In this post, I write about the four types of research papers that you could and are encouraged to contribute to during graduate school. Note that two or more of these could be combined and so, for example, you could write only one or two total papers during your Ph.D. and still accomplish most of what follows.

Corresponding author paper

A corresponding author paper is one that would not happen without you and your work. You are the one driving it and getting it done, from start to finish. This could also be a “first-author” paper, except in fields that do alphabetical author lists, like mine.

Co-authored paper

A co-authored paper shows that you are a team player and collaborator. This is the sort of paper that someone else is in charge of writing but you are helping or have contributed to some part of it, such as the data collection.

Instruments or methods paper

An instruments or methods paper is often underrated but incredibly useful to write for yourself and your field. These papers are generally less hyped than research papers describing analysis results but, personally, I think these papers deserve all the support in the world. They make science possible to do. In general, and especially if you have problems with your data or analysis, I highly encourage writing one of these. This is low-hanging fruit you can grab by being diligent about documenting your work.

Renowned journal paper

It is nice, albeit not necessary, to have a research paper in a famous journal. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have one of these as it takes some amount of luck as well. However, keep in mind that you could get your work published in one of these journals if you effectively communicate the importance and impact of your work. Always be thinking about the why and leverage that to get published in your dream journal.

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