Experience length vs publication amount, does it matter?

[leafynotepads]

I'm wondering if its worth staying in an internship if I'm not generating much data/getting published in almost 1.5yr. Is it a serious negative on an application to not have publication in that amount of time? I graduated yrs ago from undergrad and am hoping to apply to a PhD program in neuro in two more years.

I haven't generated much data yet due to paperwork and having to develop the protocol for the procedure I'm doing. I was in another lab and in half a year I was able to grab a publication and an unfortunate publication miss (granted the culture and publication rate was entirely different in this lab vs my current one).

[juilletmercredi]

I think it's much less common than applicants think for applicants to PhD programs to have publications. Few professors, I think, expect applicants to have a publication before joining the program. Most successful applicants usually don't have one. The expectation may be slightly higher for you because you will have spent a bit more time post-college in a lab, but I still don't necessarily think they'll have expected a publication. (And since you already have one, I think you'll be fine.)

It's not always about time spent. As you've noted yourself, some labs just publish more frequently and faster than other labs. Some types of research require longer times to publication. And sometimes you just get lucky and enter the lab at the right time for a publication - 2 years may be plenty of time in a lab that has data sitting around waiting to be analyzed (or already analyzed data that just needs someone to write it up), but not enough time in a lab that just wrapped up most of its projects and are starting new ones from base level.