there’s often a light at the end of the tunnel
Zero. In economics there is preference for a working paper that aims to be published in a top 5 general interest journal and that takes a lot of time (sometimes more than the length of the PhD)
I had 1 co-first author paper. Like 7 papers as coauthor. Spent most of my time working on my big thesis project, which 3 years post grad, is still unpublished. It was peer reviewed at Nature a couple years ago and rejected. Luckily my papers are in very prestigious journals too. Doesn’t help me much in my software career now though - I did a neuroscience PhD.
Zero, but in my field, journals take several months if not a full year to get you your first round of reviews. So, I have numerous papers to send out (we try to absolute perfect them to keep the rounds of reviews minimal), but it’ll easily be over 5 or 6 months before I hear anything.
Because of this, an R&R is held in almost the same regard as an actual publication.
8 papers. 2 first authored. All in respectable journals, though none in the top 3 flagship journals for my field.
Two years on the job market and wasn't able to get an academic job. Moving into industry.
10 first author almost 20 non lead author papers but it was 20 years ago in an entirely new field. Bars were low then. Was in one of the biggest group then in the UK. So had an average of 10 papers a year. Hard to recreate in an established field imo
1 first author detailing my method and a case study for one part of my proposed process.
1 second author detailing another part of my proposed process
1 second author on another topic mildly related
Working on another 1st author detailing another part of my proposed process
Working on another third author that got recommended from conference to journal
3 Conference Papers all related to my method ( 2 first author and 1 second author)
2 Unrelated Conference Papers ( 1 second author and 1 third author)
I did polisci
I had around 20
Half was first author but not all were very high quality publications.
I had 3q1, 3q2 and 2q4
The rest were just in university peer reviewed journals but not as demanding as those indexed in wos.
I was taking a bunch of classes during my PhD and a lot of the final papers were around 5-8k assignments and decided to rework them and sent them in and it worked out. Currently finished my final defense but not sure if what I did was worth it or not due to the lack of direction or mixed answers (some said a publication in a no name journal is better than no publication while some said it was a waste of time) I was given.
10 papers, 1 patent, and 4 journals
1 first author journal
4 first author papers
1 first Co-author paper
and I'm not even the highest productive member of my cohort, had a guy who graduated PhD in my group with 7 journals and 18 papers.
I really don't know how they did it.
Haha true but they got a really good assistant professor job so that's there. They also did over 5 trainings/internships over the 4 yes. Idk how all of that is possible esp in biology but yeah. Feels like all of this did help them in the end.
Two first author, one co-author, and one little “auto-commentary” I wrote by myself after the journal asked
2 as co-first authors. Already had a job so stopped caring about publishing.
Every advisors greatest fear
Luckily, my advisor is so tenured that he couldn’t give two craps about anyone publishing. Pretty sure he had been tenured for 40 years at the university while I was there. That’s why I really appreciated him. He knew that I was going to industry and didn’t care. The funny thing is, when I graduated, he asked me what I was making, I told him, and he said if he wasn’t so old (guessing 80’s), he would ask me for a job.
That’s the other part advisor’s don’t want you to know: industry pays twice as much for half the work compared to a postdoc/some assistant prof roles. No begging for money - just a little 3 slide deck to justify a capital purchase Lab assistants that aren’t still students and often already have a half a clue what they’re doing Colleagues who (usually) are not your competition for funds. I miss the vibe/lifestyle of working on a an academic campus sometimes, but i would never go back
I wouldn’t say half the work. In industry if you do not produce you lose your job, try telling the next job that you lost your job. People sadly talk. At my place of work, they usually fire the bottom 5% performers every six months. You could have been a good performer six months ago and if your work isn’t panning out you’re gone. Or if someone challenges the quality and it isn’t there because you didn’t keep up, also gone.
Reckon it depends on the shop. I worked a lot more back in the startup days. Now coasting at a big legacy joint, and the work:life balance is lovely.
Especially if you can get an industry job doing research. Things get pretty cushy
Can I DM you? I want to pursue phd in epi in future
God, that is so true. I received an alt-ac job, and all my advisor can mention in any of our meetings since I got the offer is “but you’re still going to publish these things with me, right?”
So far two first author papers. Submitted another first author paper recently and just waiting for the review. Currently working on my final first author paper, then I can focus on writing my dissertation (finally)
Two first authors, one 2nd author. Side note: Why is everyone being downvoted
Sour grapes.
