PhD Skill: The right output channel
Summary: Science is about communicating the outcomes of research. There are many kinds of output channels where you can communicate about your research: conferences, journals, book/chapters, workshops, etc. Each of them serves different purposes and has very different requirements. Here is a summary that helps decide which channel to use.
Starting conditions
My background is architecture, so I will be talking about research and publishing in architecture. Other domains have very different context and conditions, which are not taken into account here.
A PhD research can be as short as three years (unlikely) or as long as ten or more years (undesirable). So rather than plotting out recommendations along some years, let's simply divide the PhD research into four more or less equal parts in time Q1 - Q4: Quarter 1; the first quarter of your research; Quarter 2; up to half of your research, etc.
Quarter 1: Starting researcher
Entry conditions into your PhD career can vary a lot, personally, from institution to institution, and from country to country. You may have done a research master that already prepared you for the next step to PhD research. Mostly however, architecture schools do not train specifically for research in the Master program so you will have to learn the ropes as you enter the PhD program.
If you have done a research master, chances are you are progressing somehow with your PhD research in the same direction as your master. You could have been active in a research group, probably under the guidance of a PhD student or team that gave the context of your own work. In such a context you may already have something to publish about (typically as co-author of a larger group). This is great by itself, but usually the exception rather than the rule. Also, we will assume that you will have to generate new knowledge in your PhD research - so more or less starting from a blank slate.
At the start of your research you will have more questions than answers - so options for generating output are slim. PhD-oriented workshops are a very good way inform yourself on your topic area. There are also conferences that are inclusive of early stage researchers - they usually make specific mention of this. Internally organised research seminars or bi/multi-lateral (inter)national events can also serve this purpose.
In a well-established research plan, your supervisor may already have one or more specific tasks for you in mind that can yield research which you may share in above mentioned events. If the results are already of such quality and depth that it warrants a journal publication, then you are most likely part of a research team, and someone else will be the main author.
Q1 - early stage research output possibilities
Quarter 2: Establish your own research
In the second quarter of your research you're actively setting up your own research - whether that means theoretical work, prototyping, experimenting, and so on. That means you must have identified where your scientific contribution will be, e.g.: apply existing method to new problems, extending or expanding a method or theory, analyzing and solving particular problems, developing a technology, and so forth.
The point is, you can only determine where your own research should go, if you know what has already been done by others. The so-called state-of-the-art review is the backbone of this. You must have looked at most of the related work that is close to your research topic, so you can safely say where you are going to produce new insights.
State-of-the-art will be most likely a dedicated chapter in your PhD thesis, so it is something that you have to do sooner or later. Here is a very interesting option to use this work as a paper for a journal. Very often, journals accept so-called review-papers. Review papers offer a comprehensive, systematic, and rigorous literature review of a special topic in research. Comprehensive means that the review includes all of the important publications in that topic; systematic means that you use some strategy or method to ensure the completeness and can argue why to exclude/include papers in the review; and rigorous means that you can draw well-established observations, categorisations, or conclusions based on the review.
The level of depth and scope of a review paper usually is higher than the state-of-the-art chapter in your PhD thesis. The reason is that the state-of-the-art chapter needs to support only your research work, which is very specific, whereas a review paper has to cover more ground. However, a good state-of-the-art review has potential to become a review paper. Be prepared however to spend some time on this - at least one month, usually something more like three months.
At this point you will have a pretty good idea where your research is heading, but most likely there are no substantial results yet. On the methodological and theoretical level you may already have progressed beyond what is out there. For example, your method may expand or diverse from existing ones; from your literature review you may have come up with certain new conclusions or insights, or formulate some substantiated hypotheses or observations that are worthwhile sharing. Very often this is the stuff that you can present well at an international conference or workshop.
Q2 - preliminary research outcomes
Quarter 3: Research outcomes
At three-quarters through your research, you should have established already some substantial results by yourself, that no one else has done yet. You are comfortable with your process and methods; you know its strengths and weaknesses, and how it relates to similar work that is going on the field. There may be still rough edges, things not analyzed, or unexpected results for which you have not figured out yet what they mean.
Conferences are still the most likely target to share your outcomes with the research community. You can aim for conferences that are more selective in their selection process. In particular you want to look at conferences that publish their proceedings with a scientific publisher, and that have their proceedings indexed by for example Web of Science, Scopus, or similar.
Journal publications become an option especially when you can focus the content of your paper to a specialized treatment of methodology, experimental/theoretical setup, and detailed discussion of those aspects taken into context of related research work.
Another channel that may become available are book chapters. Chapters in books are organized by one or more editors that team up to create a book on a specialized topic. The editors are specialists in the field, so they know who can make interesting contributions to the book. Authors are invited or are attracted through a Call for Contributions. Such contributions tend to be quite exclusive since the publisher wants to make sure the book will attract the right audience.
Q3 - novel outcomes
Quarter 4: Contribution to science
At the end of your PhD research, the most important publication will be your PhD thesis. Some universities have their own university press service for this, meaning you will be part of some publication series, your thesis will get an ISBN number, a larger volume of prints will be created, and so on. Mostly however, your thesis will serve only as the document proof of you being an autonomous researcher, and is evidence of your original work.
At the end of your research you can return to your original state-of-the-art, and gauge what has happened in the meanwhile in the field. Additionally, you are in the position to comment on the relevance of your work to the scientific community.
This is the point when you can really target journals as the main output channel for your work. Book chapters, as mentioned earlier, are a good option as well. You should give priority to journals however, since they will be indexed and have a certain impact factor - this is hardly ever done for books. Conferences are mainly there to communicate your findings with your peers, but they will already serve less as a vehicle to carry your work forward.
Q4 - contribution to science
Conclusion
As you move along in PhD research, you will see that the focus of your publications shifts from workshops to seminars to conferences to journals/book chapters and finally journal papers. It is hard to give fixed numbers, but it is reasonable to have 3-4 conference papers, and at least 1 quality journal paper by the end of any PhD thesis. It helps if you can already make a publication plan with your supervisor at the start of your PhD research. Especially a list of target conferences will be very beneficial for you since this will form the basis of your research network.
I hope this is useful for you. As always, if you want to react, feel free to do so below.