Optimal journal publications strategy (academic career) Suppose that I've written 10 academic papers. Which CV is the best for academic appointments?


5 publications in mid-high ranked journals, 5 in low ranked (but nevertheless peer-reviewed) journals.
5 publications in mid-high ranked journals, 5 working papers that you disclose on your CV and publish on your website/University profile (assume that these could have been published in low-ranked journals but you chose not to).
5 publications in mid-high ranked journals, 5 papers that you've written that you file draw away when you figure out they you're not going to be able to publish them in a top quality journal (assume that these could have been published in low-ranked journals but you chose not to).


The third dot-point may be unethical, I'm not sure.

Feel free to play with the definition of "mid-high ranked" and "low ranked" in your response.

Feel free to do a scenario analysis where you consider PhD -> postdoc/assistant prof, postdoc/assistant prof -> tenure as separate cases requiring different analysis.

FYI this is for economics/finance/statistics, but also feel free to talk about your own areas where you've had the experience.

I started wondering about this when I came across some extremely high quality working papers that aren't published and that have hundreds of citations. This makes me suspect that the 1st option is not optimal.
the 'working paper' notion in economics appears unique to that area, so I can't comment on that. The problem with your phrasing though is that it ignores quality issues. Assuming therefore, that the 10 papers are fixed, and the only question is which of the three options to use, then the answer is probably (1). 

For people who want to know about the work, either of (1) and (2) are fine, and (3) makes little sense (I also don't understand why that would be viewed as unethical). but even then, there's some low-quality non-zero positive information associated with publication in a journal the reader hasn't heard of.

For people who prefer to look at CVs to infer quality, then (1) is superior to (2) (again (3) doesn't make sense). 

One way in which (2) is superior to (1) is if you're hoping that you get the benefit of the doubt for unpublished work that has no "quality signal" like the name of the venue it appears in. This is unlikely to happen unless you're in an area where it's common to have unpublished manuscripts circulating and valued.