Publishing strategically: You got to know when to hold ‘em

From a career point of view, publications are no small matter in science. This is especially true for academia, where publication records serve as a measure of professional competency and success. Having said that, does it make sense for a professor to be careful about when and what to publish? To hold on to otherwise readily publishable work for a while? Or to be reluctant to publish at all?

Sometimes it makes excellent sense.

It may seem that, patenting issues aside, speedy publication of research in scientific journals is always the best strategy. Often it really is. Think of a young assistant professor facing tenure review in a few years. Is he (or, less likely, she) going to hold anything back? Probably not, it is not a good idea. Neither is it wise for organic chemists to take their time when submitting first total syntheses of newly discovered natural products for publication. It's a race, being first is important.

For any professor, the forces acting in favor of publishing quickly and comprehensively are:

• necessity to maintain a stream of publications for grants and promotions;
• danger of similar or identical work being published by another research group first (i.e. getting scooped);
• pressure exerted by students and postdocs who need publications to advance their own careers.

But this isn't all there is to it. Publications are not created equal, because not all research is viewed as — or is — equally important. Immediate judgment of the potential importance of new science, however, is a difficult task at best. Nonetheless, this kind of judgment is necessary, even if it cannot possibly be 100% objective.

What follows is that professors have to "sell" their accomplishments to the scientific community. In other words, to favorably present their work and to advocate its value effectively. Whatever gets published, cannot be unpublished or published again. So it pays to play the cards right and make it count — get the paper accepted into a higher-profile journal, make a splash, dazzle and impress academic peers.

In a competitive setting, consequences include:

• polishing a manuscript to perfection by editing and re-editing can be worth it, even if it takes a year;
• holding off publication until more results are obtained sometimes beats publishing more frequently but less impressively;
• publication of proof-of-principle research can be costly as it opens the door for others to steal the thunder of more exciting applications;
• given more promising things to spend time on, preparation of lower impact papers for publication loses priority and can be abandoned altogether.

Needless to say, these kinds of considerations have to be weighed against the factors pushing the decision in favor of (quicker) publication. But there are circumstances when the pro-disclosure forces become weaker and lose dominance. Including:

• tenure;
• ability to secure funding despite delays in publication;
• research directions where competition is unlikely to be met, such as those based on novel (and unpublished) ideas.

All in all, exercising some (or a lot of) restraint with publishing can be a viable strategy. As such, it is bound to be employed by professors in academia. Those who could use it but don't will be less successful in their careers than those who do. And who in the world wants to be less successful?