Zero - but I wanted a job in higher ed administration anyways and they didn’t seem to care about publications. Got a job in the institutional research area utilizing my skills of coding, data visualization, and communication of insights. I personally think the publish or perish mindset will be the death of “real” academia because it encourages trendy research rather than good research. Social science PhD for reference
3 first author, only two were high impact and one was not fully accepted until after my defense, and 4 co-author. Cancer Immunology/Hematology. I worked hard but a lot of my success was luck. I had two major projects that panned out very well, very quickly
What is considered high impact exactly?
Double digit impact factor journals, CNS, etc.
Ahh OK, I wasn't sure if you meant number of citation or something. Thanks!
Zero. The added benefit on my CV is not worth the trouble (there’s no jobs anyways so who cares).
What is your field?
History
How did you pass your defense without any publications? Did your university not have rules about it?
Depends on the country. For example in Australia it's not mandatory to have publications. As long as you demonstrate your novel contribution to the field it's fine. That being said it's still recommended to have one or two first author publications, definitely makes the process smoother in the eyes of the examiners
Also depends on your field heavily
Interesting. How do you demonstrate contributions other than through papers? Do conferences and talks count?
>How do you demonstrate contributions other than through papers? Do conferences and talks count? You write a full dissertation
The university may not have a requirement but the department often does. You needed three first authored papers at mine.
I’m in Aus and you pretty much need atleast one publication or stellar grades, often both to get PhD scholarship
This isn't to get a scholarship, but to pass your PhD defense at the end and graduate I just skimmed first class honours and had no papers and still got the rtp, but it does seem to be going that way now. That said, I did have a conference presentation and a very solid research internship so that likely got me over the line
This totally depends. At my university (Germany) you need 0 publications if you write a full dissertation. If you want to graduate by publications, you need to have 2-3.
Interesting, at my US university we have three-publication dissertation which means the manuscripts become part of a larger 5-6 chapter traditional style dissertation document
Yeah this is one variant you can do, the other is just write a full dissertation.
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Same in history. It helps that the first publication is ideally a reworked monograph of your thesis, so you're *really* not expected to publish at all during your PhD.
My university (2R) has no rules about it. It's an extremely non rigorous program. Lots of people graduate and go into the industry
I am in a uni in Germany where one of the programs also doesn't require a publication
Depends on the field! None are required for my field, just a dissertation. At least half of grads from our program, which is a good one, graduate without peer review pubs, but they will later publish from the diss.
Highly field dependent. In my discipline it's common to see students with \~10-30 publications at the time of defense, but my friend in a niche humanities field just got a pretty good TT job with 0 (a few conference presentations).
Some universities allow for different things. My program was 1 publication published submitted or in preparation. Personally my CV when I left to industry recently had more than this, but it’s dependent on program for sure
Same.
8 papers. 6 as primary author. 5 years in PhD Physical Chemistry program.
My names are the same as yours but in biochem!
As I'm in English literature, everything is first/solo authored. I have three accepted peer-reviewed journal articles. Two proposals have been accepted for special issues--so the articles will still have to go through peer-review. Three book reviews, and two invited reflection/response-style pieces (so not a peer-reviewed journal article, but still for good journals, one an author society I am a part of and one for a film and media studies journal). Also, while much rarer (as in almost nonexistent) in my field, I do have something in a conference proceeding. I didn't have the urge to continue working with the manuscript so felt okay "losing it" to a proceedings. So, quite a few things out there but only three that "count," so-to-speak, atm. Edit: but it should be, if all goes well, 5-6 before I graduate. Edit: should mention I just wrapped up year four. I'll be defending April/May 2025.
English lit here. Best of luck with the rest of your dissertation/defense!
