I'm in my first year of the phd. I've planned some studies and will be collecting data for it, and I already have in mind the kind of journals that it could be published in. Their quality is average - to - low average. I want to do better than that but I don't feel I have the skill yet to accomplish it alone, given that I am a new phd student. But I feel 100% that I could accomplish it with some support. Is it normal in the 1st year that I should expect my supervisor to support me to do better than I could do alone / without support? I mean in terms of planning studies that could be submitted to high quality journals........

I guess it depends on the field and phd. Mine is psychology and I'm taking the alternative thesis route, so my thesis should consist of a set of papers. We are expected to have submitted for the first publication in the first year. Any advice on my actual question? :)

OK, I am getting support then if that is what is the norm. I just thought there might be more at the beginning in terms of the actual conceptualization of the studies. To help bring it up to that higher level (I can see that it could be better but I think I lack the experience to get it there - so that kind of support in the form of advice is what I mean).

I have just had my second article accepted for publication and I am 1 year and 3 months in. I had a lot of help from my co-supervisor but very little from my main. Don't think that is normal though, appears I am just unlucky with my primary and very lucky with my secondary. I guess it also depends on your discipline. Both mine were literature reviews in accordance with the two main questions of my PhD research- one article was average quality, the second was quite good, expect to get much better as your PhD progresses. I am working on the third now and can feel my writing is constantly improving.
Edit: The support I received involved simultaneously conducting the search and article quality assessment to form an agreement statistic and minor edits and suggestions to improve the written layout.

The only way for you to know is by trying this out. Your supervisor might be a nice person and may provide with feedback on the quality of the paper, point out errors and suggest improvements. If you say that this is expected of someone in your field, then the supervisor should also expect to get this kind of request.

I presented a paper at a conference in my first year which got provisionally accepted as a chapter in a book (Now waiting for the approval of the publisher). I did not ask for any help from him and did not even tell him that I was doing this because the paper is not directly related to my research question and he is not an expert in the area of the paper (My thesis covers two topics and he is an expert in one only). He also has not shown a lot of interest in my personal or professional life and has been extremely slow when giving me feedback on my work. So I did not think it would be reasonable for me to ask him for his opinion and I was not ready to wait a month or two to get his feedback.

The amount of support you receive depends on the type of supervisor you have. If you have a hands off/absent supervisor, you could perhaps expect extremely little. If you have a more involved supervisor, you can perhaps expect someone who could go over your main thesis aims/concept, experimental design and suggest areas of improvement, bearing in mind that you have to suggest the ideas first. If you have a hands off supervisor, I do suggest you look for a mentor who can give you close guidance ASAP as going solo is an extremely painful and time-consuming process. Good luck!