Hi all,

I'm a second-year humanities PhD without any publications yet apart from a book review in a respectable journal. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on getting published before the PhD is over but I'm never really sure if that's more for sciences or humanities or maybe both. Other students in my department have had stuff handed to them from their supervisors which makes me quite jealous to be honest, though that stuff isn't peer-reviewed...it does make their academia.edu profiles look way more impressive though!

I study historical material, and have some stuff that is interesting but probably won't end up in my thesis for reasons of scope. The material could make for a good journal article but I'm hesitant because I know that it would take a *lot* of work to get a high-quality article written, and my supervisor would probably be discouraging only because she wants me to focus my energy on getting my thesis done. For those wondering, I don't want to publish stuff from my thesis because it'll severely reduce the chances of a book deal and quite a few PhDs in my small field do manage to get book deals.

Is it worth putting in the time and effort or should I leave it until I'm done drafting my thesis next year? I would probably aim to write 6-7000 words inc footnotes. I thought it could be a productive distraction from the PhD work sometimes...but I'd be worried to talk to my supervisor about it, and if she isn't encouraging, possibly trying to it on my own (I would almost certainly need her feedback!)

Thanks for your help.

Hi Nesrine

I'm also Humanities and have published a few pieces during my PhD. With the exception of one journal article that was a polished up version of my MA diss', they've mostly been related to my thesis. In my area it's not necessarily a problem to incorporate previously published material in a monograph (provided its reworked and acknowledged).

To be honest, you seem to have the right idea about this. Publications look great on a C.V. and may make some difference in a competitive job market, but they involve a lot of additional work. Even if the material you submit is strong, you'll still have to devote some time to responding to peer review. Having support from your supervisor will probably make that easier.

One thing to bear in mind may be stage of the REF-cycle you're planning to enter the job market at. Having some existing publications may make you more attractive to institutions looking to boost their submissions (particularly smaller universities) but larger universities may not be too concerned (they'll probably have a stable of academics with strong monograph entries ready to go).

Hope that helps a wee bit - as I say, it sounds like you've thought this through quite thoroughly already, so it probably is down to your workload.

Mark

Publish or perish...

Well that's made the choice clear I suppose! :P

Thanks for your advice, Mark. As you say, I guess it's down to workload. I think I'll try to write a very rough draft before telling my supervisor about it so at least I can say "look, I've done something...and it could actually be good!" before she has the chance to dismiss me.

As a side-question, I'd be interested to know how forumites (esp current students) go about writing papers - dedicating a big chunk of time, only once or twice a week, or even a little bit every day?

I think you should seriously considering trying to get at least one journal paper under your belt before your PhD finishes. In humanities peer-reviewed journal papers are much more essential for academic job purposes than e.g. conference papers are in sciences. If you want to work as a post doc, or lecturer, or research fellow, you need publications. And they could give you the advantage over other job candidates.

I published two papers during my part-time history PhD. I was studying typically only 5 hours a week total for nearly 6 years. This was because of severely disabling progressive neurological disease. But I wrote two papers in that time as well as did my PhD, got them peer reviewed and published. And it's not really that time consuming, if you do it effectively.

If you already have material that could go into a paper - whether it be from your thesis, or side stuff as you've suggested - then it shouldn't in my experience take that long to write up. The key things are to contextualise it, to introduce the relevant context and background, and historiography. And the other key bit is to stress the "so what" as my supervisor always used to say, i.e. what's important about it.

Picking your journal to aim for is also important. It is very common to have a paper rejected and you then try elsewhere, sometimes multiple times. But that process can be trimmed by choosing your target journal carefully. Your supervisor should be able to advise.

This process will also be a good learning process for you, for future journal papers. And the experience may also feed back into your PhD directly, helping to make you a more efficient researcher and writer.

So go for it basically. Good luck!

Do you mean conference papers? - I tend to leave myself sufficient time before the event to plan and write them. They're usually derived from whatever I'm currently working on, so it's not a major detour. A 2-2.5k paper typically takes me a day or so of writing, depending on how much of it draws directly from existing work.

Publishable pieces take longer, but, again, I tend to dedicate blocks of time to them - usually between PhD chapters, etc.

I was talking about publishable papers but the info about conference papers was useful too!

Bilbo, thanks for the advice as well. I think I might try to brainstorm a few article ideas over the next few months and then start drafting in between chapters, as Mark said - that way, hopefully I'll be in the writing frame of mind and getting an article together shouldn't be as difficult as it seems right now. The whole thing really stresses me out but I guess everyone's in the same boat.

Think you've approached the issue very thoughtfully. I don't think it's vital to get published, just useful if you can. Personally I find it useful to switch between projects, but not everyone does.

Thanks Doc. I've also decided in the meantime to give publishing my MA thesis one more go. I did it 5 years ago now and it's not really related to my current work (same field but it's a wide field) but it got a really good grade. I've had it rejected a few times from journals so I guess I just need to be persistent and tailor it more towards a specific journal.

Can you chat to your MA thesis supervisor about it? Mine was a big help when it came to selecting and re-framing a chapter of mine.

It's unlikely seeing as it was quite a few years ago now, and she strongly implied in emails exchanged after I finished the course that she wasn't that keen on maintaining correspondence with me...her specific field of study is very different from what I was doing in the thesis but there was a little overlap. To be honest, I wrote the whole thing without any feedback from her whatsoever. I know a couple of academics who will hopefully be willing to give feedback.