Publications

[HigherEd7]

What is the secret to getting published in top journals or any journal? I have seen a few CV's and seems like some people publish something each week and it also looks like it is the same group of people.

[polly_mer]

One "secret" is to be part of the group of people who control access to the top journals as editors and frequent, long-term collaborators of the people who control access starting from early graduate work.  From your other posts, this venue doesn't appear open to you.

It's a lovely thought that good work will always shine through.  That's more likely to be true in some fields than others.  However, even in fields with an objective reality, doing truly cutting-edge, knock-their-socks-off research usually requires resources that aren't available to early career folks at OK institutions where research is valued, but not the primary and overwhelming goal for faculty members.  Solid work is often publishable in good enough journals, but not too many people are doing several of those papers a month for the first several years of their careers.  Depending on field, one to ten papers per year is typical for an early career person.
 
People who publish every week may or may not be doing so in top journals or even reputable journals.  I know people who do publish most weeks in good journals; those folks have an extensive network of collaborators who do the work with their students and postdocs with the biggest name focusing on more funding and more publicizing of the work.  As one colleague put it, "X couldn't read an article a week, let alone write one per week.  But he is a god in getting funding and good collaborators".

Did you not publish anything as a grad student?  That's not good if you've been a grad student recently in fields that publish articles.

[mamselle]

This is obviously true for the sciences much more than the humanities.

Two or three a year might be good in some humanities fields...in others, folks do more, but things take longer to develop, the funding is on a very different scale, and the expectations themselves are lower and have more to do with individual work and less with collegial cooperative work or "labs-full" of students generating stuff.

(And if you find out how to break into upper-end journals, be sure to let the rest of us know...as Polly says, not everyone does....)

;--}

M.

[Hegemony]

I think the secret is having strong ideas, working on them nearly every day (not just during vacations), finishing and sending out the articles (not working on them forever), while making them as strong as possible, as well as appropriately formatted and free of errors, and revising intensively as suggested by the journal.  I read for some top journals and I am amazed at what comes in sometimes.  Badly spelled articles with sentence fragments, repeated paragraphs, no attention to previous work on the topic, taking on subjects for which the author cannot do in-depth research (tackling big subjects with no background in the field; tackling texts in languages they can read only in translation).  I conclude that they need to be able to say "I have a manuscript under consideration at [prestigious journal]" and they send it out in a big hurry.

All of this intensive preparation takes time and focus, and getting that time and focus is also an important skill.  Even if you can only do 20 minutes a day, do that.  Twenty minutes a day adds up over 6 months, while waiting for weekends and vacations, less so.

[polly_mer]

This is obviously true for the sciences much more than the humanities.

Two or three a year might be good in some humanities fields

Two or three a year is pretty good in many science fields when one is starting out as a new PI, not on the coattails of a large group.

[Puget]

This is obviously true for the sciences much more than the humanities.

Two or three a year might be good in some humanities fields

Two or three a year is pretty good in many science fields when one is starting out as a new PI, not on the coattails of a large group.

[This applies to lab sciences-- I don't know the OP's field]
Yes, many departments  in my field are happy with 2-3 senior or first author papers in decent to good journals per year for tenure. But as in all things, consult your local senior mentors for local conditions and guidance.

Having lots collaborators certainly can pile on the middle author papers, and is nice for all sorts of reasons, but it won't necessarily get you more senior author papers (unless you are leading the collaboration), which is what you need on the TT. Having grad students who you mentor well and push to write up their research (with lots of scaffolding initially from you) is what gets you senior author papers (and publishing with your students as first authors is important for tenure many places).

[Parasaurolophus]

Have 4+ papers under review at any given time, and more in the pipeline. It's a numbers game.

Also, knowing lots of people in your subfield will help you get invitations.

[youllneverwalkalone]

What is the secret to getting published in top journals or any journal? I have seen a few CV's and seems like some people publish something each week and it also looks like it is the same group of people.

It's really no secret imho. It's a combination of the following factors:

• Talent - having good ideas, envision how to package them into papers, and being good (and fast) at writing. People vary greatly in these aspects.

• Time and motivation - you need to grind, and there is, again, great variance wrt to what people are willing to do.

• Group size and seniority - being the PI of a large group, with access to resources, a large group that write papers for you, etc., is quite different than being a junior scientist or a newly minted PI.

• Network - more collaborators means more work done, more datasets available, more request to collaborate on papers etc., and more publications at the end of the day.

• Pipeline - have as many papers as possible in reviewing and manuscript in preparation at any given time. If you are a "one-project-a-time kind" of guy it will be harder to accrue big numbers of publications.

People who score high in all of them tend to be the people you speak of, OP, at least for "normal" publications.

For top journals (assuming you mean Nature, Science, Cell & co) the key factor is being experienced in publishing there - so getting your first paper there is much harder than the following ones - because writing a paper for them is quite different (though not necessarily harder, ironically) than writing a paper for your specialty journal.   

[HigherEd7]

By the responses, it seems like if it is just you and you do not have all of these resources, etc............."Good Luck" I know a few people who are publishing something every week are they just putting their names on it!!

[youllneverwalkalone]

By the responses, it seems like if it is just you and you do not have all of these resources, etc............."Good Luck"

Evidently being isolated and with no resources is not the best path to academic stardom. I am not sure there is anything surprising about that.

I know a few people who are publishing something every week are they just putting their names on it!!

Ok, and your point is?

[Myword]

I believe that for some journals based on opinion, not fact, evaluation is very subjective
and is not totally blind. The reviewers do not know your name but the editor does in my field and that I am no longer affiliated academically. Nor am I retired from a high ranking university. You could write an excellent article on an author or topic that the reviewers and/or editor have little or no interest in currently. Or if your interpretation and ideas rebel against theirs in humanities. A few of my reviewers do not read the article carefully or only in part. (I can tell by their comments.)
The OP does not mention his or her field but I recommend starting with lower level journals and see how it goes. After you finish writing it, put it aside for a few weeks and read it again. You'll be surprised how many changes and editing you need. Don't rush. I did that once and regretted it when it was rejected.

[HigherEd7]

I am not trying to make a point at all, just saying there are people out there and most people know who are just putting their names on papers and who have not done anything and are getting published. I have also heard of stories if you challenge someone's research you can be blackballed from being published. I know this to be a fact because it happened to a colleague of mine.

By the responses, it seems like if it is just you and you do not have all of these resources, etc............."Good Luck"

Evidently being isolated and with no resources is not the best path to academic stardom. I am not sure there is anything surprising about that.

I know a few people who are publishing something every week are they just putting their names on it!!

Ok, and your point is?

[Parasaurolophus]

Just churn out work at the pace that works for you, provided it's fast enough to satisfy your job requirements. You can't control what others are doing, only what you do. If you want loads of pubs every year, then make sure you have a lot of work under review at all times.

[Hegemony]

Feeling embittered because "So-and-so doesn't do any work and has their name on a lot of publications!" — what good does it do?  There are people, in fact many people, who work hard, with integrity, get their publications out, and publish a lot.  Is it better to be one of those people, or not be one of those people?  If you are in academia, it is obviously better to be one of those people. Dwelling on perceived injustice does not get the publications out, so it is not useful to you.  Who gets more publications out, those who say their chances are hampered by injustice, or those who go ahead and do it?  The latter.  So go ahead and do it.

[HigherEd7]

Great response and you are 100% correct.