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•       Resources       Publish or Perish: Graduate Students' Guide to Publishing

Publish or Perish: Graduate Students' Guide to Publishing

In addition to endless piles of reading, demanding expectations in the classroom, student teaching responsibilities, and the always-looming awareness that they need to research, write, and edit a high-quality dissertation before graduating, today’s Ph.D. students also commonly feel stress about another topic: publishing. As more prospective employers expect degree seekers to get their names in academic journals and conferences while still in school, many learners feel overwhelmed by the prospects of making the grade. The following guide answers some of their most pressing questions, provides guidance on the ins and outs of publishing while still in school, and offers expert advice from a professor who knows better than most what it takes to publish rather than perish.

Understanding Publishing in Graduate School

Getting published as a grad student can feel overwhelming at first, because there’s so much to learn about the process and expectations surrounding it. With a bit of research, however, students can familiarize themselves with the specific language surrounding publishing and make in-roads towards getting their first paper published.

What Does it Mean to Get Published?

Within the context of graduate school, publishing refers to getting essays, papers, and research findings published in one of the academic journals or related forms seen as a leader in the field. As jobs in academia continue to become more competitive, it isn’t enough for learners to simply do well in their coursework. The degree seeker who hopes to land an important post-doctoral fellowship or find a teaching position at a college or university must make themselves stand out in other ways.

When Should a Ph.D. Candidate Get Published?

Getting a paper published takes a lot of time and effort, and those students who wait until the final year or two of a doctoral program may fail to actually have any published materials by the time they graduate. According to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Graduate Connections program , getting a paper published – especially if it’s your first – can take up to three years. In addition to the fact that most journals publish quarterly, the panel review process typically takes a significant amount of time and those submitting for the first or second time usually need to make a large number of edits and complete rewrites in order to reach a publishable standard.

How to Get Published

In order to get published, students submit their work to the journal or conference of their choosing. They frequently also provide a cover letter outlining their research interests. Most journals put out generic calls for submissions once or twice a year, while some may ask for papers addressing specific topics that have a much shorter turnaround time. Grad students may find it intimidating to go up against more seasoned academics, but another option revolves around partnering with their dissertation supervisor or another professor with whom they work closely with to co-author a paper. This not only helps ensure the validity of their findings, but alerts the academic world know that this other, more recognized faculty member believes in the research the student is doing.

Who Should Get Published?

Learners most anxious to get published are those who see their future careers in teaching and research. Because the world of academia is relatively small when divided into individual subjects, it’s important for students who want to break into these ambitious arenas to make a name for themselves early on and create a curriculum vitae that captures the attention of hiring committees.

Where Should Students Get Published?

When deciding which publications to pursue, students should consider the research aims of each and their likelihood of getting published. Newer journals tend to take more submissions as they are still working on building up their roster of contributors. While less venerated than other publications, getting printed in these can help build up name recognition and make it easier to break into the top-tier publications over time.

In terms of where work is published, the majority of students look to academic journals when sending out cover letters and examples of their work. But other options exist as well. Presenting papers at conferences is a popular avenue, as are chapters in books. The following sections takes a more in-depth look at how and where to publish.

Realities & Challenges of Getting Published

Getting published, especially while still in grad school, takes tenacity, focus, and a thick skin. Those who continue working on their craft, presenting at conferences, collaborating with others, and not taking no for an answer, however, frequently find success. Some of the challenges students may encounter include:

Lack of time

It’s no secret that doctoral students have busy schedules that seldom allow for outside – or sometimes, even related – interests to take up much of their days. Because publishing is not a degree requirement, carving out the time needed to research, write, and edit the type of paper required for publishing can feel impossible. With this in mind, student should look for ways to multitask. If presenting at a conference, think about how that paper could be transformed into a journal article.

Lack of confidence

Studies have shown that mental stress and illness frequently increase in grad school as students feel intense pressure to stand out from their peers. These feelings are often intensified when considering publishing, as learners are going up against academics and researchers who have been working in the field far longer than them. It’s important to remember that each of those renowned individuals had to start somewhere.

Lack of funding

Completing the research needed for a competitive paper doesn’t only take time – it requires money. Whether traveling to archives or printing all the necessary documentation, funding for outside research can be scarce while in school. Some programs provide competitive grants for research travel to help offset these costs.

Intense competition

As discussed earlier, competition for publishing is fierce. Academic journals and conferences only have space for so many authors and trying to get noticed can feel like a losing battle. In addition to seeking out newer publications and co-authoring with more notable figures, consider taking part in symposiums at the school you attend to get your foot in the door. While research on the average number of rejections is lacking, don’t feel discouraged if it takes a long time to be chosen for publication.

Finding the right publisher

While getting your name in print within an academic journal you greatly admire is the ultimate goal, it may take some years for it to come to fruition. One of the biggest mistakes students make is applying to ill-suited publications. Look for journals with editorial board members whose names you recognize. If a professor knows one of them, don’t be afraid to ask if they can help get your paper in front of them.

Adequately addressing feedback

Getting a paper published often requires intense editing and even completely restructuring and rewriting what you conceived in the initial abstract. If an academic journal shows interest in your essay but suggests rewrites, pay close attention to their requests and try to work with an advisor to ensure you meet all the stated requirements.

What do Graduate Students Publish?

Academic journals may receive the lion’s share of discussion in the publishing world, but graduate students can actually choose from numerous outlets and paths for getting their work to a larger audience. Students should review the options listed below and think about which format might showcase their work best.

Tips for Publishing

Despite the great amount of work required to publish, students who meet the challenges and persevere stand to position themselves favorably for future job opportunities. The following section addresses some of the most common questions about the process and alleviates general fears about how publishing (or not) reflects upon them.

How many papers should a Ph.D. student try to publish before graduating?

According to scholar-practitioner Dr. Deniece Dortch, no single answer exists. “There is no hard and fast rule as to the number of publications students should have prior to graduation,” she notes. “The reality is students in STEM disciplines and those who use quantitative methods are more likely to have publications prior to graduation because they often work in research teams and labs. This is not to say that qualitative scholars or those in other disciplines aren’t, but it’s a much more standardized practice in STEM for students to graduate with two or three publications. Personally, I had one sole-authored publication accepted prior to graduation, one first-authored piece, and one second-authored piece.”

How many journal articles is it possible to publish during a PhD?

“The answer varies and is determined by factors such as length of program, research team access, and faculty relationships,” says Dr. Dortch. “I’ve seen folks finish with as many as 10 publications, although this is extreme and doesn’t happen often.” She continues, “Imagine you are in a four-year program and you get your idea to write an article in year two. You submit that article in year three after getting approval, collecting data, analyzing it, and then writing your paper. Year three you submit that paper; it may be accepted in year four after months of revisions at the request of the editor. You finally have one published paper as you graduate.”

Are there PhD students who have no journal publications? Should they be worried about that?

“It depends on the type of employment the student is seeking upon graduation,” says Dr. Dortch, “Students applying to or wanting to work in institutions and organizations with the highest levels of research productivity who have no publications may want to consider post-doctoral positions so they have the time and space to work on increasing their publication record after graduation.” She continues, “Postdocs are a very common practice in many disciplines and are used as a way to gain additional training and expertise in research and teaching.”

Is it absolutely essential to have publications to apply for a PhD program?

In a word, no. Individuals working toward doctoral degrees have many reasons for doing so, not all of which require them to publish. Admissions panels also recognize that students focus their efforts on many different goals (e.g. jobs, internships, presenting at symposiums) throughout bachelor’s and master’s programs. As long as learners can demonstrate an ongoing commitment to scholarship, publishing is not an absolute requirement.

Does publish or perish begin before starting a PhD program?

It’s true that many students begin worrying about publishing before starting a Ph.D. program, but the reality is that they have ample time during and after completing a doctorate to make their mark on the world of scholarship. According to a recent article by Inside Higher Ed , some individuals in the academy now wonder if too much emphasis is being placed on grad students publishing. Learners unsure about this should speak to a trusted advisor or mentor to figure out when to focus on getting published.

What is the difference between a published article and a Ph.D. thesis?

While a Ph.D. thesis is required for satisfactory completion of a degree, a published article is not. A Ph.D. also takes a much longer form than a published article, averaging approximately 90,000 words. Academic journal entries, conversely, are usually between 4,000 and 7,000 words.

Should I first write my Ph.D. thesis or publish journal articles?

