A bad feeling about first published papers

Question

I was taking a look at my first published papers, which are published in (peer-reviewed) A*/A/B level proceedings. Thanks to these papers, I finished my PhD a few years ago.

I was surprised by the quality of the papers and I felt ashamed that I wrote these papers -Of course, this was not my feeling a few years ago-. I found that my assumptions were naive and the conclusions can be valid only for the used dataset (there is a high chance that they are not valid for other datasets). I found also that I lacked some fundamental knowledge and I could explain my approach differently.

Overall, if I receive these papers now as a reviewer, I would definitely recommend to reject them.

I don't know whether this feeling is just because 1) I gained knowledge over the past years, 2) the domain (CS) has evolved significantly or 3) the papers were indeed bad and they shouldn't be published.

In the case of (3), I am wondering what I should do.

Answer 1

You should do nothing other than continue growing and learning. The most common reason would be #1. I can't say the most likely reason is #1, not having seen the papers.

But a lot of authors, even poets, look back on their early work with a sense of wonder about how they could have been so naive. It is a sign of growth.

Yes, #2 is probably also a factor to some extent as CS has been a fast moving field overall, not being much over 60 years old, compared to, say math and such.

And you haven't said that the papers are actually wrong, just a bit naive. Hopefully we all learn some things as we grow older. It normally happens because we are actively thinking about things.

Others at the time (reviewers, editors, advisors) thought that the papers were fine for the time. They were fine.

Answer 2

Just ignore the bad papers. Don't include them in your curriculum vitae. Instead of using the title "Papers" in your CV, just use the title "Selected papers." That implies that you have some papers that you are not proud of.

Answer 3

You discovered something: you learned. You improved over the time. You once wrote insufficient papers, now you are beyond this. Improve further, so that in 10 years time you will be able to say "boy was I naive then". It's far better than looking back and saying "Well, I'll never reach that level of brilliance again." It means that you grow as a scientist. And yes, fields change. We did do a lot of very naive things once. That's how science as a whole works.

[added by popular request]

Answer 4

If indeed:

• "my assumptions were naive" and
• "the conclusions ... there is a high chance that they are not valid for other datasets"
• "I could explain my approach differently"

(which, I should say, might just be your misjudging your past work, as other answers suggest; but if that is actually the case)

then consider writing a new paper about the subject. Regardless of whether it is sufficiently important for a top-tier publication, you can at least share your further-developed you of the subject with the community.

It is not uncommon for papers on some subject to begin with partial insights, simplistic assumptions and limited applicability, and develop - often by the same authors - into something deeper, more mature and more useful.

Note: If you do write a paper, don't waste your time and the readers berating your previous work; rather, focus on the new presentation of the previous method, a discussion of its assumptions (as opposed to other, less-naive assumptions) and dispassionate explanation about its limits of applicability. If you can add some new result that doesn't make this assumption - even if it's a proof of impossibility or a concrete useful/insightful counter-example, that's even better. But don't write a "my last paper sucks" paper.

Answer 5

The way I see it, the papers were good enough to pass peer review so they're good enough to remain in the scientific lexicon. Even if your assumptions were slightly wrong or naive, the results of these naive assumptions are still important.

Remember the maxim:

Even negative results are results

If you feel really strongly about it, you could go back and write further papers addressing the issues in your originals and improving on them. This is the scientific method in action. Otherwise, just leave it and move on to bigger and better things.

Be proud of finishing your PhD, we sometimes forget in academic circles that this is no small achievement in and of itself.

Answer 6

To add to the other answers:

One takeaway is, that you learned in the meantime and now see the weaknesses of the paper, that were not obvious to you when you wrote them, even when you did your very best.

When you are a reviewer, look at such a paper and realize, that it had been from you years ago and don't reject it, but write a helpful review, in a way that would have improved your weaker papers.

Point out what can be improved and give hints how it can be done, so the authors that sent in weak papers that have potential to become strong papers have a chance to improve them instead of being rejected directly because you are now way above their level.

And when you see things that can be improved on your old papers, you may consider to write a follow up paper to your old paper.

Answer 7

The crux of your situation is that years ago you published some papers, about which you now say "if I received these papers now as I reviewer, I would definitely recommend to reject them." Then you suggest three things and ask for advice if option (3) is true:

"(3) the papers were indeed bad and they shouldn't be published. In the case of (3), I am wondering what I should do."

The other two answers essentially say "just ignore the bad papers and move on", which is certainly an option for you. But if you are curious for more options that you can do in situation (3), apart from just ignoring the papers, another option is to retract the papers.