Publications in Grad School

[psydd]

this is in regard to social psychology PhD programs, but i'm curious about the the general trends too:

is it a bad sign if pretty much every member of a lab i have an interest in joining has ZERO publications (first and second author). at best, they're third, but even that's rare. mostly their CV's show that they have some articles in preparation, or they've been submitted; however, these are students who are about to finish their PhDs this year, not first or second year students.

i only realized this recently, and this is my first choice program, so i'm starting to get a little worried about potentially attending now.

what would you say is the average amount of first and second author publications a PhD student should have by the time they graduate?

Edited February 27, 2010 by psydd

[socialpsych]

is it a bad sign if pretty much every member of a lab i have an interest in joining has ZERO publications (first and second author). at best, they're third, but even that's rare. mostly their CV's show that they have some articles in preparation, or they've been submitted; however, these are students who are about to finish their PhDs this year, not first or second year students.

Quite possibly. Ask the students themselves about this. And don't forget to look up, or ask about, placement records for this program.

what would you say is the average amount of first and second author publications a PhD student should have by the time they graduate?

I think in my program we generally tend to imagine that students going out on the job market should have at least: one first-authored pub (or accepted paper, not R&R) in a top journal (e.g. JPSP, Psych Science). Maybe we have no idea how the job market works, but we're always aiming for that one first-authored JPSP. Of course, a second-authored pub is better than nothing...

[liszt85]

I don't know if the accepted standards are different in social psych but for me (cognitive), my adviser has set a goal of two journal papers per year (first or second author). I'm only in my second quarter here and I've started writing up a paper for submission to Cognitive Science. 4 authors, I'm first author. I also have a collaboration with a professor outside the dept (in something totally unrelated) and we expect to publish roughly once a year too, so I'll be first or second author on those depending on who does most of the work in any particular project. So by the time I graduate, I expect to have at least 9-10 publications. My professor tells me that even that won't be very competitive.. a good number of publications in top journals is absolutely necessary to be very competitive in the job market. So if the final year PhD students don't have a single publication, that would be EXTREMELY strange to me and I would seriously consider digging into it deeper. Proceedings don't matter in Psych (cognitive) according to my adviser. Papers/talks in conferences/proceedings are good if you are in computer science but not in psychology. I have sent abstracts to 3 conferences so far..so having papers/talks in conferences is no big deal. The peer review process for that isn't too extreme and its fairly easy to get poster presentations (slightly more difficult to get talks). I myself am a reviewer for one big conference that's coming up and have been reviewing a paper and I'm only a first year grad student. So you can expect this process to be much less rigorous than a peer review process in a top journal. So I wouldn't even consider conference posters and proceedings when evaluating the output of the grad students at your prospective program.

[socialpsych]

Proceedings don't matter in Psych (cognitive) according to my adviser. Papers/talks in conferences/proceedings are good if you are in computer science but not in psychology. I have sent abstracts to 3 conferences so far..so having papers/talks in conferences is no big deal. The peer review process for that isn't too extreme and its fairly easy to get poster presentations (slightly more difficult to get talks). I myself am a reviewer for one big conference that's coming up and have been reviewing a paper and I'm only a first year grad student. So you can expect this process to be much less rigorous than a peer review process in a top journal. So I wouldn't even consider conference posters and proceedings when evaluating the output of the grad students at your prospective program.

In social, too, I think it is the case that posters and conference talks don't matter nearly as much, although if those were absent from your CV I don't know what people would think.

However, just because you are reviewing for something as a grad student, that doesn't mean it's not a "top" venue. Once you start publishing, you will also start getting asked to review, and that can start in grad school, even for good journals.

[liszt85]

However, just because you are reviewing for something as a grad student, that doesn't mean it's not a "top" venue. Once you start publishing, you will also start getting asked to review, and that can start in grad school, even for good journals.

Oh yea, I'm reviewing for a top venue alright but my point was that review procedures for conferences (including the top ones) in Psychology are far less rigorous than the peer review process for top journals. I say this because I, for instance, simply am not aware of most of the literature in the subject (because I come directly from Physics.. Psychology as a field is new to me). So when you have people like me do the reviews, the procedure is far less likely to be rigorous and stringent than when well published professors do reviews for top journals.

[ed_psy]

What about co-authoring?

I read somewhere (forgot the name of the forum), but someone posted that it is worthless to list publications that was co-authored on CV/Resume, is it true? 

[socialpsychg]

What about co-authoring?

I read somewhere (forgot the name of the forum), but someone posted that it is worthless to list publications that was co-authored on CV/Resume, is it true?

I have never heard that. Even a cursory review of faculty and grad student CVs will show that is not the case (speaking from a social psych perspective).

[ed_psy]

I have never heard that. Even a cursory review of faculty and grad student CVs will show that is not the case (speaking from a social psych perspective).

Oh...then I'll put them on my CV. 

[lewin]

I think in my program we generally tend to imagine that students going out on the job market should have at least: one first-authored pub (or accepted paper, not R&R) in a top journal (e.g. JPSP, Psych Science). Maybe we have no idea how the job market works, but we're always aiming for that one first-authored JPSP. Of course, a second-authored pub is better than nothing...

This.

I think it might be a warning sign worth looking into, but it's not necessarily a kiss of death.

Of course given the lengthy review process and time-to-publication for JPSP, the grad students in OP's department might have some articles on the cusp of publication but not out yet. I think that's common for senior grad students. A post doc year is not just for new work, but also to allow one's grad school publications to get out there.

All that said, I know people who have gotten great jobs with much less than a first-author JPSP, but they often come from Ivy league schools or have exceptionally prestigious advisors.