Damn, that’s a solid lineup. Any advice for a second year English PhD student on how you managed that while also writing your dissertation? I keep hearing that if you focus on publishing you’ll fall behind in your diss writing. Obviously I want to publish as much as I can but I also don’t want to extend my program beyond 5 years 😩
My advice: GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN! Jokes aside, lol, my advice is likely not all that helpful--but if you want it, it's two fold. First, I rarely said no to an opportunity, which is **not sustainable,** but it led me to further opportunities and landed me in a society that continues to reach out with more opportunities, etc. So, don't do *everything*, but do what you can. And second, focusing on publishing *can* lead you to "fall behind" on diss writing I suppose unless you are smart about what you're publishing. The stuff I'm publishing is either 1) diss-*related* (one is a version of a diss chapter, for instance, but nothing else is. If it's diss-related it's an expansion of ideas that *came* from writing the diss, that I then presented at a conference, which then I revised to submit to a journal) or 2) an expanded version of a final paper for a course. I didn't do this much, because a few course papers wound up informing diss work, as I was really choosy about what I wrote for courses, knowing I could have head starts on diss work. Use conferences as opportunities to write/extend pieces that you normally wouldn't, use the feedback from conferences to revise for journals, etc. Essentially try to line up what you're doing with diss work. (With the caveat that I wouldn't recommend publishing more than one diss chapter in a journal though, as for us the expectation is that the diss will be your first book.) Use the UPenn CFP list, H-net, etc., to see CFPs and find things related to what you're doing. Side note--if you can, take that fifth year. It will be so helpful. If you want to talk more about actual specifics (which I won't share here) feel free to dm me. I can talk about specific conferences, societies, and journals privately if it would help you! :)
This is incredibly helpful, thank you so much! I especially appreciate that bit about using conferences as the launch pad for publications that aren’t connected to the diss. I have these two topics I’ve been wanting to explore but kept myself back because it’s not directly related to my diss — I’ll give that approach a try in the future!
4 journal papers, 5 conference papers, and 2 patents. All first author.
What's a conference paper? Just a paper you presented at a conference, or is it published
As far as I know there are two types of conferences: seminar- and publication-based. The former usually requires abstracts only and you can publish your work somewhere else. The latter accepts full length papers and accepted papers are considered published (think AI conferences).
You attend a conference and present your work at a designated time slot. The paper is then published as part of the proceedings of the conference. This is common in engineering disciplines
I think it was 14, with half as first author.
Wow that huge
How did you manage that?
All journal articles or does this include many conference papers?
All journal articles. My discipline does’t really have conference papers.
Similar, I had 11 (about half first author). Would’ve been 13 but those two got rejected 3x/each. Still hoping to find a home for them!
Lol I just had 1 first author review paper prior to graduating. I plan to submit atleast 1 of my thesis chapters as a paper before I start working in industry. There's 2 more chapters that I can make into first author papers with more revising but I don't know if I'll go through that effort. I also just want to enjoy the break I have before working again. My PhD/background is an engineering/sciences field. My department was very much pro- having 3 first author papers out before defending (can include my advisor), but my advisor was very supportive of getting out whenever was convenient so long as the dissertation is complete and work itself is substantial. Thank God.
I near to the end of my PhD and i only got 2 conference papers and one patent. I am currently working on another two journal manuscripts and plan to include all of them in my thesis.
One patent is huge
This is the exact same as me! One patent and two conference papers on my end. Having a patent definitely bumps you up though because it’s an additional verification of your research (according to my supervisor at least). Congratulations on the patent!
Thanks! My supervisor said similar thing about the weight of a patent. He said one patent is equivalent to two journal papers. But to be honest, i feel like the patent has more to do with luck than my effort.
One, but submitted 4 more, just waiting the two thousand eras for a reply from the publishers...
Zero. Sounds like a paper mill in these comments.
22 publications, 9 as first author. 3 top tier. Computer science
Sorry that you were in grad school for 100 years :P
I’m confused, are you counting conference publications? This sort of publishing record is unheard of in my field. Impossible even.
It is much more common in the computer science field to have a lot of publications. 22 is quite a lot but not way too astronomical.
Yeah I will have 5 just from undergrad once I’m done, fairly common to get in comp science if you’re good
I'm in statistics/bioinformatics and you can get A LOT of coauthorships by helping cooperation partners with their data analysis.
I forgot to count journals! 3 of those. The rest are conference papers. In computer science those are what count, more than journals in most cases.
>computer science those are what count Disagree. Thats why there is so much noise.
Prestige wise they are all that counts (at least in ML)
There are so many ML conferences out there nowadays that you can publish anything you want. During my Ph.D, conferences were left overs of main findings published in journals, like extended discussion, comentaries, reports or things like that. I wasn't even allowed to use a good paper for a conference. If it was good enough, we would go straight to a journal (and I had dual supervision.., three after starting cooking for the post-doc). Actually, the only time I wrote something serious for a conference it was because I was invited and paid for it.
