system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Publish or Perish: PhD candidate level

Hey everyone.

I'm a PhD Student/Candidate in Europe. Kinda burned out, by the end of my 2nd year, but will probably carry over until my 4th. I won't reveal much more about me for privacy reasons, as I work with stuff related to internet/digital tech and wouldn't be hard to narrow down who I am if anyone gor curious lol (ThrowAway account for the same reason).

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I have always seen the PhD as an opportunity to become a better researcher and better in my field (Psychology) theoretically, to eventually apply said knowledge outside academia. Despite not enjoying the PhD overall, this goal has been made possible here and there, with some companies/organizations with projects close to my PhD Project being interested and inviting me to share said knowledge with them.

However, recently, I was faced with something I found conflicting. My supervisors said until the end of my PhD, I should publish at least 3 papers, ideally 4. This was kinda stressful, and conflicting with something else they said, which was "Your PhD years are the best to learn and develop.". And I found this conflicting for a very specific reason: while I'm focused on "publishing", often, I feel like the scientific process matters less, than the results. For example, I don't remember seeing any article on my field of research in Psychology without results, i.e., everyone has very interesting results. However, I personally have some "non-results", which I find interesting but people above me (my supervisors or some other professors that sometimes work alongside us) always make some pressure into "finding them results".

And this was it. The more I deal with situations like this, the more I focus on being productive and "getting this done", do eventually go back to applying said knowledge to a field that is not Academia. And no, I don't exactly intend to give up my PhD, even though I'm very critical about the whole evaluation process. I still find value in it, still want to pursue it and keep trying to learn. Actually, I may have to brind this take on "learning" vs. "publishing" on the next meeting with my supervisors. Even though they are somewhat young researchers (finished their PhDs around 10 years ago) I seem them becoming exactly what they criticized.

Well, sorry for the rant. Was just feeling like sharing this with someone on the field.

This being said: have any of you ever felt similar pressure? I honestly thought this wasn't as prevalent during the PhD, specially since I know many people who hardly published anything during theirs.
gpt
Surprised by this! In BioMedSci in Germany only 1 first author publication is required if you want to go for summa cum laude (top grade). Heard this standard is similar in other countries. Getting a paper published (getting accepted into a journal, reviews, adding data, adjustments etc.) can take a year or so in and of itself.