Job Market and Pubs

[PhD_Throwaway]

Received great advice when I posted here before.

Am a 2nd year doctoral student (focus in neuropsych and imaging, if that's relevant to pub expectations--not sure). Have a decent CV at the moment (9 pubs, 3 first-author), but it's almost entirely from stuff I did between college and grad school. Most of my projects in grad school have been dead ends with null or barely-interesting findings or a sample size too small to say anything conclusive. I'm working on a paper now, but I'm not convinced it'll be publishable, and it's certainly not going to set the world on fire.

I was initially shooting for a faculty or AMC career, but I'm getting increasingly concerned as project after project fails to work out. My advisor just told me to "publish as much as possible" when I asked for a reality check--so I'm reaching out to the pros here. The only paper I've been able to find was Peterson et al., 2014, which indicated that I'm probably fine, but the mean # of publications (14) doesn't line up well with what I'm seeing in new faculty CVs. Are my expectations completely out of whack? Should I start assuming I'm destined for a non-research career?

(I'm planning to submit a F31 by the end of my third year, fwiw.)

I'm also starting to reconsider my career plans: although my depression is much better-controlled now than it was when I made my first post, and I'm working solid 8-12 hour days, I'm still not able to put in the kinds of hours that I've been led to believe are necessary for success in the research world. What gives?

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[AcceptingUncertainty]

How about systematic reviews? I also think generalists will appreciate practice papers telling folks how best to approach CBT for patients with TBIs, etc.

 

[beantownpsych]

I'm spent my career at AMCs I think you are over thinking things. If you are a second year, then much of your grad school experience has been during COVID. This will be taken into account particularly for things like neuroimaging research that has basically come to a standstill at most major institutions. Yes, you will need some publications during grad school, but your CV is already quite strong. Is your major professor not publishing at all? Do you have opportunities to co-author? 0 pubs during grad school would be a red flag for most AMCs I imagine. But it's not like we are expecting a ton. Submitting an F is also a really good idea.

The most traditional path I've seen to work at an AMC is internship at an AMC ---> staying on at said AMC through a T, F, or PI grant-funded postdoc --> getting own grant (K, but perhaps more encouraged now, an R w/ other support coming from co-I work) and transitioning to faculty. Grants matter more than pubs when thinking about (research) faculty positions at an AMC. I have also been majorly involved with internship training at multiple AMCs. Typically there is a wide range in # of pubs for competitive (ranked) internship applicants. In recent years that's been in between 5 and 39. Many times the people with the really high pubs numbers (>25) aren't ranked very highly because of very low clinical hours/concerns they can actually see pts during a clinical year. You need both pubs and clinical experience to be competitive at the top AMCs.

I know next to nothing (at least personally) about R1s so I will let someone else weigh in on university positions.

All this being said, if you are very concerned about pubs, there is a wealth of publicly available datasets.....

 

[PhD_Throwaway]

I'm spent my career at AMCs I think you are over thinking things. If you are a second year, then much of your grad school experience has been during COVID. This will be taken into account particularly for things like neuroimaging research that has basically come to a standstill at most major institutions. Yes, you will need some publications during grad school, but your CV is already quite strong. Is your major professor not publishing at all? Do you have opportunities to co-author? 0 pubs during grad school would be a red flag for most AMCs I imagine. But it's not like we are expecting a ton. Submitting an F is also a really good idea.

The most traditional path I've seen to work at an AMC is internship at an AMC ---> staying on at said AMC through a T, F, or PI grant-funded postdoc --> getting own grant (K, but perhaps more encouraged now, an R w/ other support coming from co-I work) and transitioning to faculty. Grants matter more than pubs when thinking about (research) faculty positions at an AMC. I have also been majorly involved with internship training at multiple AMCs. Typically there is a wide range in # of pubs for competitive (ranked) internship applicants. In recent years that's been in between 5 and 39. Many times the people with the really high pubs numbers (>25) aren't ranked very highly because of very low clinical hours/concerns they can actually see pts during a clinical year. You need both pubs and clinical experience to be competitive at the top AMCs.

