When and where to publish?

[1000Plateaus]

Hey all,

I am half way through my PhD in Philosophy. I had a discussion with my PhD advisor several days ago, and his opinion is that PhD students should wait years until they decide to send any material off to journals for publication. His view is that it's better to wait until you have had years of study to distill your work into top-quality material before you submit anything. He said "bad publications are worse than no publications," and that "once you publish something it is out there forever."

This seems a bit out of touch and dated advice, in my view. I understand his point about wanting to have better quality material, however with the level of competition these days, and post-doc or tenure-track position requires multiple publications at minimum. Newly graduated friends of my mine who have turned their PhD dissertations into books have told me that even having a book published in your field is no longer than impressive. Of course quality is better than quantity, I completely agree - but I feel as though the idea that students ought to wait years before submitting anything to journals seems antiquated. A lot of the PhD candidates I know are sending off articles to journals as well as working hard on their PhD research project. Why not do both?

I should add that so far, I have 2 official articles published in two different journals. I personally would like to increase that number before I complete my PhD, but my advisor seems to think that it's better to wait. If I wait, I will be behind all the other newly minted PhDs who have more article publications.

Thoughts?

[CrunchyMamademic]

I have heard this advice from others in my field as well, but never from my own advisor. In my opinion -- which may not be appropriate for your situation, so take it with a grain of salt -- you should try working on publications. It sounds like doing so will keep you in line with others at your same level, which is obviously important for marketability. The PhD program I am beginning in the fall recommends submitting something for publication about once a year at the minimum. I also published during my MA.

Because the advice is coming from your advisor, this may be a touchy situation. However, the decisions you make in your program will ultimately shape your career later on. Does your department have some sort of placement coordinator or someone you can talk to about marketability based on your specific career interests?

[fuzzylogician]

I've heard this advice for book fields, and since I'm not in one this is all second hand, but my understanding is that the main concern has to do with publishing too much of your dissertation to be able to get a book contract. The "don't publish anything at all" version sounds a little paranoid. Sure, early on you might be immature as a researcher, and it is true that everything you have out there is out there forever, but by the time you're in your 4th and 5th year and ready to go on the job market, one would hope that you're sufficiently mature that you won't regret anything you've published. Or if so, I would have serious doubts about your dissertation. Are there other professors whose advice you might seek? Other graduate students in more advanced stages? It's a delicate matter because your advisor seems to have a strong opinion, but I wonder if there are ways of getting him on board (like maybe making sure to run everything by him for his approval before submitting). Either way, I tend to agree that if others on the job market are only hired if they have other publications, it would be advisable for you to seek some yourself, too. 

[Bleep_Bloop]

I'm in a book field. A major reason that you have to be careful with what you publish, in addition to the point above about quality vs. quantity, is that you can't publish too much of your dissertation research in article form and then still expect to flip the dissertation into a book down the line. Publishers understandably won't want a book that already has, say, 2 chapters published in article form. The goal is to publish one chapter as an article in a top journal before going on the job market so that you get exposure and introduce your project to the field. You can keep presenting this research at conferences, but in terms of publications you hold off until you're ready to publish the entire project in book form.

You should always try to develop a separate line of research, on top of your dissertation and teaching. In my field, people typically develop a seminar paper on an unrelated topic that the professor has found particularly close to article quality. If you spend a couple weeks of a summer break on this you can prep it to article form and send it out. But that's typically it: 2 articles and then the job market. Don't get intimidated by people with 5 or more. There's a lot of crap that gets published. Academic publishing is an industry, after all. My experience (and all my faculty mentors that have served on search committees) has taught me that hiring really is about quality over quantity. I've seen many grad students get tenure-track jobs at ivys in the humanities with less, sometimes without any publications at all. And the committee's barometer is typically correct: these people go on to publish amazing books, in part because they weren't distracted by pushing out 3 or more tepid articles a year. Search committees at research universities in the humanities are primarily concerned with the quality of the dissertation and how good they think the book version will be about 3 years down the line. They're also very interested in the second book project, hence the importance of developing a second line of research that you can pitch them. 

[1000Plateaus]

Thanks guys, this is all really helpful. I apperciate it! 

 

[Faith786]

On 3/4/2017 at 10:06 AM, 1000Plateaus said:

Hey all,

I am half way through my PhD in Philosophy. I had a discussion with my PhD advisor several days ago, and his opinion is that PhD students should wait years until they decide to send any material off to journals for publication. His view is that it's better to wait until you have had years of study to distill your work into top-quality material before you submit anything. He said "bad publications are worse than no publications," and that "once you publish something it is out there forever."

This seems a bit out of touch and dated advice, in my view. I understand his point about wanting to have better quality material, however with the level of competition these days, and post-doc or tenure-track position requires multiple publications at minimum. Newly graduated friends of my mine who have turned their PhD dissertations into books have told me that even having a book published in your field is no longer than impressive. Of course quality is better than quantity, I completely agree - but I feel as though the idea that students ought to wait years before submitting anything to journals seems antiquated. A lot of the PhD candidates I know are sending off articles to journals as well as working hard on their PhD research project. Why not do both?

I should add that so far, I have 2 official articles published in two different journals. I personally would like to increase that number before I complete my PhD, but my advisor seems to think that it's better to wait. If I wait, I will be behind all the other newly minted PhDs who have more article publications.

Thoughts?

Don't listen to him if you want a TT track job or anything nice in academia. There is a reason there is a publish or perish paradigm in academia...he is leading you towards perishing. Publish something...do... it... now, but in a reputable, quality journal. It is not easy getting published. On average, it takes me two years to get a paper published from the first start/submission to final publication. 

[Miss Brightside]

I can understand your supervisor's take on the matter, but the way the academic job market is changing does not give much of a choice, really. In my opinion you should aim for two or three publications in quality journals. This will take some time, as others have already pointed but send out abstracts; many quality journals have an open-call-for-papers policy all year long.

[Suraj_S]

I was never told to not publish during my Ph.D. On the contrary, since I chose a less prestigious program, I figured I would need to to land a TT position after. But it actually isn't even this simple!

My field is psychology, but my program is more philosophically-oriented. My first publication was a book chapter in conference proceedings for augmented cognition. This happened right before jumping into my Ph.D. 

My second publication was a book review initiated by my advisor for a more prestigious academic journal (Theory & Psychology). Though a book review and not original research, journal articles are higher commodities in social science than are conference proceedings, which are more valued in TEM fields.

Fast-forward to now, where I've racked up several more of the same kind of conference proceedings and another journal article fashioned from a course term paper. At my "all but dissertation" (ABD) stage, I have almost 11 publications.

I will say that from what little I can tell, it seems that the people I know doing more prestigious philosophy Ph.D.'s don't seem that focused on publishing. I imagine they'll be okay in spite of or even because of that.

Each situation requires its own analysis, here. I have gotten smarter about using pubs in my dissertation proposal since beginning it. I was following a similar path to Phillip Guo in being highly involved in research and putting it to work for the dissertation. Still--one's dissertation committee might prefer even more novelty. This matter is, to a degree, department-specific.

My suggestion is for anyone facing this issue to seek out, listen to, and heed their advisor. I understand that what they advise might take time to process and accept. However, graduation from a graduate program requiring a completed dissertation means sharing a common understanding with them.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Suraj_S