Mentoring matters: examining the relationship between adviser interactions and doctoral student publications

Abstract

For doctoral students, publications are often a key metric for evaluating academic success and career preparation in many fields. This article examined the influence between the frequency that doctoral students meet with their faculty advisers and their first-author publications. We analyzed data from the Canadian Graduate and Professional Survey (CGPSS) and focus on three key types of adviser-advisee interaction: adviser availability, the frequency of research discussions, and the mode of communication. Our results indicated that the mode of communication (in-person or remotely) does not relate to doctoral student publications. We find some evidence that adviser availability has a statistically significant, but small relationship in practical terms on publication output. Conversely, the frequency with which doctoral students meet with their advisers to discuss research is statistically significantly and positively correlated to the number of first-author publications. Weekly advising meetings have a large influence on graduate student research output. Additionally, our analysis revealed some variation in this relationship between STEM and non-STEM doctoral students. These findings complicate our understanding of doctoral mentoring relationships and highlight the need for further research and opportunities to improve doctoral education and increase research production.