Accepted: Today | Received: Do You Really Want to Know?

We’ve all peeked at that “Received, Revised, Accepted” section of a paper and instantly regretted it. Those dates often read less like a timeline and more like an archaeological record. And that, kids, is why one should NEVER ask a PhD student about the timings of their PhD. From all variables that define the fate of a PhD, one of the harder ones to control is indeed… the peer reviewing process (wow, on a blog that writes about peer reviewing. Shocker!).

Let’s imagine a scenario which I believe is quite illustrative*: a 4-year PhD programme that requires the student to have at least one paper**.

OK, let’s do this PhD!

Year 1: Coursework. Many of these courses take up a significant amount of time.

Will the student still have time to go to the lab during that year? Probably yes.
Will it be an amount of time that allows the project to progress a lot? Meh...

Year 2: Let’s go! 100% lab work! Many times, PhD projects are built on top of ground already established in the lab. But this might not always be the case. In between optimizations and dead ends, a year can easily go by. By the end of year 2, we have two years left to finalize a manuscript, submit, pray for it to be sent for review.

Year 3: Reviewer #2 finally replies… With 12 pages of complaints.

Year 4: *The simulation can now be chaotic and the author of this text refuses to engage in such a daunting exercise*

OK, so what’s the point here? - You may ask, my dear reader.

If we assume an average scenario where a student starts a project from scratch, complies with regular (and healthy) work hour dedication and faces the average obstacles a normal scientific project can present, the timeline for the navigation of the peer-reviewing process is not very hopeful, is it? ***

We plan PhDs with neat 3–4-year timelines, but the peer review system runs on its own calendar. Until those clocks are aligned, it will always feel dissonant. So that begs the question:

Should PhD (or post-doc) durations be extended or peer-reviewing be shortened?

Extending PhDs/postdocs would mean more realistic publication times, less overall pressure and possible mental health improvements (which we know is also a very important current issue). But this would extend costs for universities and open the door to even more “cheap labor” exploitation.

It feels like the symptom is time pressure, but the disease itself is slow peer review.

Shortening peer-reviewing would make research move faster and benefit the flow of every system. However, reviewers are already overworked workers volunteers and there’s a high risk of lowering quality standards (which is already questionable sometimes).

So what? This is the part where we can maybe try to find a middle ground.

Maybe we can become more permissive about publication requirements. Preprints and post-publication peer-reviewing would be good alternatives to still give students the ability to show output quickly, while allowing for a subsequent formal peer review process that guarantees quality standards are maintained.

Yes, I know, it looks beautiful if we maintain high expectations, making students have fully published high-impact papers out within a 4-year timeframe.
But given the high standards in peer reviewing (which we should not be willing to give away), we need to accept that the timeframes are getting harder and harder to comply with.

At the end of the day, to fit everything into a 4-year PhD, we either squeeze the science or squeeze the students.
And the juice from that doesn’t look good on a CV… or on a brain.

* - Yes, some universities have slightly different requirements and even smaller PhD timeframes.

** - For the sake of this exercise, I’m going to focus on a PhD student scenario as an example. This will be equally valid for postdoc situations. We love all academics equally.

*** - This also brings up a recurrent observation: when students start their PhDs, they have sometimes been previously working on that same project and lab. Maybe from their masters, maybe in intermediate positions before enrolling in their PhDs. Nothing against it, yes. But it does make you question the whole idea of when a project actually started, right? (this is a matter for another discussion)