No one else is probably going to tell you this, but go ahead and do those collaborations. At the end of the day, your thesis is only going to be read by 3 people, and a doctorate degree is just a degree and isn’t important in and of itself. The important things are the work and publications you get done while doing your degree. So unless you doubt your ability to get your thesis done on time, you should be looking on doing all the collaborations you can get your hands on. You are the best judge of your own capabilities here.
I am a slytherin academic supervising a couple of PhD students now and I endorse the above message. If you finish your PhD, collaboration with others is key to future career development. If you don’t finish, though, it’s another story—so make sure you get through. You can always forget to tell your supervisor about some of your collaborations.
If the “mercenary” papers are unrelated to your field, it would also be advantageous to start thinking of ways to portray them as related—this will be helpful in presenting your research as a coherent whole, rather than giving the impression you are just helping on others papers for the sake of your CV. Or, as identifying a specific area of expertise that has cross-disciplinary applications.
Finally if you are not able to portray your mercenary papers as related.… maybe your supervisor has a point and you should work on developing collaborations that offer more than just a one-off publication. I have a couple of “mercenary” publications from my PhD period (no further collaborations beyond one paper) and they stood out like sore thumbs in my CV when I applied for postdocs.
No one else is probably going to tell you this, but go ahead and do those collaborations. At the end of the day, your thesis is only going to be read by 3 people, and a doctorate degree is just a degree and isn’t important in and of itself. The important things are the work and publications you get done while doing your degree. So unless you doubt your ability to get your thesis done on time, you should be looking on doing all the collaborations you can get your hands on. You are the best judge of your own capabilities here.
I am a slytherin academic supervising a couple of PhD students now and I endorse the above message. If you finish your PhD, collaboration with others is key to future career development. If you don’t finish, though, it’s another story—so make sure you get through. You can always forget to tell your supervisor about some of your collaborations.
If the “mercenary” papers are unrelated to your field, it would also be advantageous to start thinking of ways to portray them as related—this will be helpful in presenting your research as a coherent whole, rather than giving the impression you are just helping on others papers for the sake of your CV. Or, as identifying a specific area of expertise that has cross-disciplinary applications.
Finally if you are not able to portray your mercenary papers as related.… maybe your supervisor has a point and you should work on developing collaborations that offer more than just a one-off publication. I have a couple of “mercenary” publications from my PhD period (no further collaborations beyond one paper) and they stood out like sore thumbs in my CV when I applied for postdocs.