How many publications per year are you expected to produce?

I also heard about this number and am not sure where it originated from.

I found you really first need to get going in your research field (after a PhD) and that it helps to stay at a given institute for a reasonable time (so collaborations can emerge) for you to be able to produce several publications in one year.

Since it is not specified what kind of publications these should be (peer-reviewed? high impact journals? single author? co-publications? or other) it is also hard to decide if you reach this vague standard.

I also agree that certain kinds of research take much more time than others before you can actually start publishing on results.

Sometimes the length of a researchers publication list is more about how strategic this person is in getting others to co-publish. So all in all, I'm not quite sure what this number 2 should be evidencing either.

Maybe someone else knows where it originated and what quality of the researcher it should highlight?

Typical researcher answers, eh? Never a simple answer, so maybe we shouldn't fuss about simple standards ;)

Hello to all

It definitely depends on the subject, on the collaborations network, on the country and funding norms.

Some grant funding institutions evaluate individual researcher quality by the number of first authoring of non-review articles published in peer reviewed journals; I know researchers that are the head of large teams and publish way more than 10 articles per year (mostly co-authoring and providing new results from lab research).

In some higher education institutions across Europe teachers are evaluated also on their articles production; in these cases, generally, oral or poster communications in meetings are not as valued as printed articles; and peer reviewd articles are more valuable than non-peer reviewed ones. In some cases, points are attributed to the communications and differences in the attainable maxima for each type of comunications can be found according to the position in the career: full professors are expected to publish more than assistants. Accordingly the "good number" of papers will depend also on the position.

I would say that publishing and being cited are more and more demanding, even in subjects in which it didn't seem to be so common.

Kind regards.

Ana

One more comment: Research Gate is a very good tool to find the very prolific authors (with 200 or more publications, for instance).

Ana

All good comments. The 'standard two' seems quite a universally accepted standard but, within that two, there is a lot of variance and that, to me, is more of a problem than 'how many'. Universities etc are probably justified in stating 'at least two..' - but they should also clearly identify the nature and quality required. Some colleagues, I know, will scramble to 'find anything' to publish 'anything' in - especially close to their annual performance-review. Some Departments will even set up their own 'in-house' forums to 'peer-review' submissions and pass them off as publications. Funny - also that 'conference attendance' (not proceedings) sometimes counts as an output as well.

2-3 is good, provided the standards are maintained and the works are fruitful and not done for the sake of Publishing.....

After a 4-5 years of exposure in academics, 2-3 researches are good in number.

100 % agree wit Roy....

We don't have this rule, 2 articles a year seems very inflexible as, especially in case of journal publications, authors cannot be certain that 2 articles would be published every year (maybe you write 5 but only 1 is accepted, or 3 are accepted, but only 1 will be published this year...). It matters more where you manage to publish (1 article in a good journal is better than a couple of conference papers) and who will cite your work.

The motto in research circles is " Publish or Perish ". But this depends on many factors such as the pressure put on researchers to publish , the type of research whether original or not , whether the research is carried out by a group or not . One researcher working on one line of research once told me " This apparatus is like a printing machine of papers ' . You only have to change one parameter every time and you get a publishing paper ( refereed and abstracted !).

Tiia and Saad - good comments. It may seem a bit odd and inflexible to state a number and, I fully agree, a few good quality outputs is much better than many low-quality ones. So - quality should always 'trump' quantity. Most universities, I think, state a number to try and get everyone to engage in some way. Without a stipulation - some academics might try to avoid any publications at all. So - for me - I think that it is more important to state the quality criteria more than the quantity. That said, I also think that it would be a good idea to have a 'scaling system' I.e. the more senior the academic - the better the quality should be - and perhaps the number should be more. So, for me, with the experience that I have - I don't think that it is unreasonable nor too big a task (with suitable resources in place) to expect me to produce at least two reasonable quality outputs per year.