I know next to nothing (at least personally) about R1s so I will let someone else weigh in on university positions.

All this being said, if you are very concerned about pubs, there is a wealth of publicly available datasets.....

Thanks a million! This is all very helpful (esp from someone who's been at an AMC).

My advisor is publishing just fine, but a lot of the low-hanging fruit in the lab archival datasets has been picked by other grad students (he has a small army), and I've mostly been "the guy who can troubleshoot the software." I'm getting a small handful of second-to-fifth authorships (when those papers are written up), but my only first is from a review, not a project. My own projects have mostly come back null or required analyses that aren't feasible with the sample size.

I work in an population that's somewhat hard to recruit and tends to produce a lot of unusable scans, and some of what I wanted to do has proved technically infeasible. I'll definitely think about those public datasets.

That said, my clinical hours aren't great at the moment either (partially because of COVID, partially because I haven't been very aggressive about taking on therapy patients), so it's good to know I'll want to work on beefing those up before internship apps.

Re: reviews, I have done one

 

[cara susanna]

Thanks a million! This is all very helpful (esp from someone who's been at an AMC).

My advisor is publishing just fine, but a lot of the low-hanging fruit in the lab archival datasets has been picked by other grad students (he has a small army), and I've mostly been "the guy who can troubleshoot the software." I'm getting a small handful of second-to-fifth authorships (when those papers are written up), but my only first is from a review, not a project. My own projects have mostly come back null or required analyses that aren't feasible with the sample size.

I work in an population that's somewhat hard to recruit and tends to produce a lot of unusable scans, and some of what I wanted to do has proved technically infeasible. I'll definitely think about those public datasets.

That said, my clinical hours aren't great at the moment either (partially because of COVID, partially because I haven't been very aggressive about taking on therapy patients), so it's good to know I'll want to work on beefing those up before internship apps.

Re: reviews, I have done one

FWIW, from my experience internship and post doc play a big role in getting a position at an AMC. I think that you have enough pubs to be competitive for a research-focused internship (I had about that number and got interviews at research-heavy AMCs and VAs). Getting an F31 would definitely help too!

 

[PhD_Throwaway]

FWIW, from my experience internship and post doc play a big role in getting a position at an AMC. I think that you have enough pubs to be competitive for a research-focused internship (I had about that number and got interviews at research-heavy AMCs and VAs). Getting an F31 would definitely help too!

Thanks for the feedback! Is there an issue with many of the pubs being prior to grad school?

 

[cara susanna]

Thanks for the feedback! Is there an issue with many of the pubs being prior to grad school?

I don't think so--it sounds like you're still being productive in grad school, even if it isn't the rate that you'd like. When I was a post doc I helped to review applications for our internship program (which was at a reputable, research-focused site) and I don't remember analyzing publications that closely.

 

[Ollie123]

At the pace it sounds like you are going, you will be fine. I think worst case scenario is you have to extend post-doc an extra 1-2 years, which is unfortunate but not the worst thing in the world. How long is your program? If in and out in 4 years that may be more likely. Research-heavy programs often keep people longer for exactly that reason. That said, if you have a choice between being a post doc making 50k and a grad student making 15k...I know what I would pick

I would think carefully about how you design upcoming projects. Get your hands on one of the many large-scale imaging sets that are now available (Human Connectome, ABCD, etc.). Rethink how you are designing studies. Any methodologically sound study should be publishable these days. Heck even with 10 people you can tack "pilot" onto the title and make it a brief report somewhere low-ranking and still have a decent shot. Some take more work and ones with null results will end up in basement-tier journals, but truly unpublishable things are rare. Whether they are worth publishing (and whether it benefits the field or just your own career) is of course a separate discussion.

My thesis was an epic failure with completely non-sensical findings. Had a large enough sample I was able to get it into a low-ranked APA journal. To help counteract this, I built SO MANY different add-ons into every study I have run since that time. If you have a dozen different projects in any one data collection effort....chances are you'll get at least a few publications out of it.

