0
$\begingroup$

I am a (hopefully) soon-to-be PhD graduate, and by the time I graduate I should have 4 papers, 3 of them with only me as the only author and another one in collaboration with other people. I recently had an idea that I want to turn in a paper, and I am quite confident that I can do that on my own, maybe with some advice from the supervisor but I already have a quite clear idea of what I need to do in mind. My question is: can this be counterproductive?

I'll try to explain myself. If I end up with 4 out of 5 papers with me as the single author, I fear I'll be seen as someone who cannot collaborate with people, while in truth it just happened that I managed to prove most of the results I was interested in essentially by myself. Is this fear reasonable or am I worrying too much? How do you suggest me to proceed?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
5
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Don't worry. I'm the sole author on most of my papers and I am doing fine. I have never received a warning along the lines you have suggested. Concentrate on your work, collaborate when that make sense and do the best work you can do. $\endgroup$
    – Liviu Nicolaescu
    Commented 2 hours ago
  • $\begingroup$ I was in the same situation after my PhD (which wasn't too long ago). In my experience, you will have plenty of time to collaborate during your postdoc. It is much more important that your research is good. One important thing that the (right) coauthor can contribute is the affirmation that you are working on something that is interesting to people other than you. $\endgroup$
    – M. Winter
    Commented 1 hour ago
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ The current culture is this. If $8$ people write a joint annals paper, then they each get an annals paper (for jobs, awards, etc.). I think this is stupid. $\endgroup$
    – mathworker21
    Commented 1 hour ago
  • $\begingroup$ @mathworker21, yes, almost any "metric" supposedly measuring the value of someone's work is silly... game-able by those interested... but/and surely admired by administrators, since "everything is much clearer then". :) $\endgroup$
    – paul garrett
    Commented 1 hour ago
  • $\begingroup$ I've actually heard varied opinions about how to count papers (or whether to count them!). Without opening this can of worms, the two options seem to be "divide by the number of coauthors" or "just count the number". Besides metrics, it can also be quite rewarding to share your ideas with others, because of the supposed "80/20 rule" that 80% of your time is spent on 20% of the details. A coauthor may exactly cover your weaknesses and allow you to finish the project a lot faster. (P.S. This is also advice to myself, as I also predominantly write single-authored papers.) $\endgroup$
    – R. van Dobben de Bruyn
    Commented 43 mins ago

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .