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Dizzying publication rates by PhD students?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I know of PhD students who have dizzying numbers of publications (think > 8) and who have not even started their dissertations yet. But judging by their CVs, most superstar professors at elite institutions published little or nothing before finishing their PhDs, and virtually none of them published anything before starting their dissertations.

This suggests one of two things. Either (1) such insane publication rates among PhD students are a new phenomenon, or (2) having an insane number of publications as a PhD student doesn’t predict career success.

I’d love to hear people’s thoughts about this. I’d also like to know whether I should try to be one of these uber-prolific PhD students. (I just started my PhD .)

I'm curious what readers think. I suspect there is some truth to both (1) and (2). Back when I was in grad school in the early 2000s, it seemed pretty uncommon to publish while in grad school. In fact, I remember hearing many people say that they were actively dissuaded from it by grad faculty, the rationales being that grad students should focus on their dissertation publishing too early might "premature", leading to poorer published work than if the student waited to develop their ideas more. Alas, the hyper-competitive academic job market seems to have rather predictably led to something like a publishing arms-race–though, as the OP notes, it's unclear whether publishing a ton actually predicts success in landing a job.

What do readers think?

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20 responses to “Dizzying publication rates by PhD students?”

  1. Michel

    IIRC the whole thing about encouraging PhD students to publish in grad school only really started as a response to the recession and job market crash of 2008. Some programs still discourage their students from publishing.
    Some subfields (e.g. Phil of law, bioethics, some science-adjacent areas) are better set up to facilitate lots of early publication (e.g. shorter pieces, faster turnaround, coauthoring and the lab pipeline, etc.). And some subfields have access to a plethora of less selective journals–that’s not necessarily a bad thing, given that philosophy’s acceptance rates are abysmally low. But eight pubs of that sort don’t send the same kind of CV signal as a couple in great specialist or generalist venues. Finally, some grad students benefit from invitations and coauthoring opportunities set up by their supervisors.

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  2. Not publishing will kill your career

    Both are probably true, though while not all productive PhD students find a job, my experiene is that almost all who find a job are extremely productive.
    I work in Europe and I defended my PhD a few years ago. I had two publications in, arguably, a top specialised journal and I know that those publications mattered a lot when I was offered that PhD position. When I started a prestigous postdoc I had more than dozen publications already, and now I have a fixed-term research job with zero teaching obligations and several dozen publications. Without my publications I would not managed to get the PhD postion, postdoc or my current job.
    I have also heard from my colleagues that nowadays there are many PhD applicants for each PhD opening with multiple papers in journals like Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

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  3. academic migrant

    Just publish as good and as much as you can. If you are graduate student reading this, you are most likely not one of the super stars that will land a career just by having a degree from a fancy institution, if there are any of these at all. And I’ve heard that more than one search committees go through CVs first, and basically throw away any CV that has 0 pubs. There are some people who land jobs without decent pubs, but again, I really don’t think you are one of them.

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  4. The Real SLAC Prof

    Well, there are assumptions about “career success” in this question that could probably be unpacked, but I would mostly agree with Marcus that there is some truth in (1) and (2).
    Now many ABD students have multiple publications in highly ranked journals, and this was not true 15 years ago.
    I do think it is the case that, perhaps aptly or perhaps perversely, the higher the prestige of the job, the less emphasis is placed on the number of publications. So it doesn’t surprise me that the OP reports seeing superstar professors at high status universities with few publications. But I think the story would change as one investigated the CVs of new hires at lower status research institutions.
    If this is right, I’m not sure what explains it. I suspect that hiring departments at higher status places may have more confidence in their own assessment of the quality of the candidates (independent of their past publication success), or it could be that they tend to hire from PhD programs that don’t encourage their students to shoot for a dizzying publication output.
    As someone who thinks that early and rapid publication by grad students is not good for philosophy, I couldn’t suggest that the OP try and become an ABD publishing machine. On the other hand, jobs at super elite R1s are not exactly thick on the ground. Moreover, a low publication rate will likely send different messages, depending on the status of one’s PhD program. At my SLAC, I don’t think the sheer number of publications is decisive, especially if it looks like salami slicing is going on, but I don’t know how common this attitude is. I would like to think ABDs are better off investing their time and energies on coming up with a compelling, interesting, and important research question, reading widely and thinking deeply, rather than spending their time churning out papers that aren’t likely to be significant in the long term, but I don’t know whether this coheres with the realities of the current, highly competitive, market.

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  5. AnonymousL

    I have been on some hiring committees at an R2. I would probably look unfavorably on someone who had 8 pubs coming out of grad school (unless you’d been on the market a few years or were from Princeton or whatever). More important than having lots of pubs is having one or two good ones. I know a faculty member who literally will get out a ruler and read your paper line for line, and if it’s not really strong, it doesn’t matter how many other pubs there are. This whole arms race thing is not helpful to young faculty or the field in my view.

