Should Graduate Students Publish?

Another gem from the Journal of Scholarly Publishing (link is here; requires journal subscription). Allan Pasco questions whether graduate students should publish while still in school, given the time required for revision and mental fortitude necessary to handle critical reviews. Well written and clear, this article also discusses important considerations such as choosing the right journals to target, spending adequate time on revisions, following journal formats carefully, and other considerations.

Pasco gives a persuasive argument about why one might think carefully about working on publishable articles, and I do see that his title is meant to be more controversial than his actual advice to graduate students. However, to take the title at face value, I am afraid that in this academic job market, not publishing while working on the PhD is a luxury that few can afford. Most disciplines will require a job candidate to have one or more peer reviewed articles to be hired, perhaps many more in some humanities disciplines. (If you are in a field that only requires an excellent, unpublished job market paper, count yourself lucky.) However, his advice about publishing only a few, higher quality articles while in graduate school is a reasonable compromise.

My personal feeling, however, is that one should try to get that first article out as quickly as possible, as long as the research and methods are reasonable, and you are confident that you will be able to stand by the findings in the future. This is because it often takes a year or more for an article to go through peer review to print, (assuming you get an 'accept with revisions'), so time is of the essence if you are to have one publication in a short PhD program. Even in a longer program, it is beneficial to go through this process early, with something that you think is reasonable, even if it is not "The Perfect Article." (In fact, sending a reasonable article rather than a prized major manuscript may be better for the ego - you will probably be more able to accept and work with peer review comments for something that you are not treating as your baby.) After you get one out, you'll understand the process and its time demands much better, allowing you to move forward with more significant portions of your research.

Full citation: Pasco, Allan H. 2009. "Should Graduate Students Publish?" Journal of Scholarly Publishing 40(3):1710-1166.