system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How important is it to publish as sole author or without PhD supervisor as co-author after finishing a PhD?

Hi, so I recently finished my PhD and have been told by several people now that I should now think about publishing as sole author or without my PhD supervisor as some Post-Doc applications have such a requirement. 

There are two opportunities for me to publish data which my supervisor was not a part of (not the PI of those projects). However, it's difficult to publish as the sole author since most of the work is collaborative - I could manage something but probably without upsetting some colleagues. 

How important is this though? Is it worth the awkward conversation with my supervisor? (Got my degree just yesterday but have a research contract till the end of this year with the same supervisor). 

Edit: so papers without PhD supervisor as co-author after a PhD do make sense.

I am working on a project in another group and hoping to get about 2-3 publications from that (without my supervisor). This is probably my best bet even though I'm probably not first author is any of these publications (maybe 2nd or 3rd). But as first author, I don't see anything in my near future without my supervisor as co-author.
gpt
If you're in STE, don't do this unless it's 100 % your own work. As you said, most research is collaborative, and if other people had a part in it, it would be a severe violation of publishing ethics.

If you look around the literature, you'll notice that sole-author papers these days are in most cases not research papers, but review or perspective papers. Sole-author research papers are either from a different time, or papers with fancy theory that are usually written by scientists in advanced career stages or even retired professors.

>[...] have been told by several people [...] publishing as sole author [...] as some Post-Doc applications have such a requirement. 

I have literally never seen this as a requirement anywhere in STEM, and especially not for Post-Doc positions or programs. If you apply for a position as a group leader or assistant professor or research fellowships at that career stage, they usually require you to have conducted "independent" research, but that in no way implies that you need to have sole-author papers. And that won't matter at your career stage anyway.