Having just spoke with my advisor, and speaking on occasion with other professors, I have come to the impression that one should not "subpublish." Let me say what I mean. I'm a 3rd year graduate student right now, and the professors I talk to seem to say that it is not a good idea to publish many small papers along the way to a result: that is, holding fixed the total mathematical content across N papers, it is best if N is minimized. I was trying to understand why. My advisor cited the reason of "reputation" and I have invented my own reason that perhaps there is an upfront cost to the process of writing and submitting a paper so that although effort per length may be constant, it is to my advantage to pay the upfront cost as few times as possible. (Finding a referee is the only upfront cost that comes to mind, but keep in mind I've never done this before.)
Can someone expand upon how reputation is relevant here i.e. for fixed mathematical content why it looks bad to come out with many small papers? Are there also benefits to the community or the knowledge pool that I'm trying to expand however slightly by writing such papers if it all comes at once in one big paper? One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so. The only person it would seem to possibly hurt is me if I were to get scooped.
Are there other ways in which upfront costs to the whole process of publishing may happen?
I am interested in all my questions in both advantages and disadvantages to me, and also to those who would use my work.
Answer
To address the reputation aspect:
Think about a typical reader of your papers. Most likely they will only look at one paper you have written. Unless you impress them with that one paper the likelihood of them reading anything else you have written depends on whether that first paper convinces them it is worth their time to read another. So the more content that is in each of your papers the more impressed the reader will be with you. If the first paper of yours someone reads has a small amount of mathematical content then they probably won't expect too much from any of your other papers.
In your formulation the ideal N may not always be 1, but each paper should actually have something worthwhile in its own right to say. You shouldn't expect someone to read more than one paper to get to only one meaningful idea.
A side comment, the author does not find referees. The editor does. Sometimes the author may suggest candidates but the editor or the suggested referee can always say no.
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