I also heard about this number and am not sure where it originated from. I found you really first need to get going in your research field (after a PhD) and that it helps to stay at a given institute for a reasonable time (so collaborations can emerge) for you to be able to produce several publications in one year. Since it is not specified what kind of publications these should be (peer-reviewed? high impact journals? single author? co-publications? or other) it is also hard to decide if you reach this vague standard. I also agree that certain kinds of research take much more time than others before you can actually start publishing on results. Sometimes the length of a researchers publication list is more about how strategic this person is in getting others to co-publish. So all in all, I'm not quite sure what this number 2 should be evidencing either. Maybe someone else knows where it originated and what quality of the researcher it should highlight?

Ecuadorian teachers are evaluated according to determined number of Scientific Articles and it is considered within a hard selection to obtain a better job at Universities. Also, it is a requirement to publish more than one Scientific article per year. Personally, I would love to publish more than two per year but it depends on the focus and the management of specific variables within the research.

A complicated activity ? No !Only if you are an impassioned researcher.

The focus will be on the quality of article, so it may be not the numbers of articles that you are expected to produce but the quality of that article and in which journal is going to be publish , also it depends your research design and and whether its human based , clinical trails or others

Antonio - a good example offered here of the type of 'madness' that emereges from 'competetive', rather than creative, academic environments. That said, do remember that the Queen Mary stipulation is measured over 4-years. From that point of view, they're not asking that much really. However, the issue of sacking, rather than supporting, academics if they fail to meet 'desirable' targets- is the real issue.

Two journal articles per year is about the rounded figure for how many articles the research-active staff produce on average. Of course, what this figure glosses over is the wide variation over time, and between individuals. In practice, twenty percent of the research-active staff produce eighty percent of the research output.

So, an average figure of two journal articles per year is to encourage staff (A) to move from being research inactive to becoming research active. (B) to warn staff of the need to plan time and resources for doing the research and preparing papers for a flow of *successful* publications. (Not all publications will be accepted, and we only count accepted publications).

Being an average, I regard two journal articles per year as being a minimum, and would encourage staff to be much more productive.

(Somebody has to produce that eighty percent of the output!)

An average figure of two journal articles can be restated as an average of four conference papers per year in the Engineering field.

Not quite as bad as the Sun Antonio - let's call it the Daily Mail or Express instead!! An IF of 5 or more, for many disciplines, would actually be very high - and, for some, could potentially mean publishing outside their 'core' or target journals. That, to me, is a little short-sighted of an organization.

Ian - as I loosely identified earlier - number over quality is a bit of a flawed system. On the other hand, I agree that it is not an onerous figure and, for research-active staff should've viewed as a minimum. Personally, I never submit or count conference proceedings - but that's my choice.

Great discussion here and it seems (almost obviously) that we would prefer the discussion to focus on quality rather than quantity, but the former is easier for bosses to apply.

@Antonio, I would probably be sacked from the institution that asks academics to publish in journals with an IF above 5 - my field is Education Studies and the highest ranking journal here, Review of Educational Research, has an IF of 4.3 and the typical tier1 has an IF of 1.5!

The numbers game is clearly unfair.

Coming from the humanities myself I'd like to add that I had enough with all these "how-many-articles" discussions (why not write a good, old fashioned, well researched monograph instead - and taking your time with it?). Why are so many researchers happy with the idea to be treated like assembly line workers? I totally agree with those of you pointing out that in the end the question should be about quality and not quantity. Sorry, if that sounded too angry.

@John: No, that was not even beginning to be angry enough. When will bean-counters stop trying to run research? GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Eric, John & Ian - agreed. The 'production line' mentality. is alive, well and kicking!! As has been stated - the 'magic number' of two is probably more there to motivate those who are not motivated. My argument would be 'for those (hopefully few) academics who are not motivated to acheive this sort of minimal target - what the hell are they doing in academia'? I couldn't face my students, peers, colleagues etc if I didn't think that I was credible within my chosen profession. What is an academic without a sustained(at least minimal) research and publication record - 'a deliverer of other people's facts and findings I suppose?

