Is a lot of review articles a warning sign?

[grazzle]

I'm interested in working with a professor who is working on a topic that matches my interests extremely closely. However, when I look at his publication record for the past few years, I see that he has about 2 experiments published from this area and about 4 reviews about this area published. Does this mean this person is having troubles with their lab or simply that people really want his opinion on this topic? Is this a warning sign or a good thing?

[juilletmercredi]

It depends. He may be at the point in his career where he's winding down his own independent research and really functions as a senior author on junior faculty members', postdocs', or graduate students' papers, and is mostly writing review articles and theoretical ones. He may have had a bad spell with a failed experiment and is trying to publish while he gears up for a new one. Or yes, maybe he just wanted to write some review articles because he realized things are missing in the field.

The best way to find out is to find a polite way to ask a graduate student of his what things are like in the lab.

[TakeruK]

In addition to juilletmercredi's comments, it might not always be a bad thing if the prof is "winding down" their own independent research. Some professors do this as they near retirement and would prefer to act as a senior advisor instead of doing projects directly themselves. If their review articles are invited reviews from prestigious places (e.g. Annual Reviews, if that journal exists for your field), then it could be a good thing -- your advisor is likely very well respected and that can help you down the road for applying to fellowships, later jobs, etc. If this is the case, you could also probably expect a more hands-off approach to advising (but not necessarily so). Ask one of their students! If you want to remain more anonymous, you can send me a PM too -- my last advisor was definitely in the "wind down" phase of their career and while we're in different fields and every advisor is different, I can tell you more about what it was like to work for an older, about-to-retire prof if you'd like.

[grazzle]

Well these responses worry me, because he appears to be junior faculty. He was hired on recently, a few years after his wife was hired in to the department. I'm thinking he might still be setting up his new lab.

I e-mailed him about possibly working together and the only response I got was, "Yes, apply."

I will have to find a way to ask a grad student what's currently going on in that lab. Of course, it doesn't matter unless I get accepted. So I can snoop around when I visit, I guess.