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  6. Bill Vanderburgh

    Having a publication record sufficient for tenure before having finished the dissertation seems like a bad thing–for candidates, and for the profession.
    In my experience hiring for several tenure-track positions at a large regional state R2, there’s little to no competitive advantage in having more than two good publications at the end of grad school. (No one gets passed over simply because they didn’t have the third publication.)
    If someone wants to maximize their chances of getting a job after having those two publications, they should focus on getting independent teaching experience, getting practice for a great job talk by doing some conferences, building an additional AOC in an area where there is lots of demand for undergrad courses, and getting the dissertation finished sooner.
    FWIW, having very many publications could work against a candidate in many contexts. For example, the hiring committee might decide such a candidate isn’t a good fit for a place that has a higher teaching load (i.e., most job opportunities), that they are unlikely to accept the job or stay if they do, or that they won’t be a good departmental citizen because they are too selfishly focused on churning out papers.
    The flip side of this is that having zero publications out of grad school will make someone uncompetitive, too. Follow Aristotle: Aim for the Golden Mean.

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  7. Ph.D. Admissions Veteran

    “I have also heard from my colleagues that nowadays there are many PhD applicants for each PhD opening with multiple papers in journals like Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.”
    This is referring to what we, in the U.S., would call grad admissions? If so it’s wildly at variance with my experience at leiter-mid R1; I think we get many of the strongest applicants, in some areas at least (even if we rarely recruit them), and
    (1) publications are uncommon;
    (2) top publications much more so (almost exclusively among MA students, but even then, very rare, and typically co-authored);
    (3) multiple top (e.g., PPR-level) publications are vanishingly rare – I can’t think of a single instance in what must be 1000+ applications over the last five or six years (I may be forgetting one).
    (4) while this experience reflects a leiter-mid-tier department, my sense from talking to others and looking at job applicant CVs is that things are not radically different at more leiter-rific places, in the U.S.
    I’m not sure how to square this with “not publishing”‘s report; perhaps things are very different in Europe? In any case, if you’re thinking of applying to US Ph.D. programs, do not be discouraged by a lack of publications, and certainly not by a lack of top publications – many people get into very good Ph.D. programs, and go on to very good 2-2 or better jobs, whilst not publishing until the later years of graduate school (and then only lightly, 1-3 full-on papers in good journals).

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  8. Trevor Hedberg

    I’ve observed the same thing that the OP is mentioning: often, people with ludicrous numbers of publications as grad students are still just winding up with 1- or 2-year appointments out of grad school. There are potentially several reasons for that, but the idea I will float here is that there are diminishing returns for the value of publications. Going from 0 pubs to 1 has enormous value; going from 1 to 2 has significant value, but a bit less; going from 2 to 3 has a little less value than the previous jump; and so on.
    Once you reach a certain number of publications, I suspect having more makes a negligible difference to your chances on the job market. There is likely no practical advantage to having, say, 10 publications rather than 9. Once you have a handful of publications as a graduate student, other factors will play a much larger role in how you are evaluated as a candidate.
    I will also add that I suspect having a ludicrous number of publications (perhaps 10 or more?) would lower your chances of getting a teaching job. People will assume that you always prioritize teaching over research, and they might also fear such a person is a flight risk who will leave the department as soon as they land a more research-focused job.

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  9. Trevor Hedberg

    Correction to my comment above: if you have too many publications, people will assume you prioritize RESEARCH OVER TEACHING. I originally stated it as the other way around.

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  10. anonymous

    It seems to me the causal arrow goes the other way. There are some people who can get excellent jobs due to institutional prestige, network effects, etc. Others who do not have those features attempt to publish a lot to compete. Alas, those other features remain important for career success.

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  11. Greg Stoutenburg

    I published a lot, in good venues, and struggled on the market. But I doubt it really indicates anything, as I expect it’s an effect rather than a cause. The folks who are landing TT jobs with fewer pubs are coming from higher-ranked programs than I did, where they don’t have the same pressure to perform. If that hypothesis is correct, then it makes sense that P(several pubs | no job) > P(few/no pubs | job), because the folks most likely to get a job don’t need the pubs, and the folks least likely to get a job are giving it their all to publish the most.

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  12. Nick

    “it’s unclear whether publishing a ton actually predicts success in landing a job.”
    Marcus, could you clarify how this squares with your hypothesis that aiming lower for many lower-ranked publications is more favorable than aiming for a few higher-ranking publications in the SLAC market?
    There is no strict incompatibility, but there seems at least a bit of a tension. After all, you could think an ABD candidate with 8 low-ranked publications has an advantage over an ABD candidate with, say, 4 low-ranked publications (ceteris paribus, ofc).

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  13. meh

    I completely agree w/ Trevor Hedberg’s comment and would add: having a huge number of publications at an early career stage typically makes me suspect that the publications are of low-quality. Additionally, seeing these high numbers of pubs makes me think the pubs are all merely for the sake of publishing rather than a part of a larger philosophical project. The latter, though, may look much better to many search committees…
    I’ve seen several “careerist” academics who do whatever they can to get published–strategically submitting to Special Issues, watering down their argument (in strength or clarity) to satisfy reviewers, salami-slicing their articles and using an earlier publication as the main (sole?) basis of support and evidence for a later paper, and more.
    My advice would be to get 1-2 publications out before you’re on the job market, no more.

