I agree that you should be judged on the basis of the quality of your PhD, but no one is going to read your thesis from cover to cover when applying to an academic/industry job (let alone if they have 100 candidates!). So they go for things like published articles instead (which I don't find fair).

To be honest, I'm not bothered about publications. If I do manage to get one, I will be pleased but as I'm not planning to stay in academia, it shouldn't be an issue for me.

i want at least one major pub per year of phd :)

is anyone thinking of trying to get a book out of their PhD? and if so, are you trying to get papers out of it as well?

The only thing I've published is an international conference paper, and I'm 18 months in. I don't think you have to worry too much about 'agghhh! I'm 2 months in and I've only published 3 papers!' I don't think it's such a rush.

However, if you publish stuff then your external examiner can't really argue with it at your viva, because it's already been peer-reviewed.

yeah, nothing like a rigourous reviewer to tell you how s**t your work is :D

From discussions with academics, the general consensus appears to be that it is far better, during your PhD, to have one paper in Science compared to twenty in something like the Tajikistani Journal of Complementary Medicine.

I know this is an exaggeration, but you get what I mean.

All good valid points. I only asked as my supervisor said that in academia your publications are your currency, which does make sense.

A further point would be that in some fields it is more difficult to publish than in others. I have read recently that in the Social Sciences 70% of the articles sent for publications are rejected, whereas that happens only to 15% of the articles in Astrology (don't know if that's exact).

Hmm, I think that it doesnt matter if you dont publish in your PhD, it shouldnt affect whether you get one or not. It does help, and it will help your career a bit, but a lot is down to luck, supervisor, project etc etc. I think people usually understand that you were learning, and that the quality of your work is usually more a reflection of your super rather than you (to some extent). As someone told me, one paper in nature and everyone looks at it as the supervisors paper. Two papers and then they start to thing there is perhaps something special about the student.

After all you may be taking over a project that is half way done, or something that no matter the result you can publish. In that case you may get a number of publications. Others may be starting from scratch, or spend half the time reading and putting together a proposal. Things may not work etc etc. They may have few or no publications.

So I wouldnt get too pent up on publications (though still aim for them). Worry if you have very few by the end of your first post doc (then time is against you).

Probably because Astrologists can 'see' that they're going to be accepted before they submit. Lol, do you mea Astronomy?

As others have said, I wouldn't worry about it too much. So far I've had no published papers but have had 5 or 6 conference papers/posters. I found this much more useful as it made me think about the audiences I was projecting to and how this would affect my final write-up.

Sometimes it's not just about the subject in question, but the way you organise your thesis. A friend or mine did a clinically relevant PhD and was able to publish about 3 of her chapters before submitting. This was because the were separate studies that could be written up separately.

However a PhD that utilises qualitative methodology is not so easy as there is often a conceptual thread that runs throughout the work whcih is not easily splintered into several papers.

@Bobby: sure I was meaning Astronomy I always get them confused... perhaps I shouldn't be doing a PhD after all.

Social science is very difficult to publish in and the articles tend to be longer than in some field (usually around 10,000 words depending on the journal). You're expected to have something published by the time you finish your PhD, but at the moment even one publication is considered a bonus