Research Question

[crying]

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Is it terrible if after working in a lab for ~15 months I have no publications? I think my name was on a grant proposal because of some preliminary research but that's it...

 

[jesse120]

no, the large majority of applicants do not have publications. It looks great if you have one, but it's not going to hurt you if you don't.

 

[GellaBella]

Research takes a long time. Some times people get lucky and get a publication out of it, most of the time it takes much longer. It's the experience that is going to count

 

[kryptonian]

Is it terrible if after working in a lab for ~15 months I have no publications? I think my name was on a grant proposal because of some preliminary research but that's it...

I think it's more about whether you can speak intelligently about what you do. Think about two scenarios. Person A joins a lab at late stage of a big project when it is about to be published, worked on it for about a month, and get his/her name on the paper. Person B joins a lab and works on a project since the very beginning for 3 years. Because the project takes a long time to publish, he/she still doesn't have anything after 3 years. When it comes to interview, do you think person A or person B can speak intelligently about what he/she does although A has pub while B doesn't ?

It needs serendipity to have publication, with factors such as PI's productivity, PI's easiness on whom to be named on the paper, stage of the project, etc. Adcom must know it.

 

[Benedictus123]

No. Undergraduates almost never have control over whether or not their work gets published. Some luck into a project that's almost done or working really well (like, every experiment is useful), and get a bunch of papers quickly. Others fall into projects that just go on and on as your mentor lurches from one failed experiment to the next. Don't sweat it. Many undergrads never get publications, and the ones who do are usually 2nd-to-beyond authors. It's a rare one that nabs a first author (of course this being SDN I await the 3 posts below me trumpeting their first author Nature papers they wrote while volunteering as an EMT for 400 hours and getting a 43S on the MCAT).

I worked on a project for three years before I got it into press as a first author. I've had others that only take months to get the work done. Science isn't like the canned labs you have in freshman chemistry or physics, where the experiments almost always work and everyone already knows what the answer is supposed to be. It's not the gee-whiz pop stuff that people like to scream about on the internet or facebook, talking about how awesome and cool science is and boy oh boy let's read Brian Greene or Steve Hawking but not actually do any work. Science is hard. It's hard. You'll fail 50 times before you have one good experiment sometimes. Other times it's like Christmas and every week you have good results. But either way, it's hard and usually not fun. Maybe I'm coming off as jaded, but as someone who's actually a scientist, I think I'm being realistic. I love the stuff besides all that and I get up every morning to do it, but it's hard.

 

[basedbear]

In my opinion, even if it is not possible to get a publication, your own self-initiative should allow you to get in an abstract or poster somewhere at the very least.

 

[Cinclus]

Undergrad and grad research combined, I had about 3.5 years of research completed when I applied. I unfortunately have no pubs to show for it, but I did write a master's thesis, and I was able to talk a lot about my work during interviews. Nobody brought up the fact that nothing was published.

 

[Bangersandmash]

No. Undergraduates almost never have control over whether or not their work gets published. Some luck into a project that's almost done or working really well (like, every experiment is useful), and get a bunch of papers quickly. Others fall into projects that just go on and on as your mentor lurches from one failed experiment to the next. Don't sweat it. Many undergrads never get publications, and the ones who do are usually 2nd-to-beyond authors. It's a rare one that nabs a first author (of course this being SDN I await the 3 posts below me trumpeting their first author Nature papers they wrote while volunteering as an EMT for 400 hours and getting a 43S on the MCAT).

You're close, but I got a 44T (I purposely missed a question so they didn't think I cheated) and my first author pub was in the New England Journal of Medicine, not Nature.

 

[Benedictus123]

You're close, but I got a 44T (I purposely missed a question so they didn't think I cheated) and my first author pub was in the New England Journal of Medicine, not Nature.

See, I'm pretty new to this forum and I can already predict this stuff. Nice work on the NEJM paper though, that's quite an achievement.

 

[487806]

Yay, just what I need. A couple of gunner premeds who are boasting themselves of getting high MCATs and publishing.


OP, don't worry about. Experiences count.

 

[Bangersandmash]

See, I'm pretty new to this forum and I can already predict this stuff. Nice work on the NEJM paper though, that's quite an achievement.

Thank you! It was a lot of work, but a good 2 months in the lab got me everything I needed. I hope the other paper I submitted gets accepted soon.

 

[MDforMee]

I'm just going to leave this here...

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=952499

 

[911 Turbo]

most undergrads don't have pubs. that said I'm pretty sure that making first author is very nice.

not sure where attaining second author or third author stand.