COVID makes things hard, but go to conferences and network. If they see you there, active, talking to people, doing good work finding a post-doc won't be a problem and then its just a question of time.

 

[futureapppsy2]

I graduated with 40 pubs and have 91 now, 4 years and 8 months after graduation. I’m in my second year of TT at an R1. My path is R2 PhD program to R1 postdoc to VAP at a teaching oriented school to Research Assistant Professor at an R1 to my current TT job at a different R1 (started my TT job 3 years after I got my PhD). I had a rougher time on the job market than most, something my mentor attributes to having a very visible disability (FWIW). My observations are that the expectations for publication productivity for incoming TT faculty actually aren’t as high as we might think—I’ve seen a ton of people get TT jobs at R1s with 7-12 pubs or fewer. The tenure track is really about building up your productivity, reputation, and research agenda and building a solid trajectory. No one is expecting you to come in with 20-30 publications and 1000 citations. They’re mainly just looking for evidence that you know how to publish and write grants and that you can be productive on the tenure track.

 

[WisNeuro]

Dang, 40 pubs in grad school. That is hella productive. Kudos. I was trying to get one every year or so, and that felt daunting at times

 

[jdawg2017]

FWIW - submit an F31 ASAP if you are going to do it (assuming you can get your ideas together). I would advise this coming August cycle, if possible.

Even if you are funded on your first try (which is a liberal assumption given funding lines at different institutes, reviewers being extra cranky, how much your PO wants to go to bat for you at council if you are on the bubble, etc.), it will take ~8 months between time of submission and notice of award due to the review panel and agency council timelines. If you submit end of third year, you are looking at maybe ~1.5 years of funding to do the work (assuming a 5 year pre-internship timeline), when in reality Fs can fund up to 3 years of training and work. Bad timeline and poor feasibility are two big torpedos to many F applications from what I have heard, and I was dinged on this even when I applied at the end of my first year in my PhD program.

Having more time by submitting earlier means you can also respond to reviews, even if not discussed and funded. Worst (best?) case, you are funded immediately and can start moving toward your dissertation training and work.

 

[niceman]

I graduated with 40 pubs and have 91 now, 4 years and 8 months after graduation. I’m in my second year of TT at an R1. My path is R2 PhD program to R1 postdoc to VAP at a teaching oriented school to Research Assistant Professor at an R1 to my current TT job at a different R1 (started my TT job 3 years after I got my PhD). I had a rougher time on the job market than most, something my mentor attributes to having a very visible disability (FWIW). My observations are that the expectations for publication productivity for incoming TT faculty actually aren’t as high as we might think—I’ve seen a ton of people get TT jobs at R1s with 7-12 pubs or fewer. The tenure track is really about building up your productivity, reputation, and research agenda and building a solid trajectory. No one is expecting you to come in with 20-30 publications and 1000 citations. They’re mainly just looking for evidence that you know how to publish and write grants and that you can be productive on the tenure track.

That's so impressive, and I'm glad you found a place that appreciates the work you do. Your experience supports what my colleagues and I (with multiple minority identities) have experienced in the field, which is less progressive than some other specialties in terms of DEI to the point that none of us stay/want to stay.

 

[nessa34]

I'm spent my career at AMCs I think you are over thinking things. If you are a second year, then much of your grad school experience has been during COVID. This will be taken into account particularly for things like neuroimaging research that has basically come to a standstill at most major institutions. Yes, you will need some publications during grad school, but your CV is already quite strong. Is your major professor not publishing at all? Do you have opportunities to co-author? 0 pubs during grad school would be a red flag for most AMCs I imagine. But it's not like we are expecting a ton. Submitting an F is also a really good idea.

The most traditional path I've seen to work at an AMC is internship at an AMC ---> staying on at said AMC through a T, F, or PI grant-funded postdoc --> getting own grant (K, but perhaps more encouraged now, an R w/ other support coming from co-I work) and transitioning to faculty. Grants matter more than pubs when thinking about (research) faculty positions at an AMC. I have also been majorly involved with internship training at multiple AMCs. Typically there is a wide range in # of pubs for competitive (ranked) internship applicants. In recent years that's been in between 5 and 39. Many times the people with the really high pubs numbers (>25) aren't ranked very highly because of very low clinical hours/concerns they can actually see pts during a clinical year. You need both pubs and clinical experience to be competitive at the top AMCs.

