Not getting the prestigious papers I work in a quite competitive sub-field of computer science. In computer science, we have the publication culture where people publish mostly in the proceedings of different conferences. As in other sub-fields, we have several conferences that are super selective and thus highly prestigious, and a few others that are OK but not so valuable. I am a mid-late PhD student, and I have an extremely poor record of getting into those top-tier venues. I've had at least five rejections in the last years. All my papers are published elsewhere and I am personally OK with that, I still believe that my work has value: it was cited, I got personal praises for the content and quality of my work. The problem is that the attitude of my adviser and some other people in the field is that only the papers from the prestigious venues count, and everything else is "meh" no matter what the actual content of the paper is. Moreover, it seems that one has no future in academia without those publications. This situation makes me quite depressed at times: it devalues all the hard work I have done in last six years of my life and makes me feel like I am wasting my time and should drop out. So questions:

1) Does my lack of ability to deliver those high profile publications at this stage really mean that my academic future is bleak?

2) If I decide to stay in (at least to finish the PhD), how can I deal with being my work massively devalued just to keep myself sane?

P.S. We even have a ranking based on those publications: http://csrankings.org/
First, congratulations! You've published papers, been cited, and gotten praise from colleagues! You've shown that you can publish, and I don't think your adviser and others would be pushing you if they thought you didn't have a shot at the top conferences and journals.


Are any of the people who have cited or praised you in a position that you could collaborate with them and/or pursue a postdoc? They have indicated that they know and value the quality of your work, and they might be able to help you raise your profile. That would be a promising path forward.


Academia is full of criticism and critics. It is easiest to give broad criticism, and it takes a lot of interpretation to make that constructive and to separate critical feedback on your work from your self worth.


One way to deal with the devaluation might be to try it your adviser's way. That is, since you know you can get your ideas published somewhere, see what it takes to aim at a higher publication. With your next research idea, plan to spend much more time on revision. Ask your adviser and anyone else who will comment what it would take to hone that into a top publication. Does it need a broader scope? Do you need to deal with more subcases? Is the idea itself too peripheral or incremental? Do you need to explicitly link it to more pressing issues in the field?
CS tends to have multiple-author papers. Can you collaborate on a paper that your adviser thinks has promise for getting into a top journal? (Either one that your adviser spearheads or one with a postdoc or fellow student?) You might learn more about the editing process they use, and the successful publication might help raise your profile.
Study how people present ideas in top proceedings and journals. You might not love their style--they may be more limited in length than in less selective venues, perhaps requiring them to be more opaque and more formulaic in order to pack in more results. But you, too, can write in that style if that's what it takes. What else do you see about the abstracts and papers that you can emulate?
Another way to survive is to think carefully about what you are proud of in your own work and what you value in others' work. This might give you a sense of who you want your closest colleagues and mentors to be.