Well put Eric - there are many of us that would struggle with the IF 5 phenomenon. No doubt set by a 'manager' who one once got a publication in a high-ranking journal - and wants everyone to know about it. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR too!!

this is good discussion but I dont agree with UK example used by António Rei Fidalgo and nunmber of qualification required , from my exeperince considering thatyou have the data collected and analysed it takes at least 12-15 months to publish in ahigh impact Journal but in another journals it may takes up to 6 months so the questions is are we looking for quantity or quality of publications?

Quality wise i believe that hardly one can do 3 and quantity wise my example 10 (including research,review,editorials and letters)

Of course many university researchers also have to do lecturing, marking and administration, which cuts into their available research time.

How come anyone can publish three or more journal papers every year. For example, if you are a PhD, you should publish at least 8 papers within your phd studies, assuming you finish your phd in four years. It's not the writing process that takes the time, finding the idea that worth publishing, reviewing the literature, data collection and analysis. those steps takes longer than a year !! and lets not forget about other responsibilities such as lecturing and other commitments.

@ Ali, this comes into play after you finish your PhD. In the Netherlands they urge you to aim for 2 articles published and 2 submitted at the end of the 4 years, íf your thesis will be made up of articles to begin with

Ali - I would agree with you that, for say PhD students and other 'neophyte' researchers/authors - then two articles in good quality journals per year may be quite an ask - especially with the potential for up to two-years from submission to actual hard-copy publication. Thta said, in my 'hey-day' , I've published up to 10 per year. That said, it's not easy, requires quite a focus, you've got to have sevral projects on the go - and requires a lot of juggling of 'balls in the air'. Then- other years - I've had less than the two articles - but would probably have made up for those with other outputs - such as edited books or chapters etc.

In my country, there are different parameters for each institution. I work for the National Health System and there is a table indicating how many papers they expect from you. The table goes with the type of contract you have. For instance, the associate researchers are divides in three categories and the lowest is requires 1 paper as co-author or leading author in peer-reviewed journals, but the journal may or may not have IF, intermediate level, one paper as co-author in an indexed journal and the highest, 1 paper as leading author and one as co-author. Full researchers are also divided in three levels, the lowest is required three papers in indexed journals, and your are encouraged to have most of them in journals with IF above 3, and is even better if the IF is above 6. Intermediate level is required also three papers, but you should be correspondent author in at least one of the papers, and at least one of the papers should be in a journal with an IF above 3. The highest level, they as for 5 papers, and you should be first or correspondent author in at least 2 o them, and you should have at least one in a journal with an IF above 6.

If you don't reach these requirements, you don't loose your contract, but you may not be considered for receiving some type of grants. There is also a rule for the minimum that you should achieve within 3 or 5 years (associate and full researchers) in order to be able to keep your job. The rule is not that difficult to reach. For instance, for the lowest level of a full researcher, you should have one paper per year in journals with IF, no matter if you are first, corresponding or co-author.

It may also depend on the peak times when a researcher may do extremely well during some years

I think that the answer for me is as many as possible.

I have written/published more than 15 papers in last three years. May be i would now slow down. It depends on individual, type of work, type of colleagues, writing/typing helps, etc., and other factors inculding finances

4 papers within the PhDpublications

you can publish n number of papers but for that you have to work also.... how much time teachers get exclusively for researches??? Putting pressure is in other terms forcing you towards False reports....

Oh yes, a lot of demands. IF of course depends on the field. If you are zoologist, not many journals have such a high IF score :) So how it can be expected from all researchers?

A prolific author, Moti Yung routinely publishes 10+ papers a year

Presumably he takes a holiday in December and June because the support staff is not there then, otherwise it would be one paper a month!

Yes Ian - i knew a colleague like that back in the UK - who set himself a target of at least one a month. However, that was a little while ago. That would be harder to sustain nowadays I would argue - especially in more established journals whereby there is increasing competition. That said, the more recent proliferation of open-access journals might offset that. I've had some years with 10+ articles - but then some other very lean years. As Ramana suggests - it depends on what different factors are in play.

