Over the seven years of my PhD (Physics), I was first or second author on less than 5 papers (3 iirc). However, I am really happy with the quality of those few papers, and so were the reviewers on my thesis and, ultimately, my employer after I defended. Unless you want to stay in academia and become a professor, the quantity is not that important.

Have a frank conversation with your advisor. If you are out of ideas, I bet they aren't. You are a student, not an independent researcher, so the expectation should not be that you are the sole driver behind the direction of your work. As a personal anecdote, I majorly changed the direction of my thesis after about three years in because the experiments were just really not working. It led to my degree taking longer, but I was seriously lost in the wilderness of discovery until I had a series of discussions with my advisor about where we could pivot the work that I had already done.

[–] someacnt@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot, I should talk to my advisor. That said, they are very busy; I took a mistake of going to a busy advisor..

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Why are is your advisor so busy? Who is paying them to be busy? Is there enough cash to go around? You gotta weasel yourself in there for a piece of that pie...