Though publishing at the doctoral level is increasingly seen as a requirement in the job market, it is not part of degree requirements. With this in mind, students should prioritize the research and writing of their thesis above all else. If they have the time and mental clarity needed to publish journal articles, this can be a secondary focus.

From the Expert

Dr. Deniece Dortch is a scholar-practitioner known for her commitment to diversity, social justice and activism. Dr. Dortch holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an Ed.M. in Higher & Postsecondary Education from Columbia University, an M.A. in Intercultural Service, Diversity Leadership & Management from the School for International Training and a B.A. in Spanish from Eastern Michigan University. Hailed a graduate school expert by NPR, she has published numerous articles on the experiences of historically underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students. She is the creator of the African American Doctoral Scholars Initiative at the University of Utah and currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Higher Education at The George Washington University .

Publishing as a student can feel intimidating. Why is this process important for learners to go through?

Long gone are the days of getting a good job by just having a solid dissertation or an award-winning thesis. Publishing your work while in school demonstrates a commitment to answering and understanding our world’s most complex problems. Further, institutions want to know that you have the capacity to publish. Now, publishing doesn’t mean you have to be first author or that you must publish sole-authored pieces only. Collaboration is also sufficient and often encouraged. The publishing process is intimidating for folks because it involves critique and, most often, rejection.

Receiving and giving critical feedback is part of the learning process and students should not shy away from it because it will only serve them well in the end as they learn to cope with disappointment and reward. But more importantly, there is no point spending months and years conducting research if you are just going to keep your findings to yourself. What you learn is meant to be shared.

What are some common mistakes these learners make when preparing their first papers?

Common mistakes that individuals make include not adhering to the guidelines outlined in the submission process. Examples of this can include ignoring formatting requirements (e.g. APA, MLA, etc.), going over the stated word count, inadequately proofreading, and not submitting a cover letter. This is probably the most important one.

What specific advice do you have for them in terms of finding the right outlet, preparing their work, and submitting to journals?

Students should have multiple individuals read over their work before submission. Writing is a process and even after it is submitted, it will need to be revised many more times before you will read it in print. It is part of the process. To find a good outlet for your work, pay attention to where other scholars are submitting their work. If you’re subject is aligned with theirs, you have a shot. Make a list of at least three outlets that fit your article. Also look out for special calls. A special call for submissions usually goes a lot faster than the regular submission process, so if you’re a student who is about to go on the job market, submit to those first. Also, the more competitive the academic, the longer the process, so keep that in mind. If you are rejected, just re-submit to the the next journal on your list.

In addition to publishing in journals, how else might a student go about getting recognition in their field while still in school?

Apply for all fellowships, grants, and awards that are specific to you and what you do. People in the academy love an award winner and they especially love people whose work has been recognized and/or funded by outside groups. A great way to increase a student’s visibility is to publish outside academic journals and publish in other media outlets. Also attend conferences in your field. Try to get on the program as a presenter or facilitator so that people in your field will start to know who you are and your research interests.

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January 26, 2022

Comprehensive scholarly publishing dataset shows publication rates in 170 disciplines at US universities

by Academic Analytics Research Center

Academic Analytics Research Center (AARC) shared comprehensive data on scholarly publication rates in 170 disciplines. The newly available data tables show the rate of journal article, book, conference proceeding, and book chapter publications over different time periods and across different career stages in each discipline.

"There's a huge range of bibliometric activity across disciplines and by scholars at different points in their career, and limited access to data like these means that those differences aren't always taken into account by university committees and administrators making comparisons across fields" according to project participant Dick Wheeler, Graduate Dean Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Senior Academic Advisor, AARC.

An accompanying essay outlines documents potential pitfalls in bibliometric evaluation across disciplines that the new dataset can be used to address. Mean (average) publication rates, for example, are often skewed higher due to a small number of exceptionally well-published faculty members, potentially resulting in unrealistic publishing expectations. Meanwhile, focusing on journal articles puts some disciplines at a disadvantage in comparative evaluations because books (e.g., English language and Literature) or conference proceedings (e.g., Electrical Engineering) are more common modes of knowledge dissemination. Characteristic rhythms of publication—how often one publishes and in what venues—show great variation, even among closely related disciplines.

The dataset contributors believe that by making these data public, administrative leaders at research universities and others who rely on bibliometric evaluation can more comprehensively characterize publishing activity. The contributors also underscore that publishing is only one aspect of scholarship at research-intensive institutions, and publishing should always be considered within the context of teaching, service, career stage and objectives, individual circumstances, and myriad other responsibilities taken on by faculty members.

The research was published in Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics .

Provided by Academic Analytics Research Center

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The publication trajectory of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and new professors in psychology

• Published: 27 October 2017
• Volume 117 , pages 1289–1310, ( 2018 )

Cite this article

• Christopher Zou 1 ,
• Julia Tsui 1 &
• Jordan B. Peterson 1  

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5 Citations

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A Correction to this article was published on 13 November 2017

This article has been updated

Each year as the number of graduate students in psychology increases, there is also increased competition for academic positions. The general consensus is that there is higher pressure for students to publish prolifically, yet there is little information as to what this exactly means. The main aim of the present study was to examine the average publication trajectory of a psychology student advancing to a post-doctoral fellowship to a faculty position. We obtained curricula vitae from graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty members from 2010 to 2015 in addition to self-reports from the graduate students. The number of publications substantially increased with each step of progression: graduate students published on average 2.89 (self-report) to 3.08 (CV report) papers, post-doctoral fellows on average published 8.06 papers, and junior professors on average had 14.30 publications before they were hired. The same pattern was observed even when restricting the number of publications to only those that were first-authored. However, a slightly different pattern emerged when comparing a scientometric index (zp-index) that takes into account both the quantity and quality of publications.

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Scholarly accomplishments: a United States survey of academic psychologists

Amber E.Q. Norwood, Thomas C. Hatvany, … James D. Griffith

Do senior faculty members produce fewer research publications than their younger colleagues? Evidence from Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States

William E. Savage & Anthony J. Olejniczak

Quantitative study on Australian academic science

Xin Gu & Karen Blackmore

Change history

13 november 2017.

In the original publication, Fig. 6 does not properly label the values. The revised version of the Fig. 6 is given inthe correction article.

We selected social/personality psychology as our comparison group because business schools typically hire graduates from this particular area of psychology.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we would like to thank the numerous research assistants in the Peterson Lab for investing countless hours into collecting and coding CVs. In particular, we would like to thank Kenny Xiong and Hank Ko for going and above and beyond their duties to complete the coding process. Second, we would like to thank Xiaowen Xu, Sabrina Thai, Jessica Maxwell, Kate Guan, Dimitry Besson, and Christian Poole for their helpful comments on prior versions of the manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank the reviewers for their contributions in improving the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Christopher Zou, Julia Tsui & Jordan B. Peterson

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher Zou .

Additional information

The original version of this article was revised. The Fig. 6 does not properly label the values. The correct figure is updated in the article.

Appendix 1: List of post-secondary institutions contacted for graduate students’ and post-doctorates’ CV

Canadian universities.

Brock University

Carleton University

Concordia University

Dalhousie University

McGill University

McMaster University

Queen’s University

Ryerson University

Simon Fraser University

University of Alberta

University of British Columbia

University of Calgary

University of Guelph

University of Manitoba

University of Montreal

University of Ottawa

University of Saskatchewan

University of Toronto

University of Victoria

University of Waterloo

University of Western Ontario

University of Windsor

York University

American Universities

Arizona State University

Auburn University

Binghamton University

Boston University

Bowling Green State University

Brandeis University

Browns University

Carnegie Mellon University

Clark University

Columbia University, New York

Cornell University

Dartmouth College

Drexel University

Duke University

Emory University

Florida State University

Georgia Institute of Technology

Georgia State University

Harvard University

Johns Hopkins University

Kent State University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Miami University

