Publish or Perish - Will publishing in Nature or Science make your career? (Feb/19/2009 )

The questions below have been on my mind for a long time and I would be very interested to know what you guys think.

Publishing is a very important aspect of our careers, and some journals (like Nature and Science) have higher profiles than others.

Do you think that it's important to publish in high-profile journals while in graduate school?
Does publishing in journals like Nature or Science mean that you have "made it"?
Does not publishing there mean that your science/research is not important or innovative enough?
At what point during a career does publishing in this sort of journal become important?

What's your opinion?

1. The number of papers you published tells how productive you are, although sometimes no paper just means you have bad luck.
2. The name of the journals where your papers appear is not critical. You know the guy who won his Nobel prize for inventing PCR did not publish in SCN--his paper was rejected by nature and science.

Hey

Like they say, you need to open yr mouth in the end.

SO papers are important only to get an interview call in whatever field you look forward to make yr career in, then you got to show them wht you are and that by no means can any paper provide.....you need to know yr stuff and know it well.

But yeah having papers and good pedigree surely helps....but cannot gurantee anything if the means you choose are Fair. And if you are good you would never ever go the "not fair" way.

TC

I am a bit confused about this.

What we do and where we publish so much depends on the decision of the supervisor and we are judged after that.

I think this depends on the field you are working in;

some fields are (at the moment) popular with science or nature, but I am quite sure they will not publish e.g. a fine taxonomic work unless it inclueds some "where does life come from" discussion, a full genome seqence or some kind of exciting Horizontal gene transfere from one group to another.....

So I think it is important to publisch good papers in the right journals for your field of research, this will help your career more than something in science or nature......especially as for young researchers papers in "normal" journals will more likely be seen as your work....
although I would not say no to such a publication but still working in a field where this is not very likely to happen....

on top of what has already been said, it is exceedingly rare for a graduate student to publish in science or nature. most articles are by established investigators. and, while it would be quite a coup for a student to publish there, not publishing in them should not have any effect on a students future. that will be determined by the quality of the work which has been published.

I agree that is more important to publish good work in an appropriate journal rather than trying to aim for high-profile journal.

I have been talking to scientist around me (senior scientist, grad-students, post-docs) and there seems to be the perception that publishing in Science or Nature is an “ought to” for a good career …..it isn’t a good perception, but it’s there and that makes me wonder. I would hope that a scientist would get acknowledged for his/her work and not for their number of Science or Nature papers.

Nabi on Feb 20 2009, 12:19 AM said:

True.....
And at some point of your career you will be the supervisor. How important will it be where to publish?

Publishing in one of the CNS journals is quiet important if one wants grants to be accepted. Also now a days its getting quite important to have a big paper if you want to get a position in any university.

pcrman on Feb 19 2009, 11:50 PM said:

If you are talking about Kary Mullis, I believe the two landmark papers about PCR -- one describing how it works (using sickle cell anemia as a model I believe) and another describing the use of Taq, were both in Science, around 1985 and 1986. Maybe he had an earlier paper rejected? I disagree that the name of the journal is not important, even if it might not seem fair.