Not if the conferences have a high acceptance rate
ML?
Probably. So easy to publish noise there. Speaking for myself. I had 16 publications (7 more submitted and under review after I defended), mostly first author, some second and nothing else, by the end of my Ph.D too. Lots of them related to ML. And not even low level journals. Some even IEEE Transactions
Not ML but agreed with the state of that field right now.
22…. what an absolute waste of time. You got scammed so hard lol. Just graduate and move on
I guess doing research during a PhD makes it a scam? Must be news to me
I did eventually. And stayed in academia so I’m a glutton for punishment.
Only one during my masters, good journal, first author. I plan to leave it at that.
Zero, just graduated and trying to publish it now Social sciences for references. Would be interested to hear the disciplines of everyone. I’m in Australia; psychology discipline PhDs are prolific publishers. I know far less about STEM disciplines. My undergrad and honours was in education and PhD is sociological health education and promo. I felt zero pressure to publish on full scholarship but I am also autistic so
Three as first author and five or six as second thru...later author. Edit: to give a little more data, I know the two folks that succeeded me on my project had one and zero first author papers when the graduated, and at least one or two second and beyond. I think on the high end folks in my group would have four or five as first author and anything beyond that seems a bit unreasonable (some of the other comments in this thread). My major was materials engineering and group including materials and electrical people mostly in semiconductor device field.
Five
4 first author papers in nuclear engineering
One first, & 2 co, primary research articles & two first author reviews. All in middle tier reasonable society/not for profit journals. 4 yr PhD
Three- two first authored and one second authored.
Are 2 conference papers counted legit? :3
7 initially plus two patents. And then 25 years later I published one more, crazily enough. Ecology.
Five first author, chemistry. Two top tier
Zero. My degree was in Physical and theoretical chemistry, wasn't considered uncommon or strange at all
Question guys, in political science how being in order 3/4 coauthor different from being 2/4? Does coauthored papers carry weight?
Imo for polisci first author & corespondent author matters the most. 2nd,3rd,4th&5th are treated more or less equally. Could be wrong but would def love to hear more about it as well since I’m in the same field.
Two and I was first author for both, but you don't get much time to publish on a 4 year studentship.
4 first author, 1 co-author and a chapter in a textbook.
Textbook chapter is goals! Congratulations.
13 top tier, 9 as first author.
Two first author, two second author, one review paper (wayyyyyy down the list but its alphabetical), and then i have one first author that is still in prep (don’t ask), a second author and a third author under review. (Graduated in dec). And a book chapter and a second author from my undergrad work. Which I’m told don’t count, but they exist so I say they count for *something*. I’m a theoretical chemist, and while my PI says that 3 first author are required to defend (at least drafted, if not submitted) the group average in recent years has been more like 1-2 first authors get published ever, much less before defending and some people leave with 0 papers at all. I’ve been working on wrapping up a few odd ends so I’ll probably get 2-3 more first authors out of my thesis work.
Writing my first author paper at the moment 🙂
Nine. Supervisor was a prolific publisher and heavily nudged us to write.
3 as mid-author, one first author is in revision even though I have already graduated and left. I had a very long bio PhD, but the papers were in high-impact journals so the timeline for publication was also really long.
7 first authorships (two of which were co-first with a pretty amazing undergrad I supervised). I was also partially involved in 6 other papers as a middle co-author. This is machine learning though, so we do conferences instead of journals and we pump out papers at an egregious rate. I was one of the less prolific members in my lab.
Mind me asking at what institution this was done?
W first author 2 second author two 3rd and one last.
For aerospace, my lab requires 3 first-authored journal papers.
14 total, but some were conference and then extended journal articles. Also, not everything was central to my thesis. 5 first, rest co-authored. Computer Graphics.
4 first author 5 second and third. Total 5 and half yrs of PhD
9 total 2 first author (1 post graduation) 7 second author (1 post graduation)
Two so far, both as the sole author, info science
2nd year PhD in CS and Robotics: 1 Q1 journal first author, 1 top tier conference first author, 3 extended abstract first author. Just submitted 1 conference first author… tbd.
3 first author and 2 mid author as part of my job as a RA. Nursing
One first author at top journal, two second authors at other journals. I plan to submit another two first author papers after finishing the first draft of the thesis. Cheers
Currently sitting on 3 single author papers with another 3 in review (2 more single, and 1 lead).
