Although scholarly publishing is increasingly institutionalised as a graduation requirement or expectation for doctoral students around the world, there has been little systematic investigation of institutional policies on doctoral publication. This study aims to fill this lacuna by critically examining a Chinese university's publication requirements and rewards schemes for its doctoral students, and supervisor and doctoral student perspectives on them. The primary sources of data included institutional documents and interview data collected as part of a longitudinal multiple-case study of doctoral publication at a top Chinese university. Drawing on neoliberalism as a conceptual lens, the study reveals that, while the institutional requirements and rewards schemes are characterised by market rationalities and privilege managerial over professional values and practices, the supervisor and the doctoral students prioritise internal motivations (e.g. learning, contributing knowledge to the local community) over external material and symbolic rewards for publishing. These findings suggest that such publication requirements and rewards schemes may have unintended distorting effects on doctoral students' scholarly publishing practices, learning experiences, and professional autonomy, and should be closely scrutinised.