Do you publish all your worthwhile research?

[MushMonster]

A bit of a strage question, but I have spotted a trend in the institution I work currently, I think, and wondered if others follow this pattern too.
It is now a few times that I hear about researchers publishing data they got years back, like quite a few years. Supervisors still waiting for junior researchers to write papers years after they left- which do not look like will actually happen....
This is not about datasets that sit within a complex project, with several groups working on it and for which you do need the overall work done to make full sense of. It is in reference to work that is publishable, on its on.
That is quite a remarked difference to what I experienced throughout my own PhD, where we were closely managed so that all data was recorded, prepared and published as soon as possible, as not to lose relevance in the field and support the grants applications. The system appeared to me strongly geared up to the production of quantifiable results. My supervisor would lose funding if he did not have much to show up for the money paid. We kept the data, but he could put it together himself if needed (like if we felt ill)
This was close to two decades ago LOL. Much can happen in this time.
Do you still have publishing of worthwhile results as a primary target in your research? Or have things gone much more relaxed? And, if it is the latter, does this not impact negatively on the overall performance of the department and institution?

It sounds to me as if your supervisor was a contract researcher and had to publish to get more funding. My supervisor was like this - if she didn’t get funding she didn’t have a job - and she even worked on Christmas Day. It also depends on your area and how quickly the data/ findings go out of date.

He would not have lost his job, just got less chances of getting further grants for future students. He was the dean of our school, a professor and a research supervisor.
It is a very competitive science indeed, where there is no point on sitting on work already done.
But most sciences are so and that is why I cannot get my head around how work done 4-5 or more years ago can be as relevant as it was back then? I do know that the area of research is not a niche one. There are plenty of international groups working on these topics.

I'm a science prof and have many old datasets which are on the 'backlog' list of papers and may one day get published or might not.

the reasons a dataset doesn't get published include

• primary researcher (phd student / postdoc) quits or moves on before the paper is finished
• data was an MSc project and MSc student has moved on
• data was a complex collaboration and no one person took overall responsibility for finishing it off
• paper is written up but gets rejected from a journal and has to be reformatted / re-organised to fit the next journal but the key person has moved on
• covid delayed a LOT of projects in my area - we lost time so ended up in with the situation where the primary researcher has moved on much more than normal

I have colleagues in engineering who work to tight deadlines and submit more (short small) papers to get work finished. which is great. but in my field it is common to spend 1 year or more doing different types of data analysis and debating theories before getting a paper written up. and when journals take 6 months or longer to review papers, the problem of having to re-submit to a new journal also causes delays often.

Also, many of the projects listed above are not supported by a grant - these things are the side projects which are fun (and often more original and interesting than the grant-funded work) but which don't always manage to take priority.

Thanks @parietal
I think people moving on is indeed what appears as the main reason for delays in the examples I am seeing these days. Only that during my own years as researcher, the PI or other supervisor would be writing up or re-writing the papers in that case.

It is a pity that work is "lost" this way, I think.

Yes, it is the PI writing the papers. But that is v slow because the PI doesn't have enough time.

I have a mountain of papers that could have been published. Some still are relevant but many have to go by the wayside. The main reason is I've got a huge admin role and two primary aged DC. I also procrastinate on mumsnet.

That makes sense and it is a feeling I get here.
I am not in an academic role, but on a technical support role. Everybody looks very chilled, but I have the feeling inside they are 150% busy and constantly trying to catch up. They do not show it very often though.

I am writing up a paper that started 5 years ago now. For me, a lot of it is that my department absolutely do not want small insignificant papers. We were told not to publish below impact factor 10 if we could help it. They’d rather one mega paper every four years. So I have a series of students working on one project

He was the dean of our school, a professor and a research supervisor.

That's a huge workload. I'm not sure that junior researchers/academics realise quite how huge that workload is.

He did not teach much. I had him for one subject, around 6 months, possibly twice a week, on my 3rd year. Then I started my PhD with him and I had a masters course with him too, maybe 3 months, once a week I think. He shared the teaching of the masters course with another professor.
I was always in awe of him. He had a brief meeting with us daily (3 to 4 PhD students at a time), just a few minutes, to check how we were doing in the lab and suggest changes if something was not working. Even when he had events for the school/ faculty. He only missed a few times when the events were all day long or he was at another uni.
His children were grown up at the time, so that helped for sure.
He was a very disciplined person indeed. And a great influence on me.

I basically have no time to write papers, so some get done but others are on the list for so long they become irrelevant before they get written 😢

Sounds like an amazing guy. Not sure the rest of us can meet those standards though!

seriously though there are big differences between scientific disciplines. In my field the projects often do "belong" to the student or ECR who is running them and therefore cannot easily be handed off to another team member (who in turn will be wanting to focus on their own projects).

When I worked in another field (genetics wet lab) it was much more that the PI had intellectual ownership and the junior researchers carried out the projects as instructed. In this case I can see how it is more plausible that the PI can finish the work (as they controlled the project anyway) or pass it on to another person.

A further difference between fields is the data collection to analysis ratio. In some fields the data collection is the difficult bit, and after this it is straightforward to write up. In my field most of the work happens post data collection (complex analysis as parietal describes), so just because you have the data doesn't mean it can be easily written up.

So yeah, lots of reasons and I expect most of us constantly feel bad about the unfinished projects

What OP is talking about struck me hugely when I started in academia, early 1990s. People who then had datasets they had sat on for 5-8 years & still hoped to one day analyse & publish. I couldn't understand it.

I have buckets of time to write articles and do new research but the PIs are coauthors & they have no time to read or approve. It's normal for me to wait months for any comments on a draft article or protocol, and sometimes the PIs are simply not interested but I can't cut them out of authorship either. Some projects or articles are well advanced & arguably nearly completed articles that will never get into peer review, but some are in preprint. We also have coauthor civil servants as colleagues who also can't decide what they want or won't make time to read & comment (they don't prioritise anything I do).

I've done a lot to support several projects that never advanced, too. I did my part, I don't know why the others never progressed their parts to final publication stages. Some of these unfinished projects were named as specific deliverables in grantApp or business plan.

I'm not a PI because I am not good at thinking up new things to research, or most my ideas aren't viable. I occasionally tell the PIs that I don't have enough to do but the PIs don't respond, so mostly I shrug nowadays & am glad I am well paid for not much work or stress & have plenty of time for LifeAdmin.

I'm a RG prof in the social sciences and I too have mountains of stuff I need to write. Yes to the overloaded with other things including parenting, university admin, pressure to win more funding, procrastination and doom scrolling on Mumsnet. I keep telling myself that good analysis doesn't date .