Curious what you would think of this CV...

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futureapppsy2

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From the "interesting things I've seen looking at other people's CVs" pile...

New PhD graduate (straight from grad school) applying for a faculty position with 30+ peer-reviewed articles but only two are first author--does the relative lack of first author pubs raise any concerns, or does the sheer number obliterate any concerns about productivity? (Pubs are in a good, fairly-standard-but-leaning-towards-better mix of journals for the area-- some higher tier, many mid-tier, a handful lower tier).

I'm just curious to hear other people's thoughts, as this was a really interesting (and unusual?) publication record.

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Are pretty much all of the publications with their PhD advisor during the time frame of the degree? I would be somewhat concerned if so... but less wary if they had several productive years working in research before graduate school. Still, having a long research history with only two first-author papers is a bit odd.

So, yes, I find it a bit unusual that less than 10% of their publications are first author (I'd expect at least > 1/3 to be) and I would definitely be curious as to where the other 28 came from. So in my mind, assessing for a faculty position, I would want to know more.
 
I've seen things like this before. I'm not sure I'd be that thrown off, but would question their preparedness for faculty positions. Different labs have very different models of authorship, so some possibilities are:
1) Unproductive person in a super-productive lab that is very liberal with authorship
2) Extremely productive person in a lab that is very stingy with authorship
3) Statistician (this is actually a pretty common CV for even high-level stats folks if they go the applied route - unless they are developing new statistical techniques they will rarely be first-author).
4) Someone who worked for a super-productive group as a coordinator but hasn't done crap since then (know a few folks like this...still riding the coattails of a good RA job with a productive group)

Less relevant for grad students, but its also common for primary clinicians in AMCs who serve as "study therapists" or consultants across a lot of projects.

That said, those are the 4 that come to mind immediately - 2 okay, 2 not good. Its definitely not a wonderful position to be in. I think in general we go overboard worrying about ratios of publications and I prefer to see a lot of good work coming out and am less concerned about the exact balance. As long as there is evidence of contributions as an independent scholar too, I tend not to worry and just assume those folks are collaborative and have desirable skills (i.e. I'd much rather see 5 first authors and 10 middle authors vs. 8 first authors and no middle authorships...but obviously there is a whole lot of grey in this process). That is an extreme scenario though. It is important to show you can stand on your own before entering on the job market and I don't think 2 pubs would do it unless they were both in extremely heavy-hitter journals...and even then I might question it.
 
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How varied are the authors? Across labs...dept...Uni?

I'd want to know what kind of leadership, planning, grant writing, etc...as it is less clear w. that publication history.

No history of grant funding in any form from grad school; authors are all from the same (PhD program) lab group. It's not a stats consultant situation.

I think in general we go overboard worrying about ratios of publications and I prefer to see a lot of good work coming out and am less concerned about the exact balance. As long as there is evidence of contributions as an independent scholar too, I tend not to worry and just assume those folks are collaborative and have desirable skills (i.e. I'd much rather see 5 first authors and 10 middle authors vs. 8 first authors and no middle authorships...but obviously there is a whole lot of grey in this process). That is an extreme scenario though. It is important to show you can stand on your own before entering on the job market and I don't think 2 pubs would do it unless they were both in extremely heavy-hitter journals...and even then I might question it

As someone with a "weird" pub record (30 pubs, 10 first author, lots of collaborators across the country, etc), I've definitely worried about how my ratio and overall pub ratio will be viewed, but I've also realized that I like what I'm doing --I like collaborating with a variety of people and sometimes that means giving and taking with regards to authorship. That's not to say it won't come back to bite me, but I at least hope that search committees will take a long enough look to realize that I do have a solid number of first author pubs among my others.
 
From the "interesting things I've seen looking at other people's CVs" pile...

New PhD graduate (straight from grad school) applying for a faculty position with 30+ peer-reviewed articles but only two are first author--does the relative lack of first author pubs raise any concerns, or does the sheer number obliterate any concerns about productivity? (Pubs are in a good, fairly-standard-but-leaning-towards-better mix of journals for the area-- some higher tier, many mid-tier, a handful lower tier).

I'm just curious to hear other people's thoughts, as this was a really interesting (and unusual?) publication record.

Is this person's mentor about to go up for tenure or recently tenured at a heavy hitting R1? If so, that might explain it too. I've also seen similar CVs from folks in very productive labs where the mentor basically has the mindset that you won't be first author on anything until your dissertation. Usually the mentor's name will carry a good deal of credibility and other, perhaps more senior faculty, will know that this is just how it works in Dr. X's lab.
 
I've also realized that I like what I'm doing --I like collaborating with a variety of people and sometimes that means giving and taking with regards to authorship.