Such boundaries must not be there regarding binding with no. of publications / per year since no one can predetermine that all research experiments can finish within a year and that too with a good results to be published - many a times instead of research - research management and official formalities kills much time - however such boundaries if made will make research a competitive world and in which results are always wonderful.

There is no such boundary. The number of publications depend on capacity of the researcher/ research group, time management, official formalities etc.

In a team spirit you can have many more than 10+; just to share I have had more than 20+ continuosly in past 04 consecutive years (2011-2014) - all are present on my RG and all are quality papers in peer-reviewed journals with IF too of less than a half or indexed in all major databases - including Thomson Reuters. Really I enjoyed team spirit to best outfit and to best output,

really nice!

I think it's hard to have this discussion without specifying the context.

In my context clinical trial research data takes 5-20 years to mature, and my experience has been it take about 2-3 years from the beginning of analyzing data (already ready to be mined) to publish a full-length peer-reviewed article on a clinical trial. I think the pressure to publish given these realities is why 1) there is increasing "slicing" of data into subsets and/or pools to produce more papers per dataset, and 2) retrospective populational analyses (on institutional, state, or national databases) are quite prevalent. The problem with 1) is now it takes reading 5-10 articles to gather all the relevant information, and there is a ton of repetition (if not outright self-plagiarism) between these publications, and with 2) these studies are at best hypotheses generating (subject to the limitations of all retrospective review and the data is of varying quality and completeness) and significant advances cannot be made without prospective clinical trials.

As many can be published with good presentations and updated knowledge and in peer-reviewed journals and better in a team spirit with multi-disciplinary approach

Different factors play a role here,

The type of research/topic :

some clinical trials needs more than one year of follow up when a case report study takes nothing. Reviews can take few months.

Your skills in idea generation, scientific writing and statistics make things easier.

Well, for me requirements became higher this year. My institution was mad enough to require not only IF, but also Q1 or Q2 (from JCR).  However, there is only one number big enough - 15 papers per first qualification, out of these 2 with mentioned Q, rest - with any IF. then these numbers are less for the next qualification.

Within 2017, i produced 14 papers (12 papers Scopus indexed and 7 papers WoS, ISI)

Dear all, it depends on the collaboration and group around you. The problem is only one issue, you must work two years before this years as 2015, 2016 to publish in 2017 and 2018, it is impossible to produce samples today and y can publish after one month this crazy things, My suggestion is to publish many as you can. All colleagues will be hard worker within ten years only after PhD holder, after professor ship not easy to work hard in the lab, Finally, it depends about the group and how the harmony between them. thanks to all

There is no set number, but we are encouraged to produce as many publications as we can.

The motive should be to publish quality research papers, does number really matter.

Straightforward answer is: publish 1-2 paper per postgraduate student/s for science base discipline and half for social science base discipline.

Enough to keep me employed. Quality over quantity. It is not a game of numbers but rather the output should be measured by novelty and virtue.

It depends on what type of contract you have: teaching only , research only or mixed. Even if you are on a teaching contract, the old adage still holds true, that being of publish or perish. On a teaching contract, try to publish as a minimum two journal papers a year. Do it as a hobby, in your spare time. Do not let the management think it is affecting your teaching output. Always think about your exit strategy. Also consider conference papers too. Many affordable quality conferences are held in the Balkans. Combine the conference attendance with your holiday, as often your university may not pay you if you are on a teaching contract. So a minimum of two journal papers a year. Work collaboratively too with your national and international contacts. Use your students wisely and put their names first - as it is their work.

If you can publish a paper that is really really significant -- let's say "Theory of Relativity". Then, the number of papers shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, that's not the case for most of us.

Hello

Produce a lot of them but to be approved is very hard

Ingrid

There is no set number, but we are encouraged to produce as many publications as we can.

The number of papers does not matter. needs of community and paper quality are important.

On a related note, what is the highest number of academic publications you have published in the span of a year?

