I am a 6th year grad student in a department with diverse research
interests. Of my grad cohorts you can see the following breakdown:
-tissue culture techniques: 10+ pubs
-hard core protein chemist: 1
-electrophysiology: 1-3
-neuroanatomy/in situ: 0-3
-behavior: 2
-molecular biologist: 2
The number of pubs you get is directly related to your research
"techniques". The guy who can complete an experiment a day using a
tissue culture model - can pump out a ton of pubs, and his boss expects
him to. doing developmental neuroanatomical tract-tracing simply takes a
year of waiting for litters, waiting for tracers and tons of scope work
and scope drawing, no one expects more than 1 or 2 pubs (total) from this
grad student.
I guess the bottom line is to figure out what the norm is for your
specific sub-field - the people reviewing any grant you write will be
very familiar with your specific field and will know what a reasonable
productivity rate would be.
don't worry - ask your PI