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  14. Marcus Arvan

    Hey Nick, good question. Yeah, I should have been a bit more careful as to what I meant there. I’ve seen a lot of candidates on the market struggle with tons of excellent publications (in places like Nous, PPR, etc.), missing out on jobs to people with far fewer publications. But, as you note (and I’ve noted a lot before), a lot depends here on the specific market one is targeting or talking about..
    My sense is that it is hard—though not impossible—to publish one’s way into an R1 job by racking up tons of publications in top places. So, in this sense it’s not clear how much publishing a ton predicts success in that market. But you’re right, my sense is that publishing a lot in lower ranked places probably helps in the “teaching university” market—and some years back I collected data that lent support to that hypothesis. Hope this helps make sense of the tension!

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  15. Nick

    Marcus, it absolutely does. Thanks for the quick reply (and this website–it’s awesome!)

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  16. Noah

    I’ll add that, from the perspective of someone with a PhD from a Leiter top 10, the types of candidates that these kinds of schools are looking for seem to be people who could become names within their subfield(s). The types of publications that these prodigious grad students push out don’t seem, in my view, likely to fit that appearance. They tend to be smaller, often disconnected, contributions that make well known kinds of moves, respond to small developments, apply existing work into adjacent areas, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of work, but my sense is that the research-oriented part of the job market is much more impressed by a few bigger-picture, agenda-setting publications, or a consistently developed research program, than they are by >8 of these smaller publications. If you are genuinely publishing >8 high-quality big-picture publications as a grad student, then hats-off to you. But those cases are few and far between.
    I don’t have any experience with the teaching-oriented side of the market, so I’d defer to the perspectives above there.

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  17. LibArtsUniProf

    Aim for two or three very good publications. You’re most likely not going to get an R1 job. 8+ publications can hurt you at a teaching school. In most cases, publications don’t get you a job, they get you an interview. In most cases it does not matter how many publications you have or where they are if your interview is mediocre. More and more, it seems to me, as publication numbers go up,and more applicants have have multiple publications, it’s harder to make good inferences based on publications. So many people look good from that standpoint. But, do you know anything about the department you’re applying to,the school, the classes, can you explain your research or how you would teach a class in a clear, lively, and interesting way in your application and interview? Why are people always fetishizing publication numbers, but not how to write a cover letter? Sure,people worry about that, but I’ve been in committee meetings where the cover letter or diversity statement ends up mattering more or as much as publications. Maybe it’s more fun to fret about publications than the actual application.we had one person who had 15+ pubs and a mediocre interview and we moved on happily. Didn’t see them listed on the PhilJobs appointment list. Maybe they’ve landed a job but they had been on the market for 2 or three years racking up pubs but, my guess, not interviewing well. Publish fewer papers, but figure out how to interview well, how to develop a strong application, etc.

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  18. sisyphus

    While it’s possible or even likely that LibArtsUniProf is right about interviews, that’s a sad state of affairs. All the data points towards how interviews are poor predictors of who will actually be good in a given position. They might tell you how well someone does under pressure, or perhaps how smoothly they are able to present, but I doubt those abilities correlate strongly with philosophical research or teaching ability. I would imagine there are a great many people who are very good philosophers and teachers, who nevertheless interview poorly for any number of reason.
    It seems to me that a contributing factor to who gets jobs these days often has to do with what AOSs are hot or trendy. My guess would be that someone with a publication or two in just the right AOS (whether “right” means a trendy AOS or an AOS that happens to be some particular niche of interest to search committee) will fair far better in today’s job market than someone with 8 or 10 very good publications in a low demand AOS.

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  19. Bill Vanderburgh

    To address something from sisyphus above: Interviews might not be good predictors of philosophical research or teaching ability, but that’s not what they are for.
    Typically, just about everyone who makes the initial interview list is fully capable of doing the job, that is, of performing well enough in teaching and research to earn tenure. (As are a lot of people in the pool who don’t make that list. That’s what we mean when we talk about a glut of candidates.)
    Above this threshold, differences in philosophical acumen are probably of little real difference to job performance, and they are probably impossible to detect reliably anyway.
    Interviews are (imperfect but fairly reliable) tools for getting at the other things that are important to the job, things like attitudes, soft skills, willingness to teach x or y, experience, wisdom handling classroom situations, collegiality, fit with departmental culture, fit with the student body, etc.

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  20. gone

    I got my PhD from a Russell Group University in the UK about 10 years ago. I graduated with a few publications and got a few more the first year. I think I had five papers published by the second year on the market. They were all in respectable places (top 20 kinds of journals). However, I had zero success with jobs. I could hardly even get interviews. The people I knew who were successful were not publishing super stars but networking superstars. I think having a few publications is a necessity these days but getting a job is mostly about being connected. That’s my experience at least. I mean I’d go to conferences. I presented at a dozen conferences probably. Unfortunately, I had low self-esteem and a lot of social anxiety, so I didn’t come off as being as smart as more affable presenters (even if our philosophical output was similar). I moved on from academia years ago now though, and I’m happier than I ever was in academia. It seems to me the rat race in academia is entirely antithetical to actually writing good philosophy. It’s certainly antithetical to being a happy person!

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