Why Is There an Emphasis on Publishing in Graduate School? (Part II)
Comments about academic publishing
3. High-level technical communication
Technical communication of your research includes not only written publications for an expert audience, but presenting it in a professional venue (see item 5).
Regarding the representation of technical information, there are ways of presenting it that are more “accepted” by some professional audiences. I realize these judgements are subjective, and may even seem absurd or “just require more work” at times—but there is a real social phenomenon going on, and it’s necessary to properly understand the social milieu of this high-level “game” you’ve embarked on.
As an example, you probably already know that within the academic technical community, papers are somehow “better received” in camera-ready (i.e., LaTeX generated) documents. Why is that? There is simply no better tool for enforcing consistency of mathematical symbols (fonts, size, kerning, etc.), specialized packages for creating network diagrams, figures, etc. Documents generated with WYSIWYG software look amateurish in comparison. The same can be said about plots, e.g., a paper with graphs or bar charts imported from Excel make a paper look like a high school book report. Subjective, I know. But if you regard scientific communication as a refined skill and craft—you’ll appreciate that a high degree of attention to detail is what’s demanded for excellence.
In addition, our field (as with any organized field of study) has its own vernacular and accepted ways of expressing concepts. Here again, this can initially pose a hurdle when seeking to publish a first research article; it’s like learning a new language (or at least, a new syntax). A useful perspective on this is that it’s a phenomenon that happens naturally and can be understood in a systems and information-theoretic sense: emergent coding systems evolve to allow efficient disambiguation (e.g., through consistent symbol usage), precision (consistent semantics, accepted definitions) and high information density (information compression).
As with any language, it’s acquired over time with consistent, repeated exposure. (Note: you start this process during your literature review your first semester.) With time and experience, you will start to pick it up. Eventually, you’ll start to express ideas (even in your head) according to the new technical “voice” you’ve acquired.
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 (see anecdote above); fully accepting it is a learned skill. For now, I’d just encourage you to try to view any feedback I give as useful information, meant to teach you a very nuanced writing style. Having been through the publication process many times before, I can recognize common problems—things editorial reviewers (myself being one of them) 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. When you start to 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 (let’s be frank: wrong ideas) about publishing.
First, never confuse the true purpose of publishing described above with anything external. A publication is just a concise summary of a research result. Implicit in this 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 thinking about a paper as an entity that already exists, when its existence depends on a research result? Focus on the research! The paper just describes what you did; it’s almost an afterthought.
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're convinced that you have a distinct research result, e.g., you've done a set of studies and have plots that demonstrate something (e.g., validation of a model, a new insight, etc.), STOP. Write an outline. Then, just describe succinctly 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 scholars who were made famous because of a single paper. Focus only on producing high quality publications, and let the number take care of itself.