Should you publish before you submit your thesis?

Should you publish in peer-reviewed journals even before you submit your thesis?

This is a question that most of us will deal with, at the beginning of the candidature, in the middle stages and when we are writing up. Of course, many a phd candidate start with dreaming of publishing in Nature or Lancet even even before graduating, and realised soon enough that publishing is not so easy peasy, unless you are in a very established research team with a track record in publishing. Otherwise, you would find this a long long trek.

One thing that all of us have to understand, at one point or another the requirements to pass your phD in your institutions. I heard of people graduating even when nothing is published in a peer reviewed journal. The "publishing" was only done as a form of poster presentation in a conference, or submitting a paper to a conference. Does that count as "published" by your supervisor, institution and examiner?

I belong to the unlucky group. In our area, in my university, you got to publish. No no no, international conferences are not counted, so are your abstracts and presentations. YOu got to get it done in a peer-reviewed journal, and that is a very very time consuming process.