As a practical exercise, consider the following question and write down a number:
Yes, "it depends", but cut through the noise: what do you think would be a decent range for you, personally, in your area?
How many of those would be first-author?
What seems like a minimum acceptable number to you?
What seems like a reasonable "I did a good job" goal to you?
Based on your experience so far, what do you think you'll achieve?
Write down a specific number range. Humour me!
What is your minimum? What is your reasonable expectation?
What would a rising star academic achieve?
Don't cheat yourself out of an insight!
Write down your guess! Thinking about it isn't concrete enough!
When you've got your numbers written, read on!
Publications are not evenly distributed.
The actual distribution follows Lotka's Law, i.e. most people have one or none, some people have a few, and a small proportion of people publish many papers.
Publications during a PhD
Hatch, T., & Skipper, A. (2016). How Much Are PhD Students Publishing before Graduation?: An Examination of Four Social Science Disciplines. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 47(2), 171–179. https://doi.org/10.3138/jsp.47.2.171
These authors looked at publication rates of PhD students in different fields (and different fields are different, but we'll focus on psychology). I reached out to the authors to get the data since I didn't think mean values were helpful to describe the results; the median and distribution was more helpful to see.
I was interested in answering the following question:
Granted, publications are not the only metric of success, but they are the dominant metric. And yes, quality and quantity both play a role, but with those caveats in mind, lets actually look at the numbers.
Summary for Psychology
The sample had 58 people from psychology.
50% had 9 or more total publications.
This includes book chapters, which are are not as prestigious.
Having 11+ publications would put you in the top 20% and 18+ would put you in the top 10%.
50% had 8 or more articles.
Having 11+ articles would put you in the top 20% and 14+ would put you in the top 10%.
50% had 4 or more first-author articles.
First-author articles are the most prestigious.
Having 7+ first-author articles would put you in the top 20% and 8+ would put you in the top 10%.
Personally, if I saw a CV with more than 14 articles pre-PhD, I would start to wonder if the person came from a lab that added every research assistant to every paper (i.e. a lab not following established authorship norms). In such a case, I would look at the number of first-author papers as a more precise metric.
The above research is from a several years ago.
If we assume a general trend of increasing numbers as the years go by, we can speculate that the real numbers may be a bit higher. There are some pretty high tier schools represented in the above data (Harvard, Yale) and I can only imagine that there may also have been a sampling bias where people on the lower end may have been less likely to respond to the survey, which would mean the real numbers might be lower. Indeed, the modal number of publications is probably 0 or 1 because most people don't publish a lot during their PhDs. However, people with such a record are not headed into academia.
If you are looking for a career in academic psychology, the mean of 4.3 total publications is not the appropriate target. Aim for the top 10% or 20% at least. That means 11+ articles, ideally 7+ that are first-author.
How do the real numbers compare with your number?
Your number-range may be relevant for your career-related decision-making.
If your number-range was much lower than 7–11, you can use this information to recalibrate:
If you want to enter academia, you should probably focus on getting more publications.
If you don't want to focus on getting more publications, you might decide that academia is not for you.
If academia is not for you, you might wand to focus on other skills, collaborations, and portfolios that would make you a desirable candidate in industry. What would the CV of "a desirable candidate in industry" look like? That likely depends on the industry you're interested in, but publications likely don't matter much. You would be wise to look into your industry of interest so you can recalibrate to that world and optimize for employment in that field.
Shouldn't we focus on mental and physical health, then be happy with however many papers we publish?
There is nothing "wrong" with that approach. This is not a universal trade-off, though.
This question introduces trade-offs, which are up to the individual.
The purpose of a study like the one described above is not to say how many publications you should have.
The value is in giving you information that will allow you to create a more realistic perspective on what is common, what is excellent, and where you stand relative to "the competition".
We all have limited time and effort. We all have to prioritize.
I think one should use a study like the one described above to help develop a realistic view of one's priorities and abilities, then take that into account when considering professional options.
Some people can prioritize mental and physical health and still publish a lot of papers.
Health and productivity are not a zero-sum trade-off.
- Maybe there are work-flow processes to optimize.
- Maybe there are ways to design more clever studies.
- Maybe someone can work faster because of other strengths (e.g. programming, delegation).
- Maybe some people drop certain aspects of life (e.g. someone is less social, takes fewer vacations).
- Maybe someone loves their work so much that they can work more time without sacrificing mental health.
- Maybe chance works in someone's favour.
- Maybe systemic issues work against someone.
There is nothing "wrong" with prioritizing mental and physical health.
Nevertheless, if prioritizing your mental and physical health means that you will publish fewer than the average number of articles, you would be wise to prepare yourself for not going into academia. You would be wise to consider other career options since you won't be as competitive in academia. You would be wise to consider your non-publication career-related behaviours over the next few years as you tailor your CV toward non-academic jobs. That might mean focusing on learning more transferable skills, making industry connections, and building a portfolio rather than focusing on publications. You might find success in industry with 1 publication at the end of your PhD because you have 15 GitHub projects and collaborated with industry partners. You would be playing a different game than an academic so the rules of the game would be different. You would be competing in a different market.
There is nothing "wrong" with not going into academia.
The purpose of these considerations is to bring realism to career-planning, to bring an understanding of your capacities relative to your peers, and to integrate the meaning of such for your career.
Think of this as equivalent to telling a C- undergraduate student that they should not think of grad school as their main plan and telling them that they should consider alternative career options. There is nothing "wrong" with being a C- student. Nevertheless, realistically, a C- student's CV is not competitive with the A students that are applying to grad school. If the C- student cannot maintain a high GPA while remaining mentally and physically healthy during undergrad, they would be unlikely to do well in grad school.
If you cannot remain mentally and physically healthy while publishing a lot, what makes you think you would remain mentally and physically healthy while working as a post-doctoral researcher or as a professor? Academic positions aren't known for getting less demanding.
Stay healthy. Stay sane. No matter what field you work toward.