7 ms·
As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three. Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get ex
by throw_pm23 4y ago
As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three.
Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important.
Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine tasks of formatting or proofreading papers, aligning figures, corresponding with reviewers, editors, co-authors, etc.
- SiempreViernes 4y agoThese are mostly people that are bossing other people around, and just review the work occasionally, not actually creating whole drafts.
- psychphysic 4y agoMost won't know how or literally what to put down on a paper and who to send it to for publication. If you can independently write a paper you can supervise many more and provide valuable insight from your experience.
- ZhangSWEFAANG 4y ago[flagged]
- throw_pm23 4y agoI used to think like that as a teenager, but honestly I think it is a self-limiting philosophy. Some may find extreme industriousness attractive though. In communist countries they used to give a "Stakhanov-prize" to people who produced the most items in a week or month.
- ZhangSWEFAANG 4y ago[flagged]
- throw_pm23 4y agoAren't we all.
- cloogshicer 4y agoCan't tell if this is serious or satire. Well done.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- isoprophlex 4y agoThat's not a very kind comment. You can, and should, do better than that to improve the level of discourse on this site above cheap, snarky "cope harder" swipes at someone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ZhangSWEFAANG 4y ago[flagged]
- mmcgaha 4y agoNever sure who the real winner is. https://youtu.be/JRWlnv0_svU https://youtu.be/JRWlnv0_svU
- candu 4y agoFor others replying here: looking through this user's comment history, pretty much all of their comments are equally snarky and troll-ish. For the parent: this is very much not appreciated here on HN. Take it elsewhere.
- poulpy123 4y agoI need the source of this copy/pasta
- hutzlibu 4y ago"and million of dollars of funding talks to your future wife, she will be in love with him and not you, so you lost the competition." Or not, because while you were always working, working, working, you never had the chance to build up a real relationship and that golddigger who does one day agree to merry you, will exploit you and leave you broken and divorced in a ditch, with children in therapy, because you noticed too late, because you were occupied. Life is also a competition, but not just that. Mainly it is about finding a healthy balance.
- make3 4y agothey don't do any of those tasks though, people who do 50 papers a year are in very senior roles & only mentor, attend a few meetings, read the paper once or twice at best and propose modifications maybe. the question of what constitutes authorship is really more the question here
- bachmeier 4y agoMichael Stonebraker referred to this as "Diarrhea of papers" https://www.idug.org/browse/blogs/blogviewer?blogkey=a7b6fe8a-a792-4752-8794-6589aa32d2a4 https://www.idug.org/browse/blogs/blogviewer?blogkey=a7b6fe8... And he more or less says the focus on quantity has made the academic field (databases) irrelevant, because individual papers don't tell you anything useful. (Disclaimer: My interpretation of his talk, and I don't work in that field.)
- mirker 4y agoMy interpretation of his claim is it’s no longer a good career move to focus on big-picture research. It’s better to attack problems with narrow scope or superficial impact. Some of those papers are useful, but they’re not the most important problems in practice.
- jonnycomputer 4y agoThe organization of knowledge production in different fields can be quite, well, different. If you had 2 post-docs and 8 graduate students, and were collaborating with other labs as well, then papers per year would go up.
- trashface 4y agoAre your colleagues just hitting the stimulants hard? Worked for Erdős I guess...