Contentment or Torment? An Analytic Autoethnography of Publication Aptitude in Doctor of Philosophy

The burgeoning trend of pursuing publication in a leading journal, as a benchmark of standard doctoral research, has become an appealing expectation of early-stage doctoral researchers (ESDR). However, recent pedagogical studies showed limited attention to exploring the dynamic relations between doctoral education and the academic publication process. Our aim was to investigate and understand (if and) how this intricately intertwined relation contributes to the scholarly publication practice in doctoral education from an individual and institutional context. We used a duo-analytic autoethnography approach and presented a comprehensive narrative based on the authors’ self-reflections by using a range of data sources namely research diaries, journaling, seminars, training courses, online forum talking, and web-based open sources. Through our autoethnographic narrative, we found five key aspects associated with publication practices in doctoral programs: quality-quantity debate, authorship dilemma, journal selection process, publishing in leading journals, and publication process. We additionally mapped out a conclusive publication cycle to demonstrate how dominant structural factors of the doctoral program subsequently affect the publication process, influence ESDR’s decision-making, and potentially reinforce academic pressures. Based on our study findings, we concluded that doctoral education should remain research intensive rather than a simplified way of obtaining a higher academic qualification.