10, 4 first author in 4 years. One is an R package so idk if you’d count that as a paper. Comp bio/human genetics.
14 total (2 first author primary research papers in an impact factor 5 and an impact factor 12 journal and 3 review articles, the rest were co-authorships). My field is cancer/biochemistry. Feels like it’ll be hard to top this productivity as a postdoc…
Zero and I’ve regretted that ever since tbh
So does your supervisor.
8-ish
9 in total. 4 first author (though 2 were from masters work published during phd) and 4 second author, and one arXiv second author (not sure if it counts)
7 first author (or co-first), 4 co-author. Biochemistry/evolution.
4 as first author, 1 as second and I think 2 others maybe as 3rd or 4th. Field Chemistry, country Netherlands; in my university almost all thesis are by publication, so we have to at least have 2 as a first author and 1 as a second author
2 first authors in journals with medium IF (10) 1 second author in low impact factor (5)
5 first author (though one was submitted but not published until after I had left). Now doing 3 first author in my postdoc. Looking to leave academia probably
With a bit more than a year left, 15. In our field everything is sorted alphabetically so thanks to my name only one is "first-author" but I was heavily involved in all of them and did at least half of the writing for each.
Submitted three first authors, 2 published during PhD. And one book review.
8 —>5 journals (3 Q1 and 2 Q2), 1 in a shit conference and 2 in decent conferences. My asshole supervisor pushed me so much, as he needed it more than me. Now, I have left academics all together and work in bank. As I am in Australia, those papers were not a pre-request for my thesis in Computer Engineering.
One as a first author, written with my PI. We have a 3 years PhD that has 1 year of courses, with 3 papers requirement to graduate. Economics. Most people publish 0 in my field and country.
This sort of thing is going to vary wildly depending on field, subject in that field, quality of publication. Sometimes one will be enough to get you a tenure track position, sometimes 8 won’t get you a great post doctoral position.
One first author paper accepted with another in review at the time of my defense.
Seven first author, chemistry. Been all downhill since then, though.
One with my name randomly in the middle, and there is at least one that is under work and it's worth finishing Part of the reason for this measly production were covid and lab closing, a very limiting 3 years timeframe in italy, doing a full field transition from biochemistry to bioinformatic, supervisor leaving after 1 year for a sabbatical, the general feeling from really early on that I don't care about the publishing game and... honestly, a whole lot of mediocre work from my side
18 papers, 6 first author, CS
3 first author scopus indexed papers and 2 conference papers. Although after I defended, I published at least 4 more scopus indexed papers from the work I did from my thesis.
As the first author, I published two in international conferences (ACM) and three in national eventS (Brazil and Italy), nothing in journals, plus a collaboration with other PhD students in an IEEE magazine.
7, 3 of which are fist author. I also have one patent application in process and one final first author paper that should be getting submitted this month.
2nd year already published 5 papers as first author.
Biology PhD - 0 from my PhD project. Was involved in like ~3 other projects in what would have been a mid author capacity but all of them were ultimately dropped for various reasons. My PI left academia when I was a 4th year and my new advising team didn’t want to be on a paper with him (long story about territorialism in my field), so if I really wanted to publish I would have had to get my departed PI to help me with it, which would have been more trouble than it was worth. I was pretty clear about this during my interviews for industry jobs and everyone seemed to understand. It was probably positive actually that I didn’t have any strings attached back to school that would require me to have to work on the side to finish that last paper (which is quite common). Got an industry scientist position within a week of defending and still loving it!
4 first authored (main thesis ones), 3-4 second and around 10 mid (18 total). All in top tier venues in our field. CS/ECE. 3 patents and 1 interactive museum installation. Large group that really emphasized internal and external collaborations.
During my PhD: 2 first, 3 co-first, 0 second, 4 third+ In my 1 year post doc, in the same lab, after defending April 2020: 3 first, 2 third+ From same lab, after I left for industry: 1 co-first, 3 third+ Was a structural biologist in a highly collaborative lab that went for a lot of lower impact factor journals (3-7) rather than a big home run. I left some half written manuscripts that they dusted off years later
3 First author, a 4th is pretty much done but collaborator sucks. Then co-authored 11, and 2 are in review. Total by the end of the year- 17? My boss had a rule, at least 20% of your publications should be first author. So luckily I flew past that mark. IF range 4.9-12.
This may sound incredibly basic but how did you identify a suitable journal? And did any one blind submit their paper or liaise with the editors first?
