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Publishing as a graduate student

Interesting discussion about publications by graduate students.

Clearly these expectations differ by field. I know several people in economics who have been hired at fine schools without any publications to their name. But in history, sociology and political science my sense of the anecdotal evidence is that a publication or two will save you from being culled on the first round. Who knows though?

Academics' reluctance to study themselves means there probably isn't much data on this matter. Not to mention that any study would really require delving into the internal politics of committee decisions, and hiring decisions are always over-determined anyway. It's easy to say that all other things being equal, the publication will help, but the other things are rarely equal.

As for the question, "should graduate students publish", my answer has two aspects;
(1) How does publication fit into the professional training we are doing?
(2) What are the marginal benefits and costs?

(1) How does publication fit into the professional training we are doing?
Ultimately being an academic means participating in the conversation. That means presenting papers at conferences, that means submitting articles tor publication.

Finishing your dissertation well also requires feedback from people beyond your committee. Conferences can be a good place to get feedback. Referees of submitted manuscripts can also provide this feedback.

Just as graduate students relax their focus on their dissertations to get experience teaching, so too they can relax the focus on the dissertation to see an article through to publication. Both are part of becoming an academic. Which is more important -- teaching or research -- will depend on the opportunities available, and a person's own ambitions.

(2) What are the marginal benefits and costs?
Ultimately it all comes down to costs and benefits at the margin.

Publications while in graduate school that don't detract from getting the doctorate should probably follow a profile something like this;

• A research-based seminar paper or dissertation chapter gets good feedback at a relatively early stage from the advisor/committee.
  
• More feedback is received from other faculty and graduate students in informal workshops at the student's own institution.
  
• While being developed as part of the dissertation, the paper is written in such a way that it can stand alone as a conference paper or article.
  
• The paper is presented at conferences, and receives good feedback.
  
• The paper is submitted to a journal ...
  

At this point, the marginal costs can increase if substantial revisions are required. This is the point where the dissertation finishing and publication can really conflict. It is thus the point where the student has to decide how much work is required to get the article published. If it's less than a couple of weeks full-time work all told, they should probably do it. If it's more they should probably take the free feedback they got, cut their losses, and withdraw their submission.

If they want to send it off to another journal with minor revisions and try their luck again, they should do so. But if the paper is rejected twice, they should probably put the manuscript aside and focus on the dissertation.

Done like this, the publication in graduate school evolves naturally and relatively easily from the dissertation work. The benefits along the way -- the feedback from home faculty and peers, and conference participants -- is important. If it leads to a publications it's a big bonus.

Never having been on a search committee I'm not sure how graduate school publications will be viewed. I hope that having published a bit will signal that I'm capable of seeing things through to the end, but that will also require finishing the dissertation in good time.

In other words, so long as the publications appear complementary to the dissertation they should be a good thing. If they appear to be a substitute and distraction, they could be viewed as a bad thing.

With that, back to work, back to the dissertation ...

Posted by robe0419 at December 2, 2004 9:12 AM