This qualitative study examines how funding status mediates doctoral students’ perceptions and experiences of mandatory publication requirements in Russia, by comparing funded and self-funded doctoral students at a selective researchintensive university. Through 19 in-depth interviews, the research explores this understudied area. Although publication requirements were initially introduced to develop research skills, these institutional demands now function primarily to enhance university visibility, creating pressures that are strongly mediated by doctoral students’ financial circumstances. The study initially aimed to explore how funding shapes doctoral experiences more broadly. However, as the interviews progressed, participants consistently redirected the discussion toward publication experiences, revealing publication as the primary site where funding disparities are most acutely experienced. This emergent theme subsequently shaped the study’s analytical focus. The findings reveal a clear divide in experiences shaped by funding status. Funded doctoral students, despite receiving material support, describe intense psychological pressure and tensions between substantive dissertation work and institutional compliance demands. By contrast, self-funded doctoral students face persistent struggles for time and resources, as the necessity of external employment severely limits their ability to engage in both publication activities and dissertation writing. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the analysis conceptualises funding as a form of economic capital that shapes doctoral students’ positions within the academic field. Institutional support systems should therefore attend not only to funding levels but also to the broader material conditions of doctoral students’ lives, recognising that self-funded doctoral students require qualitatively distinct forms of support rather than simply greater quantities of existing support mechanisms.