Michigan State University

New Mexico State University

New York University

North Dakota State University

Northeastern University

Northwestern University

Ohio State University

Ohio University

Pennsylvania State University

Princeton University

Purdue University

Rice University

Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick

Stanford University

State University of New York, Albany

State University of New York, Stony Brook

Syracuse University

Temple University

Tufts University

University at Albany, State University of New York

University of Arizona

University of Buffalo

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Davis

University of California, Irvine

University of California, Riverside

University of California, San Diego

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Cruz

University of Chicago

University of Cincinnati

University of Colorado, Boulder

University of Connecticut

University of Delaware

University of Florida

University of Georgia

University of Houston

University of Illinois, Chicago

University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign

University of Iowa

University of Kansas

University of Kentucky

University of Louisville

University of Maryland, College Park

University of Massachusetts

University of Miami

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

University of Missouri, Columbia

University of Nebraska, Lincoln

University of New Mexico

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

University of Oklahoma, Norman

University of Oregon

University of Pennsylvania

University of Pittsburgh

University of Rochester

University of South Florida

University of Southern California

University of Texas, Austin

University of Texas, Dallas

University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center

University of Toledo

University of Utah

University of Vermont

University of Virginia

University of Washington

University of Wisconsin, Madison

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

University of Wyoming

Utah State University

Vanderbilt University

Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Wake Forest University

Washington University, St. Louis

Wayne State University

Yale University

Appendix 2: List of post-secondary institutions contacted for new faculty members’ CV

University of Quebec, Montreal

Boston College

Brown University

Case Western Reserve University

Graduate Center of the City University of New York

George Washington University

Indiana University, Bloomington

Penn State University

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick

State University of New York, Binghamton

State University of New York, Buffalo

University of Alabama, Birmingham

University of California, Los Angeles

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

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Zou, C., Tsui, J. & Peterson, J.B. The publication trajectory of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and new professors in psychology. Scientometrics 117 , 1289–1310 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2540-6

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• Published: 10 October 2019

A PhD is more than the sum of its publications

• Fan Li 1 , 2  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  3 ,  page 1021 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Comparing the experiences of students at Menzies Institute, PhD student Fan Li reflects on the importance of publications across disciplines, but argues that these should not detract from the benefits of PhD training.

At the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, in the study room on level 3, there are two types of PhD students. One is the biomedical PhD candidate (laboratory-based) who works on a basic research topic in a wet lab, just like me, whose study focuses on retinal gene editing in animal models. The other is represented by my neighbours, students pursuing a PhD in epidemiology and clinical research. Despite these branching clades of science, each track comes with its own challenges.

My first challenge was overcoming the steep learning curve at the start of my candidature, mostly in part due to limited experience in basic laboratory research. The classical adage, ‘see one, do one, teach one’ emphasized in clinical training suddenly becomes ‘see one, do one, fail one’ in the laboratory setting. Here troubleshooting is just a part of life. Although my experimental techniques became more reliable over time and my project later came to a promising fruition, my time spent at Menzies was never without its fair share of drama. Sometimes, a hypothesis that would seem very promising would somehow end up with negative or unexpected results. The manuscript of my first PhD project recently got accepted. Looking back, I realized that I had spent far more time on the project as a whole than the published data would seem to indicate. If the time spent generating publishable results were to be considered as productive moments, were the other countless hours spent troubleshooting not worth acknowledging? The answer is of course they were. The research training and the troubleshooting with my supervisors helped me throughout the rest of my PhD.

Comparatively, the epidemiology-based PhD pathway that my neighbours are taking seems smoother. At the beginning of their candidature, they took statistics courses and then employed these sophisticated statistical analyses to investigate various health-related areas from multiple sclerosis to sedentary behaviour, etc. At the onset, their data was already available to them. This allowed them to start the writing process sooner than most lab-based PhDs. As such, it was not uncommon for them to have more published papers during their candidature and to experience, overall, less stress during the final write-up of their theses. This didn’t mean, however, that they didn’t have their own obstacles during their PhDs. For example, students may have had different yields in papers due to differences in the original study designs, data collection speeds and statistical analysis methods. Because the data was secondary, they had little control over it. What is more, their progress could be hindered by outsourced work, such as primary data collection or complicated analysis done by a professional statistician. The grass is always greener on the other side, but the fact is, many of our concerns are shared.

Despite being occupied by our own tasks under different daily working schedules, sometimes we managed to have a little chat over a coffee break. Collectively, we shared an interesting and recurrent Tuesday symptom—stomach churning—right before our weekly group meetings, during which we would report progress with our supervisors and fellow students. The mutual challenge for us regardless of our disciplines or topics was that we were all expected to finish three or more high-quality research projects within our 3.5-year PhD timeline, ideally generating one paper per study within the scope of our thesis. Although there is no formal publication requirement for PhD graduation at Menzies or other institutes in Australia, we are still burdened by the weight of our expectations to publish in high-impact-factor journals.

We share these pressures across not only different PhD tracks, but also across different universities and countries. The focus on high-impact-factor journals and the requirement to publish is also prevalent in my country of birth, China. In China, most PhD students in medical research have to publish one or more papers prior to graduation, with varying journal impact factor requirements. This is particularly stressful as the overall trend is for the journal impact factor requirement to rise every year. Other countries may have different PhD graduation requirements, but nonetheless, the pressure to publish remains a shared symptom among students worldwide.

Publication pressure during PhD training is not all bad: getting research work peer-reviewed and published is a vital training process for PhD students. This process can improve one’s reading, writing and data analysis and can help us gain new insight into a finished project. What is more, getting papers published indicates the official completion of one study, enabling us to move on to the next project and providing us with visible milestone towards the completion of PhD.

Nevertheless, published papers should never be viewed as the most important aspect of PhD training. What is more important is that the processes underpinning publication—original and critical thought—is learnt and applicable to a wider scope beyond the PhD candidature. Although this invaluable skill may be less tangible than a portfolio of published papers, critical thinking is a lifelong job requirement for a career in research. Therefore, publication output should not be the sole measure of success for PhD students.

A PhD should be viewed as a precious training journey, not a race. Students and supervisors should not lose track of the importance of the many other aspects of what it means to train for a PhD.

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Li, F. A PhD is more than the sum of its publications. Nat Hum Behav 3 , 1021 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0719-y

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Comparison of scientometric achievements at PhD and scientific output ten years later for 4,790 academic researchers

Gyöngyi munkácsy.

1 Department of Bioinformatics and 2nd Dept. of Pediatrics, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary

2 TTK Lendület Cancer Biomarker Research Group, Institute of Enzymology, Budapest, Hungary

Péter Herman

Balázs győrffy, associated data.

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Introduction

PhD is the highest awarded degree offered by universities in different disciplines. Owners of a PhD can teach at universities, start independent research and receive a higher salary while further building a scientific career. We examined whether the publication output before the PhD degree has a correlation with subsequent research activities.

We downloaded publication and citation data from the Hungarian Scientific Bibliography for Hungarian researchers who obtained PhD between the ages of 24 and 45. The researchers were grouped into eleven scientific sections. We examined the number of Q1 publications published in the previous 5 years, the H-index, the total number of citations for the last complete year, and the biological age of the researcher. Each parameter was computed for the year at which the PhD was obtained and ten years later. Pre-PhD publications (and citations for these) were excluded when assessing post-PhD track records. Spearman rank correlation and Kruskal-Wallis test were computed.

We analyzed all together 4,790 researchers. We obtained a positive correlation between the number of Q1 publications before and after PhD (corr. coeff. = 0.21–0.54, p<0.01 in all sections), between the H-index before and after PhD (corr. coeff. = 0.32–0.56, p<0.01 in all sections), and between the citations received before and after PhD (corr. coeff. = 0.34–0.51, p<0.01 in all sections). All three metrics measured ten years after the PhD were negatively correlated with the age of the researcher at the time of obtaining the PhD (number of publications corr. coeff. = -0.09–0.22, p<0.05; H-index corr. coeff. = -0.09–0.29, p<0.08; number of citations corr. coeff. = -0.14–0.30, p<0.01). Among all disciplines, Philosophy and History and Engineering sciences show the strongest correlation between pre- and post-PhD output. When running multiple regression analysis for all three metrics as dependent variables and the number of articles, the H-index, the number of citations in the year of the PhD, the calendar year of PhD, and the gender of the researcher as independent variables, the number of articles and the H-index in the year of PhD reached the strongest positive correlations while gender had a negative correlation.

Conclusions

We independently evaluated pre- and post-PhD publication performance. In connection with age, the discipline-specific reference values of scientometric parameters at the time of obtaining the PhD can help to select candidates for postdoctoral grants and positions.

