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On the shoulders of students? The contribution of PhD students to the advancement of knowledge

Vincent Lariviere

arXiv:1108.5648v1physics.soc-phcs.DL

TL;DR

The paper addresses limited evidence about how doctoral students contribute to knowledge production. It analyzes peer-reviewed publication participation for Quebec’s doctoral population from 2000 to 2007, finding substantial publication involvement linked with degree completion and later research careers. The conclusion notes that the direction of these relationships cannot be assessed and that collaboration is not equally applicable across research objects.

  • Problem

    Large-scale data on PhD students’ participation in producing new knowledge were previously unavailable.

  • Method

    The paper surveys publication activity for 27,393 PhD students enrolled in Quebec universities between 2000 and 2007.

  • Results

    Doctoral students contribute to a considerable proportion of new knowledge production, and publication during the doctorate is positively linked with degree completion and research careers.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    Publication involvement is presented as an important part of doctoral research training and socialization into research.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    The study cannot determine the direction of the relationship between publishing and degree completion or subsequent outcomes.

Abstract

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Using the participation in peer reviewed publications of all doctoral students in Quebec over the 2000-2007 period this paper provides the first large scale analysis of their research effort. It shows that PhD students contribute to about a third of the publication output of the province, with doctoral students in the natural and medical sciences being present in a higher proportion of papers published than their colleagues of the social sciences and humanities. Collaboration is an important component of this socialization: disciplines in which student collaboration is higher are also those in which doctoral students are the most involved in peer-reviewed publications. In terms of scientific impact, papers co-signed by doctorate students obtain significantly lower citation rates than other Quebec papers, except in natural sciences and engineering. Finally, this paper shows that involving doctoral students in publications is positively linked with degree completion and ulterior career in research.

Introduction

Doctoral students occupy an intermediary role: they acquire research skills while contributing to knowledge production and becoming socialized into their scientific communities. Because publication provides peer-reviewed validation and integration into research, the paper measures students’ participation across Quebec’s doctoral population.

  • Doctoral training combines acquiring disciplinary knowledge with contributing to the advancement of knowledge.
  • Publication exposes students’ work to peer review, making it a central component of research socialization and integration.
  • Thesis completion alone is not considered sufficient preparation for entering the contemporary scientific community; publishing thesis results is also expected.
  • Existing evidence offered little large-scale information about doctoral students’ contribution to new knowledge production.
  • The paper presents the first large-scale survey using the population of 27,393 PhD students enrolled in Quebec universities between 2000 and 2007.
  • It measures publication participation, examines production contexts and subsequent research careers, and assesses contributions across Quebec’s research domains.

PhD students’ publication activity

Prior studies provide partial evidence that doctoral students participate substantially in publication, with participation varying across fields and publication types. The reviewed literature also links publication activity with degree completion and shows that available studies were generally too narrow for a macro-level portrait.

  • No previous study had quantitatively measured doctoral students’ contribution to knowledge production at the macro level.Technical difficulties identifying authors’ statuses contributed to the predominance of small-scale studies.
  • 85% of analytical chemistry, 50% of experimental psychology, and 35% of American literature graduates published at least one paper during their studies.
  • About one graduate student in two in a U.S. survey had published research during doctoral studies, with output ranging from 66% in engineering to 40% in education.
  • Journal-article publication was reported for 47% of engineering students and 44% of science students, compared with 22% in social sciences, 19% in humanities, and 15% in education.
  • Research productivity was positively linked with degree completion, while prior studies remained limited by narrow samples, fields, or publication measures.
  • In Quebec survey data, slightly more than 80% of students had contributed to at least one publication, including 41% to an article and 55% to a conference paper.

Factors affecting students’ publication activity

Publication activity varies with disciplinary organization, funding, supervision, and collaboration. Students in more team-oriented fields and those receiving research-related support generally publish more, although access to funding differs across disciplines.

  • Students receiving fellowships published more peer-reviewed papers than students receiving none in education, science/mathematics, and social sciences.
  • Research assistants published more papers in all disciplines except the humanities, while teaching assistantships were positively linked with productivity only in the humanities.
  • Mentoring and faculty–student interaction were associated with greater research productivity, including more papers among students with mentors across disciplines.
  • Supervisors participated in defining research projects for more than 92% of respondents, with involvement varying across disciplinary groups.
  • Research-team participation is more common in natural and medical sciences than in social sciences, where students more often work independently.
  • Research-group participation benefits students through opportunities to publish and graduate, while supervisors connected to students’ projects were more productive in the natural and medical sciences.

Data and methods

The paper matches Quebec doctoral students to Web of Science publications from 2000–2007, retaining validated student–article links and analyzing disciplinary publication and citation patterns. It uses full counting and compares students with professors while acknowledging database coverage limits.

  • 27,393 doctoral students enrolled in Quebec universities between 2000 and 2007 formed the study population.
  • 31,738 validated author–article combinations covered 25,159 papers authored by 8,468 doctoral students.The dataset was reduced from 313,367 initial name matches through automatic and manual validation.
  • The analysis included articles, notes, and reviews, excluded editorials and other non-original document types, and used full rather than fractional counting.Each contributor received one full contribution regardless of author order.
  • A paper counted as doctoral-student-authored when at least one author was enrolled during publication or the preceding year.Students remained classified this way until one year after graduation or departure.
  • Citation counts were normalized against same-discipline, same-year averages, with self-citations excluded.An average of relative citations above 1 indicates impact above the world average for the field.
  • Web of Science coverage omits some scholarly outputs, especially non-article and non-English SSH research, limiting publication-count comparisons.The authors compare students with faculty in the same disciplines to provide a coverage-matched baseline.

