Hi all, I’m sorry if this is not the appropriate place to post such a question, but I’d be really happy if you guys could shed some light on my situation.

Without giving too much detail, I graduated with a BSc a few months ago from a small university in [STEM field; not CS]. I joined a research lab during this time in my field that involves some computational work, and ended up doing a little project for fun applying machine learning to this field, which never evolved to yield novel results. Now, I am applying to MSc programs in CS, but am also considering just joining industry doing something in programming.

I don’t think that little project is noteworthy at all; in fact, it is nearly identical to something done almost 5 years ago, with a slightly different algorithm. However, my professor is now pushing me to write a paper about the project, which will make it easier for the lab to get grants and pursue more interesting machine learning work in the future (strangely, I will not be there anymore though, and no one else in the lab seems to have a big interest in ML). Moreover, the professor is expecting me to educate all of the other lab members on how to use python, making sure GPUs are in order, training ML algorithms, etc. since I was the one that started the project.

Here are the questions that I’d be happy if you could give me some input: (1) do you think it is better to publish a paper that is not interesting than to not publish at all, and (2) do you think that it is reasonable to ask a student after graduation to help out in the lab? If so, for how long?

Thank you very much in advance for your comments.