research process - Familiarizing oneself with state-of-the-art at the beginning of a PhD

From my research internship experiences (my previous University didn't really focus on research much) and what my current advisers told me, a general flow of a PhD is like any other long(er)-time project:

• familiarize oneself with state-of-the-art on the subject


• 
  

  generate your own ideas (by trial-and-error) and integrate with current approaches

  
  

  (with this phase becoming a lot fuzzier the more advanced your "project" is)

  
  


• write it up for the world to know.

As a fresh PhD student, I'm currently in the middle of familiarizing myself with the state of the art, following the advice of many older students ("be a brave soldier in the beginning and do and read everything your advisers throw/send/e-mail your way"). And I do understand the importance of it (in fact, more often than not, I love it). But, it does give one an impression of self-uselessness sometimes (I have a talk with myself every few weeks or so to remind myself of my motivation and resolve the "uselessness" issue).

So, my question is: Typically, how much time would a fresh PhD student spend on going through state-of-the-art at the beginning of his/her PhD?

And some sub-questions:

• is it expected/typical to produce some kind of output (articles?) during this period?


• what kind of output is expected at the end of this period?


• what would be some indicators that this period is ending which a student himself can notice

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In the end, just to provide some context: I'm doing a PhD in Europe, and we have a limit of 3 years for a PhD (sometimes extended for up to 6 months) and I'm studying Computer Science.

Answer

Your question likely indicates that you need to work on your communication with your advisor. Hasn't he told you what is expect and how you are progressing?

I will try and keep this answer focused on the question, but I apologize if it strays.

Some indicators that your are becoming familiar with the field:

• When you talk to your supervisor you are familiar with some of the references mention and names start to mean something to you. Better familiarity is when this holds when you talk to colleagues and go to talks and seminars


• When you have read/glanced at most of the references in articles that you read. Better is when the most exciting thing about reading new literature is finding a reference to something you didn't know about

As far as output, ideally during the course of your dissertation you should become familiar enough with the relevant literature to write a literature review article. You should feel like you could write a review at the end of the familiarization stage. Actually writing a full review is probably a bit premature, since you want the review to tie in with your eventual dissertation. I would suggest that a useful output is a dissertation proposal with a strong literature review based motivation. This is not a publishable output, but it is tangible.