In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader who is about to start a PhD program writes:
[H]ow and when is one ready to write something publishable? Or to put it otherwise, how do you decide whether an idea should be pursued for a publishable work? after how many papers or books? Should one read "everything under the sun" before start writing for publication? Or for example, if I have an idea of paper after reading ten papers, should I start writing or wait for a comprehensive literature review?
I'm very curious to hear about how other people answer these questions, and suspect there is a lot of variation in how people work. But let me share my own approach.
This reader seems to think that the way to go about deciding whether something is publishable is to read stuff, and then decide before writing whether one has a publishable idea. My sense is that this is exactly the wrong way to approach publishing. Instead, at least in my experience, I've found that the best way to determine whether one has a publishable idea is to discover that in the writing process itself. I've also noticed in a number of previous threads on the Cocoon people have said similar things. Why?
Early in my career (i.e. during grad school and my first year or two post-PhD), I really struggled to publish. In grad school, I got a couple of R&R's at very good journals, but neither one panned out–and in the years that followed nothing else 'hit' for me. One main problem, at least in retrospect, was that I just wasn't completing much work or sending very much work out for review. Rather, I spent the vast majority of my time reading and trying to figure out whether any of the ideas I had were publishable–that is, exactly what the above commenter describes. This, in my experience, is a very common trap that many grad students fall into. Because it's so hard to know whether something is publishable until you write it, if you spend all of your time reading and trying to figure this out from the armchair, chances are you'll never get much done!
Linus Pauling is famous for saying, "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away." This more or less describes my writing process. I've published 22 papers and 2 books. However, in my Google Drive, you'll find exactly 80 papers and 3 and 1/2 book manuscripts. In other words, I've written vastly more things than I've ever published. Why? This might seem like a terrible waste of time. But I don't think it is in the slightest. I began this strategy (call it the 'overproduction strategy') in about 2010, when after 8 years in graduate school and 2 years post-PhD I had exactly 2 publications to my name: both short 'reply' pieces. In the 3+ years that followed 2010, I published 11 papers. In other words, the overproduction strategy worked, and has continued to work since then. The reason why, in my experience, is several-fold.
First, as mentioned above, it's very hard to tell from the armchair whether something is publishable. The devil, as they say, is in the details. And in order to work out the details of a paper–the things that matter in terms of its being publishable–you have to write it. Sure, you can try writing an outline. But outlines are just that: an overview of the 'big' claims you plan to make in the paper. But that's not enough: the devil, again, is in the details–and you work through the details by actually writing (or at least I do).
Second, I've found that what Pauling says is true. The best way to have good ideas is to have a lot of ideas, and then sort out the good from the bad. However, the way to have a lot of ideas and then sort the good from the bad just is to write a lot, working out your new ideas on paper. This is basically what I do. I read stuff or reflect on the body of knowledge I already have, and then the moment I have a seemingly-cool idea that doesn't seem already 'taken' in the literature (which I determine through web searches), I sit down and write it up. Then I either find that the paper works, or it doesn't. If it seems like it does, then I send it to people and in turn to conferences and journals. If it doesn't, I either give up on it entirely or set it aside to potentially come back to later (which I often do).
Finally, on the waste of time issue, I've found that this is exactly what the overproduction strategy is not. Here's an analogy: imagine a student of painting wondering whether all of Leonardo da Vinci's sketches were a waste of time. This is obviously mistaken, right? The best way to improve at drawing or painting is to do a ton of it. Every paper I have drafted–even the worst ones–has taught me something and improved my ability to write, organize, etc. Further, a lot of time when I draft new papers I discover new work to read, which often enough generates new ideas to think about and draft up. It's a lot of fun, really, to constantly explore and write new things–a lot more fun, in fact, that simply sitting around reading, thinking, and trying to figure all of this out from the armchair.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts and experience, and may of course not generalize to everyone. But I figured I'd share them. What do you all think, particularly those of you who have success in publishing?
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