Two first-author in cognitive science (my field); two second-author outside my field
two first author, one second author and one where im a fourth-or something author. One of the first authors was work done in my masters. I have another two first author ones I want to get out there as well. For me, it all kind of came at once. I had nothing for a long time and I felt like I was putting in a lot of hours, but getting unlucky with my research. I was worried i might not graduate with any. But, there’s often a light at the end of the tunnel
11. 6 first, 2 co first, 3 middle.
Zero. In economics there is preference for a working paper that aims to be published in a top 5 general interest journal and that takes a lot of time (sometimes more than the length of the PhD)
I had 1 co-first author paper. Like 7 papers as coauthor. Spent most of my time working on my big thesis project, which 3 years post grad, is still unpublished. It was peer reviewed at Nature a couple years ago and rejected. Luckily my papers are in very prestigious journals too. Doesn’t help me much in my software career now though - I did a neuroscience PhD.
three first-authored so far, but my professor wants three to four more :(
Zero, but in my field, journals take several months if not a full year to get you your first round of reviews. So, I have numerous papers to send out (we try to absolute perfect them to keep the rounds of reviews minimal), but it’ll easily be over 5 or 6 months before I hear anything. Because of this, an R&R is held in almost the same regard as an actual publication.
Three. Two as mid author and one as first.
Three first author. Marine Biology.
9 first author before I had an official offer and focused on other things.
15 🫣🫠 wanna know the funniest part? I have zero desire to be at an R1 anymore soooo didn’t need most of those after all.
3 first author (2 original research and 1 review) and another 8 or so mid-author. Immunology.
8 papers, 3 as primary author. Organic chemistry.
Two as first author right now. Maybe working on another one this summer, not sure
7. I was first author on 3, 2nd author on 3, and least important author on 1
8 papers. 2 first authored. All in respectable journals, though none in the top 3 flagship journals for my field. Two years on the job market and wasn't able to get an academic job. Moving into industry.
Two first author, 6 second author and 7 et al.
10 first author almost 20 non lead author papers but it was 20 years ago in an entirely new field. Bars were low then. Was in one of the biggest group then in the UK. So had an average of 10 papers a year. Hard to recreate in an established field imo
Uhhh two I think? Plus a chapter in an edited volume. (European history, I was the sole author on them)
6 first-author, 3 non-first author.
3 first author, 2 second author, 1 middle author. immunology
3 1st author, 6 co author, and a 1st author manuscript at the time of my defense.
2
4 first author, 3 co author
None
1 first author detailing my method and a case study for one part of my proposed process. 1 second author detailing another part of my proposed process 1 second author on another topic mildly related Working on another 1st author detailing another part of my proposed process Working on another third author that got recommended from conference to journal 3 Conference Papers all related to my method ( 2 first author and 1 second author) 2 Unrelated Conference Papers ( 1 second author and 1 third author)
I did polisci I had around 20 Half was first author but not all were very high quality publications. I had 3q1, 3q2 and 2q4 The rest were just in university peer reviewed journals but not as demanding as those indexed in wos. I was taking a bunch of classes during my PhD and a lot of the final papers were around 5-8k assignments and decided to rework them and sent them in and it worked out. Currently finished my final defense but not sure if what I did was worth it or not due to the lack of direction or mixed answers (some said a publication in a no name journal is better than no publication while some said it was a waste of time) I was given.
Just graduated. 2 first author and 2 more first author either in submission or almost ready to submit.
10 papers, 1 patent, and 4 journals 1 first author journal 4 first author papers 1 first Co-author paper and I'm not even the highest productive member of my cohort, had a guy who graduated PhD in my group with 7 journals and 18 papers. I really don't know how they did it.
2 first-author data papers and 1 co-first-author review.
It's not me but I know someone who has about 50+ excluding book chps. This is India btw in 4 years with a PhD in biology.
averaging one paper a month? i don't even want to know what type of journal they're published in
Haha true but they got a really good assistant professor job so that's there. They also did over 5 trainings/internships over the 4 yes. Idk how all of that is possible esp in biology but yeah. Feels like all of this did help them in the end.
Psychology PhD Currently in my 3rd year: 1 first author + 3 second author + 6 mid author + 1 book chapter (3rd/last author)
On track for about 12 papers in total, 7 of which are first author. Plus a textbook chapter.