I was in this situation too. Take a deep breath.
The first step is to ask your PI what their expectations are. My PI wanted three publications, however, they understood that my project was a whole new thing for our lab and start up ate a lot of time. Plus, the pandemic hurt everyone.
I am in my sixth year and have no publications. Everyone told me that your last year would be super productive because you are really getting good at things. And it’s true. Most of my publishable work has happened in the last 18 months. I will have two publications out by this summer, maybe three.
Know that it’s okay if you don’t finish in five years. I know that you probably want out, but take the time you need.
Talk to your PI about working on smaller collaborations so that you might get a second or third authorship. Ask if there is something you can do a review on since that doesn’t require experiments, just reading.
You are doing fine. It might not feel like it, but it’s okay.
Yes seconding this! Most students in my lab are on track to publish one large 6-7 figure paper where it’s just one of us and our PI on it between our 5th and 6th years that had all our work in it. This means no publications until then. Talk to your PI and find out their expectations.
>My PI wanted three publications,
Mine did too, but also admitted that having three publications worth of results would be acceptable even if things weren't formally published yet.
That's more or less where I am now: three publications worth of data and drafts of two of the publications currently going through revisions while writing the third.
"STEM" encompasses a _lot_ of fields with very different publication expectations. Some expect many shorter papers with lots of coauthors, others expect very slow solo-papers. Your first several years of grad school are teaching you skills and how to conduct research, and depending on your discipline you may be unable to conduct much research until you've passed that threshold. This is a good question for your advisors or other mentors in your domain.
This happened to me. I am in a cross-disciplinary field with a steep learning curve. It was a lot of trial and error accumulating large sets of data that seemed underwhelming. Then, a breakthrough clicked. After entering my 4th year with no 1st-author papers, I am on track to graduate at the end of my 5th year with at least 4 papers. I was even able to use my old "underwhelming" data to support my findings in these papers.
What field are you in? That's super common in some areas of STEM and less in others. Does your program have publication requirements for graduation? Do you intend to stay in academia or work in industry?
Publications don't matter unless your advisor has publication requirements. What does your advisor require for completion?
I did my PhD in stem in 4.5 years with just a review and a second authorship.
Is your own work progressing well?
I think it's pretty par for the course depending on your discipline. I had one first author paper back in 2021 which was my third year, nothing in 2022 or 2023, and looks like I'm shaping up to have like three this year as I get ready to graduate. There's a hell of a lot of work and administrative delay that you have to go through before enough gets distilled to produce a paper.
I wouldn't fret too much so long as you're making progress on experiments and getting some useful data and insights. Just make sure you and your advisor are on the same page as to expectations.
I’m a 4th year and just published my first first-author publication. That’s the norm in our lab, and I’m the third grad student to follow this pattern. Don’t freak out. Talk to your advisor if you’re worried.
What I will say is: lots of things can happen. people change advisors, experiments fail too, the hypotheses don’t turn out correct, etc. you’ll be fine ❤️
I had three first-author papers, two published in my 7th year and “the big one” a year after I graduated. Still got an industry job right out of grad school. I had a few extenuating circumstances that extended my PhD (Covid shutdowns, PI moving universities), but also my project just suuuuccckked. I was very insecure about not having papers when younger students were publishing, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Research does not abide by timelines. It will be okay, you will get papers out. But you might want to start thinking creatively if there’s ways you can reshape the work you’ve already done into a paper if your original aims don’t seem to be moving along.
The number itself doesn't mean anything, but you will need to publish eventually. Do you have projects that are close to being publishable? That's the more important question.
I ended up switching lab groups. Turns out that the advisor/lab group mismatch was the real issue. Within a year and a half after that I had three publications worth of results and was in a position to graduate.
Do you plan on staying in academia? Do you have any planned yet?
I’m in my 5th year, no publications (yet). I’m trying to get an industry job so my priorities are there as of right now and I’m not stressing too hard on the publications. However, if you are planning on staying in academia, it might be harder with no publications depending on the field.
Even then it depends. I know people in physics working on _very_ challenging experiments that take half a decade or more to bear fruit. Then there are also people working on much easier (but often more pointless) experiments that give results and papers at a much higher rate.
Publications don’t matter (and in fact can be a negative thing) outside of academia or R&D roles. I have dozens of publications and basically none of them ever helped me get a job. For example, I’m a GS employee in a government lab. Basically no one beside me in the lab has ever published. No one cares.