Dear Dr. Erik Blair

The fact is that the standard for the number of articles in different disciplines is not the same and cannot be presented a fixed digit for all disciplines. However, according to the properties of each discipline can be created the requirement standards (Norms) for the same discipline.

For example, the number of yearly papers for each faculty member in a discipline in a country can be determined based on the relationship between the average number of yearly papers all the faculty members in the discipline in the country and the population of the faculty members in the same country. Also, this digit can be used as a national standard in scientometrics studies and based on be compared the number of faculty members papers with the standard.

Furthermore, based on the methodology can be created institutional, regional or international standards in the favorites indicators such as citations, h-indexes &, etc.

More than we need!

In my limited experience, it is useful to see what other researchers at similar career stages in your department and field are doing, and seek to be at a reasonable level relative to those benchmarks. Strongly agree with comments about quality vs quantity, but paradoxically it seems that increasing quantity of research outputs can sometimes come with gains in quality as well (as processes become streamlined and skills are honed). I am sure someone has studied this formally, and if not that could be one more publication for someone next year ;)

it's depends on your disciplinary and your major. In many major an one article with good quality is enough

Deponds on where you want to publish first because in a high scientific peer review journals it takes very long time to publish

I agree with benchmarking with people at your level and you work with

In some countries, accreditation bodies set a KPI of minimum one article per year but as academics use this publication for promotion purposes they are motivated to produce more

Hello

In Spain, we should be accreditatte by ANECA, we have to present good articles, congress and chapters in order to be evaluated and only by this way we can work. I am looking for it and also I hope to work in Spain.

I hope to present 5 articles this 2020, I have 4 in revision

Ingrid garcía

have to be careful about the resources and where the article is published

There are so many variables that one cannot give a concrete answer. Being in a communication field that overlaps with mass media law, there is journal-based discrimination. The com journals don’t like to accept work about First Amendment law, and the legal journals really don’t like com profs writing about the law. Plus, one is always having to change the style from APA to CMS to Blue Book!! A lot of time is wasted there. Plus, I am required to teach 4 courses each semester! I am now at 3 articles per year, but I have no life.

Susan Sarapin - I feel your pain, I have a similar problem because of my background in both journalism and science (and to make matters more complicated, I have a law degree as well and that perspective creeps in). Lip service is given to interdisciplinary work, but it's not REALLY supported.

Thank you for your response! Your work looks fascinating!

Setting a minimum standard is quite okay and one or two articles is not asking for too much. However, it should not be mandatory since people have different interests and abilities.

Thank you very much!

Most universities already apply this, but more than that, they put pressure on the faculty member by evaluating the annual performance, which causes him to produce large numbers of research that lacks quality in order to achieve the requirements. The correct thing is to encourage scientific research, but without placing restrictions on the work of a faculty member due to the different nature of research and the value of scientific journals.

I feel the number does not matter much. but at least one or two papers is a sign of productivity. Rest depends on how active you are, how active your students are, and how active your collaborations are. but it is important to publish in good journals which do a good peer review to ensure the quality of papers.

Also think after 20 years, how this paper will be looked at. so important to maintain good quality.

In my opinion, it is the quality of publication rather than the number of publications. One good quality work is better than many ill devised and executed works.

As research faculty, I'm expected to publish at least 7/year as first, second, or last (corresponding) author.

I expect minimum one publication per month as average, after I could obtain a postgraduate opportunity.

It depends on the field you are considering.

One or two good journal from engineering background

Two does seem to be a typical requirement. I worked at a medical school several years ago and the chair of one of the most successful departments set the baseline level of acceptable performance at 2 (good) papers per year. As a department head at a veterinary school, I also used that benchmark. It was not a written policy, but I told faculty members that 2 per year was adequate but unless they were of remarkable quality and impact, 2 per year would be viewed as adequate, but not great. We have faculty members who routinely publish 10 or more papers per year and have done so for a long period of time, so prolific productivity is clearly possible.