Doctor Philosophiae (PhD) is the highest globally recognized academic qualification available in any field of research. A PhD degree can only be awarded by a university once the applicant has completed a wide-ranging and novel research project. The holder of a PhD degree can teach at universities, start independent scientific research, and also receives a higher salary as better paid positions are reserved to those with a PhD degree. For example, in Hungary only the two most basic academic (assistant lecturer) and scientific (assistant research fellow) positions can be filled by those without a PhD degree. Notably, the effect of education on wages was also sizeable in an Italian study [ 1 ], and over-education even had a negative impact [ 2 ]. The number of PhD graduates grows rapidly in all continents of the world–in some countries like China by 5% a year [ 3 ].

Commonly, the PhD student is assisted by a supervisor and the training requires 3–6 years of full-time investment. As cornerstones, completing the studying requirements, passing the doctoral examination, and the successful defense of the PhD dissertation is needed to obtain the degree. The so-called doctoral dissertation proves that the researcher can independently solve a scientific task, with which it broadens our knowledge with new, previously undiscovered results in the field [ 4 ]. The significance of the work made by PhD fellows is supported by the fact that about one third of research publications comes from a doctoral student in universities [ 5 ].

The exact conditions for obtaining the degree vary from country to country. In the UK, a PhD is awarded as part of a three-year course including specific and general subjects. Students’ dissertations are reviewed by external reviewers and an oral defense is delivered to show the candidates’ proficiency. In Australia, training with a scholarship lasts for 3–4 years [ 6 ] and publications accepted before the application can also form the basis of the doctoral thesis in certain disciplines [ 7 ]. Oral presentation for defending the dissertation is not mandatory. The United States has the longest PhD program with 4–11 years for graduates depending on subject areas. In Germany, most doctoral candidates work as employees in universities and training decisions are left to supervisors and doctoral students [ 8 ]. In Hungary, a two-year study period ending with a final exam is extended by a three-year research period, and the defense of the doctoral dissertation finishes the training.

A number of indicators are available to measure the quality and quantity of scientific output. Available bibliometric indicators include among others the total number of publications, the cumulative impact factor of all publications, the total number of citations, the number of articles with at least one citation, the number of highly cited articles, the average number of citations per article, the number of citations per year, and the H-index [ 9 – 11 ]. Derived bibliometric indicators have also been developed to measure researcher productivity [ 12 ]. There are no international standards for the publication requirements for obtaining a PhD [ 13 ]. The minimal requirements are mostly determined by the program, the lead tutors, and by the university. In Australia, 2–5 first or co-authored articles are required to get PhD degree [ 7 ]. There is no regulation in the United States and in Canada, although publication is strongly recommended before obtaining a PhD [ 13 ]. Peer-reviewed publication is not required in Germany. In Hungary, a discipline-specific number of publications with or without an impact factor threshold are needed to apply for a degree [ 14 ].

The scientific outcome of a doctoral training is determined by several factors in addition to the personal abilities of the doctoral student: the doctoral program, relevance, novelty, working environment, access to other experts, feasibility, and supervision [ 15 ]. The theoretical conditions of a good doctoral dissertation are also established [ 16 ]. Generally, a PhD is said to be strong in case the number of publications of the candidate is high, the total impact factor of these articles is high, and the doctoral student fulfills the training conditions in a shorter time.

To what extent does PhD training influence postdoctoral publication performance? Here, we aimed to correlate independently calculated pre- and post- PhD scientific output for a large cohort of Hungarian researchers spanning all scientific disciplines. In addition to different publication metrics we also aimed to include the age of the doctoral student to determine which features have the highest influence on a researcher’s subsequent career.

Database construction

Publication and citation data were downloaded from the Hungarian Scientific Bibliography ( www.mtmt.hu ). MTMT includes self-reported data, which is then validated at the time when one submits his or her PhD thesis. In this, we included doctors of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), members of HAS, recipients of the Momentum grant (an ERC-grant like national scheme), researchers who have submitted Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) applications since 2006, and researchers with university affiliation who have obtained a PhD. Unique MTMT identification numbers were used to distinguish researchers with the same name. The age of researchers as well as the age at obtaining the PhD degree was obtained from the doktori.hu public database.

Scientific sections

HAS classifies researchers into eleven scientific sections, which are as follows: I. Language and Literature, II. Philosophy and History, III. Mathematics, IV. Agriculture, V. Medicine, VI. Engineering, VII. Chemistry, VIII. Biology, IX. Economics and Law, X. Earth sciences, and XI. Physics. Researchers can select the most relevant section based on their area of research. For researchers without a selected scientific section the designation was made based on the topics of the last five publications.

Indicators of scientific output

We computed three indicators to measure scientific performance, the selection of these was based on our previous study [ 11 ] and availability (e.g. we had to exclude journal impact factors as these are not available for all publications). These include the number of scientific publications , the H-index , and the number of citations for all previous publications in the given calendar year.

The number of all scientific publications is based on the total number of articles published in Q1-ranked journals in the last five years as a first, last, or corresponding author. By excluding Q2, Q3, and Q4-rated articles we guaranteed that only high-quality publications are included in the database. This number reflects the contemporary scientific activity of the researcher. Q-ranking was based on the Scimago Journal Rank database ( https://www.scimagojr.com/ ).

The H-index of a researcher is n if he/she has published n articles, each of which has been cited at least n times while there are no other articles with more than n citations. The number of citations includes both dependent and independent citations. This value is an indicator of an individual’s performance over his/her entire academic career and is a measure independent of the impact of journals. We have computed two different H-index values: the H-index at PhD includes all publications up to the year of the PhD award. The H-index ten years after PhD includes only publications published after the PhD award . The aim of this differentiation was to exclude the direct effects of publications before the PhD on subsequent H-index values ( Fig 1 ).

The total number of independent citations to all previously accepted scientific articles in a given calendar year. Independent means that there is no overlap in the author list of the cited and the citing documents. This value is an indicator of the impact of the researcher’s former scientific activity in the present. By excluding dependent citations, it can be guaranteed that this parameter will give an objective evaluation of the researcher impact. In the same way as for the H-index, to exclude the effect of pre-PhD papers, the independent citation count was derived by using only citation received for papers published after the year of the PhD.

Statistical analysis

The age of the researcher and all three parameters achieved in the year of the PhD (the number of articles published in the previous 5 years, H-index and number of independent citations) were compared with those values obtained ten years after the PhD. Continuous variables were compared by calculating Spearman correlation coefficients. Differences between sections were calculated using Kruskall-Wallis test. The p-value cutoff was set at p = 0.05.

The initial database contained 7,118 researchers. Those researchers were deleted where the year of obtaining the PhD was unknown, who obtained the PhD over the age of 45 or under the age of 24. We also excluded those who obtained their degree within 10 years because we could not perform the analysis with these data. Degrees obtained over the age of 45 were excluded as these more likely refer to a former candidate degree and not to a PhD degree. Values under the age of 24 were most likely date errors in the database. The final database contains 4,790 researchers. The screening process is summarized in Fig 2 .

The 4,790 researchers were arranged to one of eleven scientific sections of HAS, in particular, 342 researchers to Language and Literature, 457 researchers to Philosophy and History, 238 to Mathematics, 429 to Agriculture, 702 to Medicine, 360 to Engineering, 467 to Chemistry, 719 to Biology, 489 to Economics and Law, 242 to Earth sciences, and 345 to Physics. The average age of all researchers was 59.8 years, with a median of 58 years.

Features of researchers in the year of obtaining their PhD per section

The average age of researchers at the year of obtaining the PhD degree was 33.8 years. There was a significant difference between scientific sections in this parameter (Kruskall-Wallis p value<1E-16). Youngest mean age at obtaining the PhD was shown in Mathematics, Physics and Biology sections (31.4, 31.7 and 32.8 years, respectively). Researchers in Language and Literature, Medicine, Economics and Law sections had the oldest average age (35.3, 35.1 and 35.1 years, respectively) (see Fig 3A and all the values in S1 Table ).

Average age at obtaining the PhD degree (A), number of publications in the previous five years (B), H-index (C), and yearly independent citations (D) at the year of obtaining the PhD in each scientific section. Mean and 95% CI are shown. See detailed data in S1 Table .

There was a significant difference between sections in the average number of peer reviewed publications in the five years preceding the PhD (Kruskall-Wallis p value<1E-16) ( Fig 3B and all the values in S1 Table ). The average number of publications varied between 0.01 and 1.0. Researchers in Language and Literature, Economics and Law, and Philosophy and History sections had the lowest average values (0.01, 0.05 and 0.1, respectively). The highest average number of publications was found in Physics, Medicine and in Biology sections (1.00, 0.80 and 0.78, respectively). The average number of publications when including all researchers was 0.48.

