Should Young Computer Scientists Stop Collaborating with Their Doctoral Advisors?

Shortly after the first author started his tenure-track position at Bar-Ilan University, he published a few additional papers with his doctoral advisor. These papers were mostly "lingering" results from his Ph.D. or direct extensions thereof. He was very surprised that his department chair reprimanded him for this, claiming it could be harmful to his career. Surprisingly, until now, we were unable to find any support to that claim in the literature. The benefits and importance of mentoring have been long established and span a wide variety of vocational fields both in and outside of academia.2,7 In the academic realm, the supervision benefits are commonly mutual:6 The advisor extends her ability to conduct research by delegation, extends her influence network, and the advisee learns the important skills needed to conduct scientific research, receives various types of academic support, and so on.