PhD students’ contribution to the advancement of knowledge

Doctoral students contributed unevenly to Quebec’s university output, with stronger participation in health and natural sciences and engineering than in social sciences and arts and humanities. The authors relate these differences to disciplinary research and thesis practices, while noting that coverage and authorship conventions also matter.

  • 63% of health doctoral students and 40% of natural sciences and engineering students published at least one paper during their doctorate.The corresponding proportions were about 10% in social sciences and 4% in arts and humanities.
  • Doctoral students in arts and humanities and social sciences were respectively 7.4 and 3.8 times less likely than faculty members to author a paper.The comparison is intended to account for discipline-specific database coverage.
  • About 30% of Quebec university papers in health and natural sciences and engineering included doctoral students, compared with 19% in social sciences and 13% in arts and humanities.
  • The authors associate stronger publication participation in health and natural sciences and engineering with article-based theses and closer integration into laboratory research.Social sciences and humanities more often retain monograph theses, where article writing is less central to training.
  • The paper concludes that doctoral students in natural and medical disciplines are more socialized and integrated into research than their social sciences and humanities counterparts.

PhD students’ collaboration patterns

Doctoral-student papers were more collaborative and had larger author teams than other Quebec papers, but their international collaboration was generally lower. Collaboration patterns varied sharply across disciplines, especially between laboratory sciences and the humanities.

  • About 99% of papers in natural sciences and engineering and health had more than one author.The larger author teams suggest that students participate alongside more experienced researchers during research apprenticeship.
  • Only 10% of humanities papers were co-authored, with little difference between doctoral-student papers and other Quebec papers.
  • 18.9 versus 9.8 authors: doctoral-student papers had about twice as many authors as other Quebec papers.In natural sciences and engineering, doctoral-student papers averaged more than 34 authors versus 23 for other Quebec papers.
  • The paper reports that doctoral-student papers were more likely to result from collaboration, and disciplines with greater collaboration showed stronger student publication involvement.
  • In every discipline except arts and humanities, doctoral-student papers had a significantly lower proportion of international co-authors than other Quebec papers.Thus, student integration occurred in larger teams that were less likely to include foreign colleagues.

Degree completion and post-graduation research output

Publication activity was positively associated with doctoral degree completion and later research output. Among graduates, students with more pre-graduation publications generally produced more afterward, although the post-graduation measure excludes papers without a Quebec address.

  • In every discipline, doctoral students who completed their doctorate published more papers than those who had not completed it by the end of 2007.The data covered the 2000, 2001, and 2002 cohorts, totaling 6,596 students.
  • Research integration was strongly related to doctoral students’ degree completion.
  • Average impact per paper was not significantly different between the two student groups when students without completed programs were excluded.
  • Among 2,319 students graduating in 2003 or 2004, greater pre-graduation publication productivity was positively related to post-graduation productivity.
  • Students who published more during their doctorates were more likely to obtain research positions after graduation.The paper names postdoctoral fellowships, researcher positions, and professorships as examples.
  • Post-graduation output was measured only for papers with at least one Quebec address, excluding most papers produced during fellowships abroad.

PhD students’ scientific impact

The paper examines whether doctoral students’ publications have different scientific impact from other Quebec papers, extending prior research that lacked data on this group. Impact varies by discipline: student co-authored papers receive lower citation rates in health, social sciences, and arts and humanities, but higher rates in natural sciences and engineering.

  • Research gap: Existing studies report that younger researchers typically have higher scientific impact, but provide no data on doctoral students’ scientific impact.Doctoral students are positioned before the conventional starting point of academic careers, defined by PhD completion.
  • Measurement: Figure 7 compares the average relative citations of papers with doctoral-student contributions against other Quebec papers by discipline.The analysis uses scientific-impact measures described as ARC.
  • Disciplinary results: Doctoral students’ papers obtain lower citation rates in health, social sciences, and arts and humanities.These disciplines are contrasted with natural sciences and engineering in the paper’s disciplinary comparison.
  • Disciplinary results: Papers with doctoral students as co-authors obtain significantly higher citation rates in natural sciences and engineering.The paper identifies a disciplinary component to the scientific impact of student-involved papers.
  • Interpretation: The paper associates higher citation counts in natural sciences and engineering with more empirical disciplines, while social sciences and arts and humanities show lower counts in more theoretical disciplines.It suggests theoretical creativity may require greater maturity and literature knowledge, whereas empirical creativity may rely more on technical skills and curiosity.

Conclusion

The paper’s large-scale analysis shows that doctoral students make a substantial contribution to Quebec’s research output, with participation varying sharply across disciplines. Publication involvement is associated with research socialization, faster degree completion, and later research productivity, although disciplinary thesis formats and research organization constrain comparisons.

  • Conclusion: The first large-scale analysis finds that doctoral students contribute a considerable share of new knowledge produced in Quebec.Their publication participation is presented as central to both researcher training and the research system.
  • Conclusion: Disciplinary comparisons are limited because the study lacks data on the prevalence and differences of article-based theses.Thesis format and research organization are identified as important explanations for variation in publication participation.
  • Conclusion: Higher integration into collaborative research teams helps explain greater doctoral-student publication involvement in natural and medical sciences than in social sciences and humanities.Research teams and article-based theses are more common in the former disciplines, whereas students in the latter are less often integrated into advisors’ projects.
  • Conclusion: Publication during doctoral study is positively linked with faster degree completion and post-graduation research productivity.The paper reports this association across disciplines, including fields where relatively few doctoral students publish.
  • Conclusion: More than 50% of natural-sciences, engineering, and health students in the 2000–2002 cohorts had completed by 2007, compared with 25% in social sciences and humanities.The paper links this difference to lesser inclusion in collective research, while noting that no single solution eliminates delays.
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