Mean H-index at the year of obtaining the PhD degree in each section is presented in Fig 3C . Average values varied between 0.87 and 3.72. Researchers in Language and Literature, Economics and Law, Philosophy and History sections had the lowest average H-index values (0.87, 0.96 and 1.20 respectively). Highest average H-indices were found for researchers in Physics, Medicine and in Biology sections (3.72, 3.32 and 3.31, respectively). Average H-index at the year of obtaining the degree was 2.23 for all researchers.

Finally, the number of independent citations in the year of PhD varied between 0.83 and 13.22, and differed significantly between sections (Kruskall-Wallis p value<1E-16) ( Fig 3D and all the values in S1 Table ). Lowest average yearly citations were found for researchers in Language and Literature, Economics and Law and Engineering sections (0.83, 1.37 and 1.74, respectively). Researchers in Physics, Biology and Medicine sections showed the highest values for the average number of yearly citations (13.22, 11.86 and 11.56, respectively).

Total number of articles between 5–10 years after obtaining the PhD

Correlation between the number of articles accepted before obtaining the PhD and the number of articles accepted between 5–10 years after the PhD was the strongest in Mathematics, Philosophy and History, and Engineering sections (Spearman corr. coeff. = 0.54, 0.48, and 0.44, respectively, p<0.01). Weakest correlation was found in Language and Literature, Medicine, and Economics and Law sections (corr. coeff. = 0.21, 0.23, and 0.26, respectively, p<0.01). Positive correlation was found between all three scientific parameters in the year of PhD and this parameter, in each section. Table 1 shows Spearman correlation coefficients between the number of manuscripts 5–10 years after the PhD and the scientific parameters at the year of obtaining the PhD per section.

Correlation between the number of publications ten years after obtaining the PhD and scientometric parameters and age in the year of the PhD.

H-index at ten years after obtaining the PhD

Positive correlation was found between the H-index at the year of obtaining PhD and at ten years later in all sections. H-index of researchers in Philosophy and History, Engineering, and Mathematics—Agriculture sections in a tie showed the strongest correlation (Spearman corr. coeff. = 0.56, 0.52, 0.51, and 0.51, respectively, p<0.01). Weakest correlation was found in Biology, Medicine and Physics sections (corr. coeff. = 0.32, 0.39 and 0.40, respectively, p<0.01). We found positive correlation between the number of accepted manuscripts prior to PhD and value of H-index at 10 years after PhD– except in Language and Literature section (corr. coeff. = 0.05, p = 0.18). The number of independent citations in the year of PhD and value of H-index ten years after PhD had strong positive correlation in all sections. Table 2 shows Spearman correlation coefficients of the H-index values ten years after PhD and the other scientific parameters at the year of obtaining the PhD per section.

Correlation between H-index ten years after obtaining the PhD degree and scientometric parameters and age in the year of the PhD.

The number of independent citations in the tenth year after obtaining the PhD

Positive correlation was found between the yearly number of independent citations in the year of obtaining the PhD degree and ten years later in all sections. Researchers in Philosophy and History, Mathematics and Engineering sections showed the strongest correlation (Spearman corr. coeff. = 0.51, 0.49, and 0.47, respectively, p<0.01). Lowest correlation was found in Biology, Physics, and Language and Literature sections (corr. coeff. = 0.34, 0.36, and 0.38, respectively, p<0.01). We found positive correlation in all sections except of Language and Literature between the number of publication prior to PhD and the yearly number of independent citations ten years after PhD . Also, positive correlation was found between the H-index at the year of PhD and the number of independent citations in the tenth year after PhD in all sections. Table 3 shows Spearman correlation coefficients for the number of independent citations in the tenth year after PhD and the other scientific parameters at the year of obtaining the PhD per section.

Correlation between the number of citations in the tenth year after obtaining the PhD and scientometric parameters and age in the year of the PhD

The age of researchers at the year of obtaining the PhD and later scientific output

We found negative correlation between the age of researchers at the time of PhD and the number of publications at 5–10 years after PhD in all sections ( Table 1 ). Researchers in Biology, Earth sciences and Engineering sections showed the strongest correlations (Spearman corr. coeff. = -0.23, -0.22, and -0.21, respectively, p<0.01). Weakest correlation was found in Economics and Law (corr. coeff. = -0.09, p = 0.02), Agriculture (corr. coeff. = -0.10, p = 0.02), Physics (corr. coeff. = -0.13, p = 0.01), and Philosophy and History sections (corr. coeff. = -0.13, p<0.01). We found negative correlation between the researcher’s age at the time of obtaining the PhD and H-index ten years after the PhD in all sections–the significance was only marginal in Mathematics ( Table 2 ). Negative correlation was found between the age of researcher at the time of obtaining the PhD and the number of independent citations in the tenth year after PhD in all sections ( Table 3 ).

Gender specific differences

We were able to determine the gender for all researchers and compared the number of publications, the H-index, and the yearly independent citation count values reached by male (n = 3,689) and female (n = 1,101) researchers. At the time of obtaining the PhD, female students had higher mean publication count (Mann-Whitney p = 1E-07). There were no significant differences in the mean citation count and in the H-index values. Similarly, there were no significant differences between male and female researchers ten years after PhD in the three investigated scientometric parameters.

Multiple regression

In a separate analysis we performed multiple regression by simultaneously including the number of articles, the H-index, the number of citations in the year of the PhD, as well as age, the calendar year of PhD, and the gender of the researcher for all included scientists. Dependent variables were the number of articles, the H-index, and the number of citations ten years after obtaining the PhD. In this analysis, citation in the year of PhD had no significant correlation with the number of articles (p = 0.15) and the H-index (p = 0.63). Female gender was associated with lower H-index (p<1E-50), citation count (p = 1.1E-06), and number of articles (p = 1.2E-13) ten years after PhD. The most significant positive correlations for all three dependent variables were observed for the number of articles (p = 4.4E-32 for number of articles ten years after PhD, p = 2.4E-48 for the H-index ten years after PhD, and p = 9.4E-42 for the citation count ten years after PhD) and for H-index in the year of PhD (p = 9.2E-32 for number of articles ten years after PhD, p = 1E-50 for the H-index ten years after PhD, and p = 2.6E-13 for the citation count ten years after PhD). Age and the year of PhD had minimal effects with small correlation coefficients in most settings. The detailed results for each setting including the equation values are provided in S2 Table .

Publishing during PhD training has an impact on later careers, reputation, and collaborations [ 17 ]. Here, we partially reproduced the results of Horta and Santos, but by accounting for different scientific disciplines and assessing the effects for each disciplinary area. Thus, our results not only build on and validate the previous results [ 17 ] but also significantly extend the knowledge in this field.

Early career publications are seen as a requirement to enter an academic career [ 18 ]. Along with the excellent educational and professional activity, writing strong articles is an essential condition for promotion in a scientific career [ 19 ]. However, the question remains whether scientific publication output during the PhD adequately reflects future academic performance independently of the research environment [ 6 ]? Although Horta and Santos partially responded to this question, here we performed a more in-depth analysis including different scientific disciplines. We scrutinized Hungarian researchers whether the scientific performance before the PhD influences postdoctoral scientific output. We examined three bibliometric parameters in the year of obtaining the PhD and ten years later: the number of first, last- or corresponding authored manuscripts accepted in Q1-ranked journals, the H-index, and the total number of independent citations received by the researcher in the given year. In almost all settings each of the metrics measured at the time of obtaining the PhD was positively correlated with the values measured 10 years after the PhD award. These observations are in line with our previous study analyzing publication performance of Momentum grant holders before and after grant award [ 9 ] and reinforces the validity of the Matthew effect in this setting as well.

When looking on different scientific field-specific variances, we observed the weakest correlations in Medicine, Biology, and Physics sections for all three parameters compared to other sections. Most probably, the daily routine work of physicians in patient treatment often discourages publication activity [ 20 ]. On the other hand, bibliometric indicators achieved at the year of obtaining PhD are outstanding in Medicine, as confirmed by previous other studies as well [ 21 ]. Of all scientific sections, Mathematics, Engineering, and Philosophy and History had the highest correlations between pre- and post-PhD scientific output for all three investigated indicators. These observations can be partly explained by the fact that the highest salaries for PhD holders are available in engineering, business and science fields in the United States and in Hungary which can increase compliance and engagement during PhD studies.

