Just a note from the Continent - or, rather from a UK interpretation of
experiences related by my Dutch friends about being in a PhD programme:
In the Netherlands, you write papers and you publish them, and at the end of
the day you write the linking material together to turn them into a thesis.
That way someone with a doctorate has or should have a minimum of four papers
in journals of which one is usually a lead journal of some kind; six is still a
more reasonable number. You get serious research experience this way; you get
your work and your supervisor's supervising monitored by nominally-impartial
referees (especially if your supervisor's name isn't on the paper) and you get
feedback as you go along.
There are + and (-) sides to this process, intellectually, but it seems to be
one way around the problem of publishing as a doctoral candidate...
kkaye at vax.ox.ac.uk
