Which of the following sentences is correct?
1) During my career I have worked on papers that have been published.
2) During my career I have worked on papers that were published.
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1possible duplicate of Must present perfect tense be used if the action takes place more than once? – Mari-Lou A Sep 22 '15 at 18:02
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"During my career I have worked on papers that have been published." is better.
"Were published" sounds a little bit as if the papers were already published at the time they were being worked on. The present perfect is for things that happened in the past, but have an effect on or a result in the present. (The sentence is probably for the purpose of stating one's present qualifications.)
Also, since the first part of the sentence has "have worked", continuing that with "have been" sounds better.
Yee-Lum
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1+1: When you combine the simple past and present perfect in a sentence like that, it sounds like the simple past should be earlier. You could fix the simple past by saying "later published" . – Peter Shor Sep 22 '15 at 17:58