We obtained a strong negative correlation between age at obtaining a PhD and subsequent scientific output in all disciplines. Younger age at PhD results in significantly better postdoctoral publications with higher impact. Our results are little bit astonishing, as we have evaluated pre-PhD and postdoctoral publications completely independently. Thus, the scientometric parameters ten years after PhD only reflect the H-index, citation, and publication count of publications printed after finishing the PhD studies. Because of this separation, those who obtain a PhD at a younger age had no advantage in terms of additional years to collect citations to increase their H-index over those who acquired their PhD later.

Publication metrics are not the only indicators of the performance of an individual, but also of an institution [ 22 ], and can be used to pave the way for access to external funding sources. Therefore, a main goal of universities worldwide is to maximize research output. Different tactics can be executed to intensify publication activity: writing courses, writing support groups, and writing coaches can significantly increase the number of publications of the research participants according to a study summarizing 17 studies [ 23 ]. Reviews also help to grasp available methods for scientific writing [ 24 ]. Other options include the continuous mentoring even after the competition of the PhD [ 25 ]. Overall, the requirement to publish is a constant high pressure for employees working in academic institutions [ 26 ].

Here, we did not examine personal factors such as periods of motherhood, in which case publication activity may be paused for years. The reason for this is the lack of available data regarding maternity leaves for PhD students. Although executed in a different country, a study involving 8,544 researchers from the United States found no effect of personal circumstances including marriage, number of children, and care for aging parents on publication productivity [ 27 ]. More important factors seemed to be academic rank, salary, commitment to research, and desire for recognition, which we could not examine due to the lack of available data. The availability of funding resources can also influence publication efficiency. Reputation and experience of the supervisor [ 6 ] or of the group leader [ 28 ] also impacts the productivity of a researcher. The country-specificity of these effects should be evaluated in a future study.

We have to note a few limitations of our study. In the analysis we did not have any explanatory variable for the PhD training itself. In other words, one does not know how the PhD was trained by the supervisors, if there was co-supervision or not, if one was included in a large or small research group, if one had access to resources to do research, etc. Second, one may publish during the PhD even if the training was not focused on publication. Sometimes it all depends on the earlier training of the students, and the ability of the students. In addition, we included only Hungarian researchers. The reason for this is the utilization of the MTMT database, which only comprises data for Hungarian researchers. A main advantage of MTMT is the differentiation between dependent and independent citations. Other repositories (like Google Scholar or Scopus) either do not have this information or there is no open access. Finally, we included only Q1 articles as our focus was on research excellence and not on research quantity. One might note that lower ranked publications might still have value as scientific results. We have to note however that the majority of all publications of the investigated researchers were published in a Q1 ranked journal.

In the future, a similar study with additional data can bring more light into this field. For example, the association between time to degree, available funding, and accomplished publications during the PhD may be relevant in order to understand how funding can influence the ability to publish or not during the PhD. Conversely, funding during the PhD can affect the research performance later on.

In summary, a major novelty of our analysis is the independent analysis of pre-PhD and post-PhD scientometric parameters. Therefore, in our analysis pre-PhD publications do not directly influence the number of post-PhD citation counts and H-index. Our results are most relevant to early stage pre-PhD researchers and emphasize the importance of building a publication track record. We show that a PhD obtained at a younger age is an outstanding advantage in the later scientific career prognosticating not only more abundant publications but also higher impact of these as measured by citation counts. Post-PhD research output shows a strong correlation to the number of publications and their impact during PhD studies in all scientific disciplines. Our results emphasize the need for pre-doctoral training programs having an emphasis on regular publications. The listed scientific discipline-specific values of scientometric parameters at the time of obtaining the PhD can help to select the most suitable applicants for postdoctoral grants and positions.

Supporting information

Mean, standard deviation, and 95% CI for the age, number of publications in the previous five years, H-index, and yearly independent citations in each scientific section at the year of obtaining the PhD (A), and ten years after obtaining the PhD (B).

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support of ELIXIR Hungary ( www.elixir-hungary.org ).

Funding Statement

The research was financed by the 2018-2.1.17-TET-KR-00001 and 2018-1.3.1-VKE-2018-00032 grants and by the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Programme (2020-4.1.1.-TKP2020) of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology in Hungary, within the framework of the Bionic thematic program of the Semmelweis University.

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Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study

Affiliations GREDEG, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France, CRIOS, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, BRICK, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Torino, Italy

Affiliations CREST-ENSAE, Paris, France; UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, Netherlands, NBER, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations NBER, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, Andrew Young School, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Affiliations New York University, New York, New York, United States of America, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

• Michele Pezzoni, 
• Jacques Mairesse, 
• Paula Stephan, 

• Published: January 13, 2016
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146
• Reader Comments

We examine gender differences among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology using a new dataset that includes information on trainees and their advisors and enables us to construct detailed measures of teams at the advisor level. We focus on the relationship between graduate student publications and: (1) their gender; (2) the gender of the advisor, (3) the gender pairing between the advisor and the student and (4) the gender composition of the team. We find that female graduate students co-author on average 8.5% fewer papers than men; that students writing with female advisors publish 7.7% more. Of particular note is that gender pairing matters: male students working with female advisors publish 10.0% more than male students working with male advisors; women students working with male advisors publish 8.5% less. There is no difference between the publishing patterns of male students working with male advisors and female students working with female advisors. The results persist and are magnified when we focus on the quality of the published articles, as measured by average Impact Factor, instead of number of articles. We find no evidence that the number of publications relates to the gender composition of the team. Although the gender effects are reasonably modest, past research on processes of positive feedback and cumulative advantage suggest that the difference will grow, not shrink, over the careers of these recent cohorts.

Citation: Pezzoni M, Mairesse J, Stephan P, Lane J (2016) Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0145146. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146

Editor: Wolfgang Glanzel, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BELGIUM

Received: September 9, 2015; Accepted: December 1, 2015; Published: January 13, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Pezzoni et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Data Availability: The data are confidential because they include personnel data on human subjects. Deidentified data are available and can be accessed for validation purposes on a restricted server. Requests should be made to Cristina Jones at AIR ( [email protected] ) who will forward them to the Sponsored Research Office of the university studied in this research.

Funding: This work was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; NSF Education and Human Resources Award 1348691. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Despite growing participation of women in science, gender differences in publications, an important measure of scholarly productivity, persist[ 1 , 2 ]. Yet little is known regarding the extent to which gender differences are observed in graduate school, or if differences only begin to emerge over the course of the career. Likewise, little is known as to whether the gender of the advisor and the gender pairing between the advisor and graduate student play a role in the scholarly productivity of the student. Nor do we know whether the gender composition of the team that the student works with while training is correlated with publishing productivity.

In this paper we examine differences in publications among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a highly selective research intensive university, using a new dataset that includes longitudinal information, such as occupation, on all individuals paid on federal grants and connects them with their publications. We focus on graduate students given the key role that publications at the time of training play in subsequent placement outcomes and career trajectories. We are particularly interested in how the publications of graduate students relate to their gender and the gender of the advisor. We are also interested in whether the gender effects of the advisor are mediated by the gender of the graduate student.

The data enable us to go one step further in studying the publishing productivity of graduate students by constructing a detailed measure of teams at the advisor level. We use this measure to explore how the gender composition of the team relates to publications. We see our work as an important contribution given the key role that teams play in affecting productivity, be it that of scientists[ 3 – 5 ], soccer players [ 6 ], supermarket checkers [ 7 ], or fruit pickers [ 8 ]. The exploration of teams is particularly relevant given the important role that graduate students and postdoctoral fellows play in teams in science [ 9 , 10 ] and work that relates team performance to the gender composition of the team[ 11 – 13 ].

Numerous studies have examined gender differences in the productivity of scientists [ 1 , 14 – 17 ]. Virtually none, however, have studied whether at the earliest stage of a scientist’s professional career—during graduate school—there is a gender difference in publication output, and if differences exist, the effect of systematic gender variation in graduate students’ professional environment on publication outcomes. Even small early career differences can have substantial later career effects, given what is known concerning processes of cumulative advantage and positive feedback mechanisms in science[ 18 – 20 ].