This is my current scenario (though I'm nowhere near 30!). The results are quality publications, but it takes much longer; I'm averaging 1-2 publications a yr. I'm in the clinical track, so this is actually pretty good. Now i'm pursuing my own grant funding, trying to make time for my own manuscripts, etc. #AcademiaProblem
 
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As someone with a "weird" pub record (30 pubs, 10 first author, lots of collaborators across the country, etc), I've definitely worried about how my ratio and overall pub ratio will be viewed, but I've also realized that I like what I'm doing --I like collaborating with a variety of people and sometimes that means giving and taking with regards to authorship. That's not to say it won't come back to bite me, but I at least hope that search committees will take a long enough look to realize that I do have a solid number of first author pubs among my others.

I'm beginning to think this may be a difference in our subfields. I just pulled the CVs of a few colleagues who were recently hired at R1 faculty positions. Most hovered around 1/3 first author pubs. Only one had >50% first author. One only had 20% as first. We typically have anywhere from 4-10 authors on papers (sometimes less, sometimes more) so if its an area that typically necessitates involvement from fewer individuals (i.e. online studies, less technical research, etc.) it might be more common to see people mostly producing first authors. It just seems very uncommon for people to have much more than that.
 
I'm beginning to think this may be a difference in our subfields. I just pulled the CVs of a few colleagues who were recently hired at R1 faculty positions. Most hovered around 1/3 first author pubs. Only one had >50% first author. One only had 20% as first. We typically have anywhere from 4-10 authors on papers (sometimes less, sometimes more) so if its an area that typically necessitates involvement from fewer individuals (i.e. online studies, less technical research, etc.) it might be more common to see people mostly producing first authors. It just seems very uncommon for people to have much more than that.

I don't think it is a subfield difference so much that most grad students tend to have relatively fewer pubs (5-10 or so, which is still a lot!) but relatively more of those are first author--it's much easier to have 3 out of 5 first author pubs than it is to have 18/30 first author pubs and thus a "better" ratio. I also do work in two areas--one like you mention where we have a lot of authors by necessity and one where we have fewer authors, so that kind of confuses things for me. Most of our interviewees for new faculty jobs, even those coming from post-docs, do seem to have ~50/50 ratios, so that raises my state anxiety a bit. But, at this point I've just figured that my pub/research record is what it is, and I don't regret it, honestly.

I think (hope) we're both probably be both fine when applying for faculty jobs, though. :) I can't imagine you having any sort of issue, Ollie, FWIW.
 
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I've seen this situation before. The lab I'm thinking of pumped out a few dozen papers each year, all worthless research that gets somehow gets published anyway. They put at least half the lab on each paper, and one of the grad students I think left with over 50 papers in less than 8 years as a PhD student. The research was such crap, you couldn't spend more than 5 minutes looking at the methods section before you just started vomiting. But the PI was considered a "leader" in her field, and my suspicion is that she suggested her own former graduate students and post-docs to be the peer reviewers, so a lot of it just got rubber-stamped for publication.
 
I've seen this situation before. The lab I'm thinking of pumped out a few dozen papers each year, all worthless research that gets somehow gets published anyway. They put at least half the lab on each paper, and one of the grad students I think left with over 50 papers in less than 8 years as a PhD student. The research was such crap, you couldn't spend more than 5 minutes looking at the methods section before you just started vomiting. But the PI was considered a "leader" in her field, and my suspicion is that she suggested her own former graduate students and post-docs to be the peer reviewers, so a lot of it just got rubber-stamped for publication.
Very interesting (and kind of disturbing and depressing, honestly). Can I ask what field?
 
It's all in the eye of the beholder and it depends what kind of Uni you are applying to work at. I echo what Ollie said earlier as the CV could be taken in a number of different ways. I'd argue that the abstract concept of "fit" matters quite significantly during these searches. Someone with more first author pubs could be easily trumped by someone with two first author pubs that are really salient to the needs of the department. Just depends.

Either way, you've frequently asked questions like this over the last few years and you've always had a high pub count relative to your peers. I think you'll be okay.
 
It's all in the eye of the beholder and it depends what kind of Uni you are applying to work at. I echo what Ollie said earlier as the CV could be taken in a number of different ways. I'd argue that the abstract concept of "fit" matters quite significantly during these searches. Someone with more first author pubs could be easily trumped by someone with two first author pubs that are really salient to the needs of the department. Just depends.

Either way, you've frequently asked questions like this over the last few years and you've always had a high pub count relative to your peers. I think you'll be okay.

This isn't my CV at all... I found it when looking up the collaborator of a collaborator and thought it seemed... unusual, so I decided to throw it out to the SDN collective--just general curiosity. :)
 
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