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Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

> Minimum Pubs for a PhD in CS?

The answer is obviously "one". Any number of PhDs have been granted based on one outstanding paper. But this outcome obviously depends on the quality of the work, and institutions differ in what they consider significant.

No self-respecting person/institution is going to say "N papers are required". The nature of the work is what's important, not a paper count.

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It is not that obvious. Especially in theory, it is quite possible that you might have a thesis but not have published work anywhere or have things in the process of being published at the time of defense. I am not sure whether this is a good idea from a career point of view though...

A PhD is virtually never granted based on unpublished work. It might be tentatively offered pending publication, but not granted.

That depends entirely on your field. A (not insignificant) number of PhD students who've gone before me at my university got their PhDs without having published by the time of their viva.

Exactly. I believe the issue is that the culture in C.S. is to focus more on conferences which means a more rapid turnaround time. There are other disciplines where conferences are not as respected as journal publications which are slow as hell. Having said that, personally I tend to believe in the existence of life after a PhD, this means that one should probably publish and also give talks in conferences etc.

Not to go off-topic, but there are absolutely programs (and some may even be CS programs) which require "3 major papers" in lieu of a doctoral dissertation for award of the PhD. This surely has its disadvantages, but I have known colleagues--especially if they're headed into industry--who feel this is more representative of the type of work they're expected to perform and gives them a leg up on students who must manage both.

Be that as it may, I think counting papers is an absurd academic standard. It replaces evaluation with enumeration.

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