Why Is There an Emphasis on Publishing in Graduate School? (Part II)
Comments about academic publishing
This article is a continuation of the Part I discussion on academic publishing in graduate school.
4. Incorporating external feedback
The publication process includes receiving feedback from others in your field. This feedback will initially come from me.
Critical feedback is naturally difficult to accept. Fully accepting it is a learned skill.
For now, I’ll just encourage you to try to view any feedback I give as useful information, meant to teach you a nuanced writing style. Having been through the publication process many times, I can recognize common issues—things editorial reviewers (being one myself) will readily notice as well.
You will also receive feedback from the publication outlet. Whether the paper is accepted (with or without modification) is the first piece of major feedback.
The second is contained in the reviewer comments. Much more can be said about how to respond to reviewer feedback, both psychologically and practically. But briefly, the most useful perspective concerning reviewer feedback is to assume it’s valuable information.
Admittedly, there is a spectrum of quality and relevance of a particular reviewer's comments, but I encourage you to nevertheless maintain this default perspective: “After I incorporate this valuable external feedback, my paper will be even better."
With continued practice at accepting feedback, you’ll one day start to eagerly seek it.
5. Presenting your research
A final reason I'll give for why research publication is a critical part of graduate school is that it leads to presentation of your work in professional venues, most notably, technical conferences.
Attending a conferences has value beyond the oft-cited “networking” aspect—when you hear about new research in your field it can be especially motivating. Often you’ll find yourself buzzing with new ideas, or it may give your research a heightened sense of relevance.
In addition, when you present your research, you move beyond the passive attendee and become part of the conference—your ideas are beginning to influence the field.
Final Thoughts
I'll end this article by briefly mentioning a few misconceptions (to be frank: wrong ideas) about publishing.
First, never confuse the true purpose of publishing with anything external. A publication is just a summary of a research result. Implicit in this is that you need to have a research result before you even think about publishing.
A fairly common issue that causes students grief and much wasted time is thinking that research is somehow done “towards” a publication.
Why are you even thinking about a “paper” when its existence depends on a research result? Focus on doing the research.
When done right, a paper is practically an afterthought to research. You’re just documenting what was already done.
Another skill to learn is knowing when to stop doing research so you (only) work on publishing it. The basic rule is: as soon as you have a distinct research result, e.g., you've done a set of studies and have plots that demonstrate something, STOP.
Write an outline. Then, just succinctly describe why the problem is important, the model, and precisely how you validated it.
That is all there is to writing a research paper.
Whatever you do, don’t try to continue in a quest to obtain more or “better” results. Any paper can be refined further; there is no end to it! If it’s a distinct publishable result, publish it. You can always extend the idea—in a separate publication.
A final item I'll mention is, don't make the mistake of thinking that the number of publications you have is more important that their quality or impact. I can give numerous examples of people who became famous because of a single paper. Focus only on producing high quality publications, and let the number take care of itself.