I know next to nothing (at least personally) about R1s so I will let someone else weigh in on university positions.

All this being said, if you are very concerned about pubs, there is a wealth of publicly available datasets.....

agree with all of this. I had a productive RAship prior to grad school but my lab in grad school was very slow to publish (was also an imaging lab + advanced methods that took awhile to master + just slow to get papers out). I applied for internship with NO pubs from grad school - I had one with an R&R at a prestigious journal, which I noted on my CV, but none actually accepted. I didn't have a ton of clinical hours either, and I did get fewer internship interviews than expected, but matched at my top site which was a very research focused place. I focused on getting papers out during postdoc and was able to get a K funded without a delay relative to others at my career stage. I worried SO MUCH about my low productivity in grad school, but with some strategic choices it ended up not derailing anything. Agree on the advice about finding something publishable and applying for an F31, but keep in mind that productivity in grad school is not the whole world - this is especially true given effects of COVID right now.

 

[Justanothergrad]

You're early in training, relax and just focus on publishing now within what you want to do.

I graduated with 40 pubs and have 91 now, 4 years and 8 months after graduation. I’m in my second year of TT at an R1. My path is R2 PhD program to R1 postdoc to VAP at a teaching oriented school to Research Assistant Professor at an R1 to my current TT job at a different R1 (started my TT job 3 years after I got my PhD). I had a rougher time on the job market than most, something my mentor attributes to having a very visible disability (FWIW). My observations are that the expectations for publication productivity for incoming TT faculty actually aren’t as high as we might think—I’ve seen a ton of people get TT jobs at R1s with 7-12 pubs or fewer. The tenure track is really about building up your productivity, reputation, and research agenda and building a solid trajectory. No one is expecting you to come in with 20-30 publications and 1000 citations. They’re mainly just looking for evidence that you know how to publish and write grants and that you can be productive on the tenure track.

I mean, to be fair - you're a beast ;p

 

[DynamicDidactic]

My path is R2 PhD program to R1 postdoc to VAP at a teaching oriented school to Research Assistant Professor at an R1 to my current TT job at a different R1 (started my TT job 3 years after I got my PhD).

To the OP, this is a nice reminder that your first job doesn't have to be your last job.

 

[futureapppsy2]

To the OP, this is a nice reminder that your first job doesn't have to be your last job.

No. My experiences with ableism on the job market were beyond awful. The only "nice" thing about what I went through was where I ended up (and I do love my current job). The reminder is not to be disabled, so you won't have to have a better CV than many tenured faculty to get a TT job.

 

[ccool]

No. My experiences with ableism on the job market were beyond awful. The only "nice" thing about what I went through was where I ended up (and I do love my current job). The reminder is not to be disabled, so you won't have to have a better CV than many tenured faculty to get a TT job.

Thank you for reminding everyone who is reading and will read this thread that academia is not some magic land that is exempt from enacting and propagating institutional and systemic violence... nor that those who comprise it is are above reiterating that violence on an interpersonal level.

Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your labor.

edit: I wrote “t h a n k you” but when I just scrolled back to review it, it reads “bless you.” I don’t know why that’s the case or if it reads as “bless you” for others but I want to explicitly clarify that I wrote and mean “t h a n k you.”
Edit 2: hmm curious. “t h a n k you” only remains as t h a n k you and not converts to “bless you” with spaces. Are others having this experience??

 

[DynamicDidactic]

No. My experiences with ableism on the job market were beyond awful. The only "nice" thing about what I went through was where I ended up (and I do love my current job). The reminder is not to be disabled, so you won't have to have a better CV than many tenured faculty to get a TT job.

I did not mean to minimize your experiences. Simply highlighting that part of what you said.