The gender of the advisor may affect mentoring, expectations and the evaluation of trainees’ competencies. A study of US faculty in engineering, the natural sciences and psychology in the early 2000’s found women advisors, for example, to “place significantly more emphasis on giving help to advisees” than male faculty did. The same study found male faculty members to meet more frequently with students and less by design, such as setting specific times for meetings, than did women faculty members [ 21 ]. Male faculty were also found to be less likely to see their ideal relationship with a student to be that of mentor-mentee, and more likely to see it as a collegial relationship, than did female faculty members. Male and female faculty at research-intensive institutions in the US rated male student applicants as significantly more competent than female students for a position of lab manager [ 22 ]. They also offered more mentoring to male applicants than female applicants. Mentoring, in turn, has been shown to affect subsequent professional outcomes of women in economics[ 23 ]. A recent experiment [ 24 ], however, found that, regardless of gender, faculty in biology, economics, engineering, and psychology working at a large number of US institutions had a 2:1 preference for hypothetically hiring female applicants over male applicants for a tenure track assistant professor position.

The gender match between advisors and advisees may also be important. Gender, for example, plays a role in how dyads evaluate scientific expertise. A study of 60 teams working in multidisciplinary research centers at a US university found men to give higher ratings to the expertise of other males on their scientific team regardless of the education level of the men. Women were found to give higher ratings to men who are highly educated than they do to women who are highly educated [ 11 ]. The gender pairing between faculty and advisee also plays a role in faculty evaluation of factors seen as contributing to success. When evaluating male students, for example, a study in the early 1990s of faculty in doctoral granting departments in science and engineering at US universities found women to put more emphasis on external factors, such as graduating from an elite institution or being aligned with an important faculty member than did male faculty members; no difference was found in terms of how male and female advisors rate the importance of internal factors, such as intelligence and hard work, of male students. For women students, both male and female advisors saw external factors playing a more important role than for male students [ 25 ]. Recent work finds gender pairings to be based on gender and accomplishments: males in the US train few women in the biomedical sciences relative to their presence in the training pool: the effect is strongest among elite male faculty[ 26 ]. Past research that examines how gender pairing at the graduate level in science and engineering relates to productivity, focuses on the productivity of the advisor, not that of the student, and finds the productivity of male advisors to be an increasing function of the number of male students [ 16 ].

The characteristics of the team with which a graduate student works may also affect publication output, since teams perform better when members make the best use of others’ expertise. When deference among members of multidisciplinary teams working at a research university is based on social affinity, (such as gender), the performance of scientific teams suffers while deference based on task contributions enhances performance [ 27 ]. Deference based on ethnicity may partly explain why the publication performance of teams, measured by the number of citations or the Impact Factor of the journal in which the publication appeared, is negatively related to the lack of ethnic diversity among the coauthors [ 28 ]. Productivity of teams at a US National Laboratory,[ 29 ], however, was not found to be related to gender diversity of the team. The gender finding may relate to the mixed contributions that females bring to the team. On the plus side, and as demonstrated by [ 12 ] in a study of 40 teams, female dominated teams exhibit higher “collective intelligence,” which, although uncorrelated with the average or maximum intelligence of individual members of the group, explains the performance of the group on a number of tasks. On the negative side, a study found that groups composed exclusively of women underperform groups of other gender configurations in terms of decision making [ 13 ]. Study subjects were MBA students and undergraduate students. The performance of individual members of the group may be mediated by their gender and the gender composition of the group. Female freshmen engineering students, for example, exhibit greater participation in female majority groups or in gender parity groups [ 30 ]; females randomly assigned to single sex classes in economics at the University of Essex were more likely to pass their first year courses and to score higher on required second year classes than peers who attended coeducational classes [ 31 ].

Materials and Methods

This research and the research design were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the American Institutes of Research. Consent of subjects was not required by the IRB; records of all study subjects were anonymized and de-identified prior to analysis.

We use UMETRICS data to examine the role of gender. UMETRICS data consist of longitudinal information on the researchers directly supported on federal grants, and the vendors who are providing goods and services to support those grants. The data were originally generated as part of the STARMETRICS partnership between 5 federal science agencies, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and over 90 U.S. research universities. The researchers and administrators at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) universities have developed an enhanced version of the data so that researchers can link to external datasets and generate better data to model the production and impact of science[ 32 ].

The specific dataset is derived from detailed payroll data of Caltech. It captures longitudinal quarterly data on all individuals (and their occupations) paid on federal grants for the period 2000–2012. We examine the productivity of PhD students who received their degree between 2004 and 2009. Receipt of the PhD is determined by matching the names of PhD students with dissertation records kept in the Caltech library. The name of the advisor is also taken from the dissertation record, as is the discipline of the thesis. We determine gender by matching the first name and approximate date of birth to publicly available Social Security Administration data to determine the probable gender; in cases where we cannot determine gender using this method, we do so by web searches. We observe 933 PhD students enrolled in programs in engineering and the natural sciences who graduated during the interval 2004 to 2009 (Table A in S1 File ). Approximately two-thirds receive degrees in engineering or the physical sciences; 29.2% (272 PhD students) are female (Table B in S1 File ). Publication data are derived by matching the name of the advisor to Web of Science ( WOS ). [ 33 ]

We attribute to the students articles co-authored with their advisor. In order to provide sufficient time for research to be refereed and published, we measure productivity in year t (pub t ) as the sum of articles published in years t, t+1 and t+2 divided by 3; the results are robust to different measures (Table L in S1 File ). Most students (88.2% percent) publish either while a student or soon after graduating. The average number of publications per year is nearly one article (0.86). We use the 5-year Impact Factor, taken from Journal Citation Report , as a measure of quality[ 33 ].

We construct a measure of the team with which the focal student works at each year t to explore the role that team composition plays in publication activity. The construct bases team membership on the number of postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, technicians and staff scientists supported on a PI’s federal grants as well as the number of PhD students the PI supervises. (Details provided in S1 File ). Team size in year t is then determined by averaging team size for the three preceding years. Our measure of team size excludes the focal student and the advisor. The average size of the team is 8.2, 6.1 of whom are PhD students, 1.9 are postdocs and 0.2 are staff scientists. We find that all but 4 percent of the students who received a PhD during the study period belong to a team. For the sake of simplicity, and with virtually no impact on the results, we restrict the analysis to students with a team. We thus obtain a pooled panel database of 5151 observations for 933 PhD students during their average 5.5 years of PhD study to model their publications during these years.

The dependent variable in the regression analysis is log(1+pub t ). We use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) with clustered robust standard errors. The results are virtually unchanged when we rely on Poisson estimation instead of OLS (Table M S1 File ). In all regressions we control for discipline, number of years since starting the PhD, year of defense, whether the student had at least one publication in their first year of study, the log of publications of the advisor lagged one year and whether the advisor had any publications in the last three years.

Gender of Student

In any given year of study, female students publish approximately 8.5% fewer articles than male students ( Table 1 , column 1). The gender differences exist throughout the graduate career ( Fig 1 ). There are substantial field specific differences: the gender difference is greatest in biology, with a gap of 13%, and least in physics, with a gap of 5.5% ( Fig 2 ). Two other findings from the regression analysis are of particular interest. First, publishing during the first year of a student’s PhD studies is predictive of the student’s publications in his or her subsequent graduate career. Second, students who work with a highly productive advisor publish more than those who work with a less productive advisor.

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Study sample includes the 933 PhD students who defended their thesis in the period 2004–2009. Control for advisor productivity, discipline, number of years since starting the Ph.D., and year of Ph.D. defense apply.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.t001

The average number of publication is calculated every year, starting from 5 years before the thesis defense (d-5) until two years after the thesis defense (d+2).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.g001

The productivity differences for all disciplines are the graphical representation of the marginal effects of the OLS estimation in Table 1 , columns 1 and 2. The productivity differences at discipline level are the marginal effect of an OLS estimation where we interact the student and advisor gender dummies with the discipline dummy. Control for advisor productivity, number of years since starting the Ph.D., and year of Ph.D. defense are applied.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.g002

Gender of Advisor

We observe 204 unique advisors who have supervised one or more dissertations during the period; 12.3% of whom are female. Advisors are highly productive (Table C in S1 File ). Male advisors author on average 7.6 articles per year; female advisors author 6.3 publications per year (p < .05). A larger proportion of female advisors (p < .05) have not published in the previous three year period than males (5.0% vs. 2.2%), consistent with previous work finding that female scientists are more likely to exhibit non-publishing spells [ 2 , 34 ] than are men.