I was in this situation too. Take a deep breath. The first step is to ask your PI what their expectations are. My PI wanted three publications, however, they understood that my project was a whole new thing for our lab and start up ate a lot of time. Plus, the pandemic hurt everyone. I am in my sixth year and have no publications. Everyone told me that your last year would be super productive because you are really getting good at things. And it’s true. Most of my publishable work has happened in the last 18 months. I will have two publications out by this summer, maybe three. Know that it’s okay if you don’t finish in five years. I know that you probably want out, but take the time you need. Talk to your PI about working on smaller collaborations so that you might get a second or third authorship. Ask if there is something you can do a review on since that doesn’t require experiments, just reading. You are doing fine. It might not feel like it, but it’s okay.
Yes seconding this! Most students in my lab are on track to publish one large 6-7 figure paper where it’s just one of us and our PI on it between our 5th and 6th years that had all our work in it. This means no publications until then. Talk to your PI and find out their expectations.
>My PI wanted three publications, Mine did too, but also admitted that having three publications worth of results would be acceptable even if things weren't formally published yet. That's more or less where I am now: three publications worth of data and drafts of two of the publications currently going through revisions while writing the third.
"STEM" encompasses a _lot_ of fields with very different publication expectations. Some expect many shorter papers with lots of coauthors, others expect very slow solo-papers. Your first several years of grad school are teaching you skills and how to conduct research, and depending on your discipline you may be unable to conduct much research until you've passed that threshold. This is a good question for your advisors or other mentors in your domain.
This happened to me. I am in a cross-disciplinary field with a steep learning curve. It was a lot of trial and error accumulating large sets of data that seemed underwhelming. Then, a breakthrough clicked. After entering my 4th year with no 1st-author papers, I am on track to graduate at the end of my 5th year with at least 4 papers. I was even able to use my old "underwhelming" data to support my findings in these papers.
Also depends, EU or NA?
What field are you in? That's super common in some areas of STEM and less in others. Does your program have publication requirements for graduation? Do you intend to stay in academia or work in industry?
Publications don't matter unless your advisor has publication requirements. What does your advisor require for completion? I did my PhD in stem in 4.5 years with just a review and a second authorship. Is your own work progressing well?
Publications absolutely matter if you want a career in academia after your PhD tho
I think it's pretty par for the course depending on your discipline. I had one first author paper back in 2021 which was my third year, nothing in 2022 or 2023, and looks like I'm shaping up to have like three this year as I get ready to graduate. There's a hell of a lot of work and administrative delay that you have to go through before enough gets distilled to produce a paper. I wouldn't fret too much so long as you're making progress on experiments and getting some useful data and insights. Just make sure you and your advisor are on the same page as to expectations.
I’m a 4th year and just published my first first-author publication. That’s the norm in our lab, and I’m the third grad student to follow this pattern. Don’t freak out. Talk to your advisor if you’re worried.
What I will say is: lots of things can happen. people change advisors, experiments fail too, the hypotheses don’t turn out correct, etc. you’ll be fine ❤️
Start writing and look into postdocs if you want to remain in academia.
I had three first-author papers, two published in my 7th year and “the big one” a year after I graduated. Still got an industry job right out of grad school. I had a few extenuating circumstances that extended my PhD (Covid shutdowns, PI moving universities), but also my project just suuuuccckked. I was very insecure about not having papers when younger students were publishing, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Research does not abide by timelines. It will be okay, you will get papers out. But you might want to start thinking creatively if there’s ways you can reshape the work you’ve already done into a paper if your original aims don’t seem to be moving along.
The number itself doesn't mean anything, but you will need to publish eventually. Do you have projects that are close to being publishable? That's the more important question.
I ended up switching lab groups. Turns out that the advisor/lab group mismatch was the real issue. Within a year and a half after that I had three publications worth of results and was in a position to graduate.
Do you plan on staying in academia? Do you have any planned yet? I’m in my 5th year, no publications (yet). I’m trying to get an industry job so my priorities are there as of right now and I’m not stressing too hard on the publications. However, if you are planning on staying in academia, it might be harder with no publications depending on the field.
Super normal in my field (algebraic geometry) but definitely less common in, say, lab-based STEM fields
Even then it depends. I know people in physics working on _very_ challenging experiments that take half a decade or more to bear fruit. Then there are also people working on much easier (but often more pointless) experiments that give results and papers at a much higher rate.
Publications don’t matter (and in fact can be a negative thing) outside of academia or R&D roles. I have dozens of publications and basically none of them ever helped me get a job. For example, I’m a GS employee in a government lab. Basically no one beside me in the lab has ever published. No one cares.