Co-authoring a PhD by publication: assigning percentages to who did what

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co-authoring, publishing from the thesis, thesis by publication

By Cally Guerin (with a lot of help from her friends Claire Aitchison & Susan Carter)

The thesis by publication (or article-based thesis) is becoming a common format in many disciplines and in many countries. While there are many advantages to writing up doctoral research (see on this blog, for example, Kalypso Filippou and Cally Guerin), this process does introduce some challenges of its own. One particularly difficult task is the expectation in many universities that any co-authored papers submitted for examination need to include a very clear indication of how much of the work was done by each author.

Ten tips for publishing out of the thesis

Tags

argument, audience, genre, publishing research

Ruth Albertyn is affiliated to Stellenbosch University and has been involved in critical reading, mentoring and facilitating workshops on article writing across disciplines for the past 12 years mainly at universities in South Africa but also in Africa and more recently in Belgium. In her experience, doctoral students seem to need additional support as they embark on the process of writing journal articles. Here, she offers ten tips for student authors and supervisors for facilitating the shift from thesis to the article genre.

Should doctoral writers do free work for academic journals?

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journal article, Peer review, publication practices

By Cally Guerin

Doctoral writers are often keen to publish their work in highly ranked journals, thus entering the debate about whether or not academics should publish their work in journals run by the big publishing companies. This contention continues, especially with regard to COVID-related research. Those powerful academic publishers are accused of exploiting the voluntary work of researchers and scholars through the administrative and editorial load they undertake in organising and performing peer review, in making decisions about manuscripts, in corresponding with authors, and in finalising the published articles.

Even though I have many sympathies with the open access movement and applaud the efforts to make publicly funded research freely available to the public, I still do unpaid work for journals owned by big publishers. There’s value for me in reviewing submissions and in handling articles as an associate editor. I want to explain my reasons for doing this free work so that doctoral writers make informed decisions about what is right for them.  

Writing an article – how is it different from writing a thesis?

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audience, authorial voice, literature review, thesis by publication, writing journal articles

by Cally Guerin

Some doctoral candidates come into their programs with extensive experience of writing for publication from their previous work or study. For most, though, it is a big jump from writing assignments for lecturers or a Masters dissertation to writing a formal article for publication in a high-ranking, peer-reviewed journal. There’s a lot of useful information out there about how to write for academic journals. In this post I want to focus on an aspect of this discussion that is rarely mentioned: how does article writing differ from thesis writing? Importantly, how can doctoral writers recognise and respond to the difference?

Writing a thesis by publication. Some reasons for and against

Tags

article-based thesis, collection of articles, compilation thesis, thesis by publication

By Kalypso Filippou

Kalypso Filippou is a post-doctoral researcher and part-time teacher at the Faculty of Education, University of Turku in Finland. Kalypso’s research interests mainly focus in the field of higher education, international education, and intercultural postgraduate thesis supervision.

I have recently defended my article-based thesis (aka thesis by publication, collection of articles thesis) and I was intrigued by the blog of Cally Guerin regarding the ongoing debate of writing a thesis by publication (https://doctoralwriting.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/thinking-about-writing-a-thesis-by-publication-some-reasons-for-and-against/#more-2348). I actually agree with all the reasons for and against that were indicated but I decided to re-examine these advantages and disadvantages and add a few more reasons based on my experiences as a doctoral candidate who wrote a thesis by publication.

Deciding on a dissertation format: Considering the implications of a PhD by publication

Tags

publishing, research writing, thesis by publication

By Liezel Frick (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)

Professor Liezel Frick is a colleague in the Special Interest Group that focuses on doctoral writing. She has long considered the dimensionality of the candidate and their text and adds South African experience to our generally Australasian perspectives.

Unlike the traditional monograph style of thesis (a collection of sequential chapters, each reporting on a specific aspect of the project in a linear fashion), a publication-based format has greater variation in form. For example, it may consist of an introductory and conclusive chapter that explain the logic of the dissertation, and a number of publishable and/or published works that may include articles, book chapters and/or published conference proceedings (see Mason and Merga, 2018 for a multitude of options this format might take on), or a hybrid of the above-mentioned formats (see Odendaal and Frick, 2016 for a conceptual frame on this hybridity).

Often students do not have (or feel they have) control over deciding on the format of their doctoral dissertation – institutional policies, disciplinary practices, and supervisor preferences may govern their decisions. The publication-based doctorate is gaining more impetus internationally and across disciplines, yet both students and supervisors are increasingly being confronted by this choice without having the necessary pedagogical knowledge or tools to make an informed decision.

In addition, the forces that drive the push to publish have not always originated from the noble intention of developing PhD students into responsible scholars. Adherence to quality assurance mechanisms and addressing slow and low completion rates at the PhD level underlie many managerialist policies and practices. However, what is often not explicit in these debates is whose interests are primarily served by publishing during the PhD – institutional stature and ranking, the supervisors’ academic credentials, or the scholarly development of the student?