The majority of students work with a unique advisor; a small percentage have co-advisors. Eleven percent of the students work with a female advisor. Students working with female advisors publish the same or more than men up to the year they defend their dissertation ( Fig 3 ). As seen in Fig 3 , and column 2 of Table 1 , we find that students working with a female advisor publish 7.7% more articles a year than do those writing with a male advisor. We find no significant relationship between number of coauthors and the gender of advisor, controlling for characteristics such as field and previous publication history of the advisor and thus reject the hypothesis that the premium is driven by the possible proclivity of women advisors to be more inclusive in defining coauthors. The difference in the publishing productivity of students with female advisors vs. male advisors is greatest in physics and the biological sciences; smallest in engineering and chemistry ( Fig 2 ).

The average number of publication is calculated every year starting from 5 years before the thesis defense (d-5) until two years after the thesis defense (d+2).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.g003

Gender Dyads

We divide students and advisors into four dyads: MM; FF; MF; FM, where the first letter refers to the gender of the student and the second the gender of the advisor. The majority of male students write with a male advisor as do the majority of female students ( Fig 4 and Table F in S1 File ). The percent of male students working with a female advisor is greatest in biology, smallest in engineering. The percent of female students working with a male advisor is greatest in chemistry and smallest in engineering and physics.

The shares are calculated for all discipline as well as split by discipline.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.g004

For purposes of statistical analysis, we benchmark the FF, FM, MF groups against the MM group. We find that women writing with male advisors publish 8.5% less than males writing with male advisors (p < .01); men writing with female advisors publish 10% more (p < .05); no significant difference exists between women writing with women and the male-male benchmark ( Fig 5 and column 3 of Table 1 ). The female student-male advisor “penalty” is greatest in biology and chemistry; smallest in engineering. The male student-female advisor “premium” is greatest in physics; next greatest in engineering. It is not present, and indeed is negative, in chemistry.

The productivity differences for all disciplines are the graphical representation of the marginal effects of the OLS estimation in Table 1 , column 3. The productivity differences at discipline level are the marginal effect of an OLS estimation where we interact the student-advisor gender dyad dummies with the discipline dummy. Control for advisor’s productivity, number of years since starting the Ph.D., and year of Ph.D. defense apply.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.g005

The results indicate that the gender gap is greatest between women writing with male advisors and men writing with female advisors. We are not able to determine if the observed difference is related to the mentoring relationship between the male advisor and the female student, the extent to which the advisor utilizes the expertise of the student or if it is a result of some type of matching whereby women are either assigned or drawn to less productive male advisors or less productive female advisors choose women. Likewise, we are unable to determine whether the premium observed for men writing with female advisors is driven by selection or by female advisors devoting more resources and social capital to male students than they do to female students.

In order to examine if the findings apply to the quality of publications as well as the quantity, we estimate an equation in which the dependent variable is the average 5-year Impact Factor of journals in which the focal student publishes (Table G in S1 File ). The results suggest that gender disparity as measured by quality of publications between female students with a male advisor and male students with a female advisor is greater than is the quantity disparity.

Gender of Team

The average team of the focal PhD student consists of about 8 individuals, approximately three-fourths of whom are PhD students; 22% are postdoctoral researchers. A small percent are staff scientists and technicians. The largest team has almost 35 members, the smallest has one member, excluding the focal PhD student and advisor, who are not counted in measuring team size or gender composition of the team. Approximately 75% of the members of the team are male. The vast majority of teams—83.3%—are mixed in terms of gender. Female advisors are significantly more likely to have a higher proportion of female members on their team– 37.6% versus 28.6% for male advisors; this is consistent with work that shows “homophily” in the formation of authorship patterns [ 35 ].

We find no evidence that the publication levels of the student relates to the gender composition of the team (Table K in S1 File ). This finding is consistent with the literature suggesting that female dominated teams bring both pluses and minuses to the table in affecting productivity. Moreover, we find no evidence that gender plays a mediating role in terms of the gender composition: Female students neither benefit nor are penalized by working on teams that are increasingly female.

We use new data at the project level to examine the under-researched question of how gender—that of the individual, the advisor and the team—relate to the research productivity of PhD students. We find the direct relationship between gender and publications to be relatively small: women PhD students write approximately 8.5% fewer papers than their male counterparts during their doctoral studies. This is approximately 45 percent less than the gender differential that has recently been reported among faculty [ 1 ]. Although the differential is modest, past research on processes of positive feedback and cumulative advantage suggest that the difference will grow over the careers of this recent cohort, not shrink. We also find gender differences to be mediated by the gender of the advisor. Students with female advisors publish more; the premium is only realized by male students, not female students. Moreover, women writing with male advisors publish less than men writing with male advisors. Together these results indicate that the gender gap is greatest between female students working with a male advisor and male students working with a female advisor. The result persists, and indeed is magnified, when we look at the quality of publications, as measured by average Impact Factor, rather than the quantity of publications.

Our data allow us to explore whether the student’s productivity relates to the gender composition of the team with which the student works. Our research is novel in this sense: we are the first to measure team size and gender composition using administrative records. We find no evidence of a significant relationship between the two, where the gender composition of the team is measured in terms of the percent of the team that is female. Moreover, we find no indication that the effect of the gender composition of the team on productivity is mediated by the gender of the student.

Several caveats accompany our research. First, our results are for a highly selective research intensive institution and are not necessarily generalizable to other institutions. Second, we are not able to determine causality. For example, the finding that the gender dyad of the advisor and student plays a role could stem from a variety of causes, such as matching, undervaluation of the research skills of women by male advisors, the amount of energy and effort faculty invest in students or a tendency of women to apply to work under less productive male advisors. They could also arise by gender bias in response to student applications [ 36 ]. Third, our measure of team size of the student is biased downward since it does not include postdoctoral researchers who are members of the team but supported on fellowships or other sources of funds rather than grants. Fourth, we only attribute publications to a student if they are coauthored with the dissertation advisor; sole-authored papers or the small number of papers co-authored with other students or faculty who are not the advisors are excluded. Finally, we only use one measure of research productivity—publications. Richer measures, such as job placements and career trajectories are currently being developed.

Our results regarding gender pairing between advisor and advisee bear further research as to why a premium exists for males writing with females and a penalty exists for women writing with men. While we cannot determine causality, the finding raises a cautionary flag to advisors, students and administrators alike and is consistent with recent research showing that gender plays a role in the way in which faculty evaluate students [ 22 ] and respond to student inquiries [ 36 ]. We hope that other researchers will take up the issue of gender differences among doctoral students, as UMETRICS data, which include an increasing number of research institutions and links to Census data, become available to the research community through the new Institute for Research on Innovation and Science and through Census Research Data Centers.

Supporting Information

Table A in S1 File: Distribution of the study sample by year of thesis defense

Table B in S1 File: Distribution of Ph.D. students and advisors by the discipline of the thesis

Table C in S1 File: Average publication productivity of advisor smoothed over 3 years by discipline

Table D in S1 File: Alternative measures of publication productivity of the focal PhD student

Table E in S1 File: Publication productivity and average 5-year Impact Factor (IF) smoothed over 3 years by discipline

Table F in S1 File: Panel of five tables providing information on study sample of PhD students by gender of the student and gender of the advisor

Table G in S1 File: OLS robustness check of gender effects when output is measured as average Impact Factor (avg_IF) of journals in which focal student publishes.

Figure A in S1 File: Team definition

Table H in S1 File: Average share of female team members

Table I in S1 File: Average share of female team members by discipline

Table J in S1 File: Average number of PhD, Postdoc, and staff scientist within the team by gender

Table K in S1 File: Regression Results for Ph.D. productivity, focus on team characteristics

Table L in S1 File: Robustness check of the econometric exercise; alternative measures of dependent variable.

Table M in S1 File: Robustness check of the econometric exercise using Poisson estimates

Table N in S1 File: OLS robustness check of control for advisor “quality”

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146.s001

Acknowledgments

We thank Christina Jones and David Mayo for help with data issues. Megan McGarvey, Kaye Husbands Fealing and Cornelia Lawson made useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We acknowledge support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and NSF Education and Human Resources Award 1348691.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MP JM PS. Analyzed the data: MP JM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MP JL. Wrote the paper: JL PS.

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