New study: "Our results show that Chinese PhD student significant pressures to publish in order to obtain their degree, with papers indexed in the Science Citation Index [#SCI] often a mandatory requirement for students to obtain their degree. Moreover, it is found that first authorship is also mandatory." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04854-8
@petersuber@academicchatter my doctoral program here in Toronto had a explicit expectation to publish as a major component of getting the degree and it seems to me that this is fairly common at least across STEM PhDs?
@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter when I was in charge of doctoral training a few years ago, I discovered it was the case in biology but rarely so in other disciplines. I hope things have changed.
@Thcoudreau@petersuber@academicchatter Not where I could see it. I think it is brilliant to teach the skills of publishing to young scientists - but to make their PhD dependent on the successful evaluation process by a journal is something I find unacceptable. The university should evaluate the work, not the successful completion of someone else's evaluation.
@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter I think the reasoning was to have an external "impartial" evaluation. I very much agree that it is the university's job to evaluate for a degree.
@Thcoudreau@petersuber@academicchatter If that was indeed the reason, then this would mean IMHO that the university gives up its most precious foundation of existence. If some unknown guys taking money for reviewing papers at a predatory publisher have more influence on a PhD evaluation than the university's own committees, then we surely have a problem, don't we? Why not then let the student pay thousands to mdpi for having his/her PhD evaluated altogether?
@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter It was a time when predatory publishing was not as common as it is now and all the current reflexions regarding publications (quality of peer review, open access…) were far from being prevalent. Peer reviewing meant external, international and quality evaluation.
@Thcoudreau@petersuber@academicchatter Indeed, and I was myself proud when Uppsala University allowed me to defend my PhD which included a published paper in a major journal (ecography), back in 1986. But the committee evaluated the science, and the published paper was a means to show that my supervisor and I knew how to navigate the process.
@Thcoudreau@wolfgangcramer@academicchatter@petersuber Not sure whether it is a general rule, but my impression of PhD in the scandinavian countries was: collect at least three published (or accepted) (to 5) papers and write a synopsis. First authorship or significant contribution is mandatory…. Not so far from the chinese approach, not?
@kraweel65@Thcoudreau@academicchatter@petersuber That's more or less what my friends and I did back then, but back then the "accepted" status was not the crucial part (and also there were not the kind of crap publishers we have today). The idea was to show that you can undertake and complete scientific work...
@wolfgangcramer@kraweel65@academicchatter@petersuber I believe the issue here is that published/accepted papers have somehow lost their meaning with all the recent news showing how (a) the system can be gamed or profited from and (b) all this paper inflation is becoming more and more unsustainable.
Rules may have a meaning at some point but must be changed when the context changes (which is difficult for any organization).
@Thcoudreau@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter I can confirm that in Portugal things have NOT changed for biologists. PhD students are mandated to have at least one scientific article published. Most supervisors enforce this rule. And even if they don't, the student is penalized when defending its thesis, regardless of the work or content of the thesis.
@koen_hufkens@mrbig@Thcoudreau@petersuber@academicchatter There also is the editorial aspect: I cannot prove the exact case, but I am pretty certain that the same people insisting on those rules also routinely turn down our review requests for submitted papers, saying they are "too busy" (many don't even reply). And the students, understandably, ask us to rapidly publish the paper. Who then, in the mind of those university folks, is reviewing the papers submitted by their students?
@mrbig@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter
I keep a very vivid memory of a person in charge of a large administrative institution who talked about the "leaves", i.e. the persons who do the actual administrative work (by contrast with the branches and the trunk). It is very difficult for an institution to change how these individuals work: likewise, it would take a strong institutional push to change how PhDs are evaluated.
@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter PhD students do not write "alone". They are trained by their supervisor in communicating their results to broad audience of peers over the course of their doctoral studies. Peer-reviewed articles are an excellent way of doing so. Alternatively, they can publish reviews or monograph. I really don't see the issue.
@aronza@petersuber@academicchatter ...then you probably did not read the thread higher up. The point is that academic writing is an important skill and should be taught. But the capacity to wait for reviews of a paper (or to effectively pay heavy for reviewing by a predatory publisher) should not be a criterion for a PhD.
@wolfgangcramer@petersuber@academicchatter Probably we are talking about extremes. There is obvious risk in research: it happens that despite valiant efforts one ends up with few items that are worthy of publishing. I agree that the promise of positive results should never be a criterion for PhD (heck, they are not a criterion for funding!). However, I've also seen many self-congratulatory (functionally incomplete) degrees being thrown around. A golden middle, maybe?
@aronza@petersuber@academicchatter No, Alberto, this exchange was not questioning the need to publish results from a PhD at all - it was about the fact that universities effectively do not evaluate the science, they evaluate the capacity of getting papers through journal review processes.
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