{"id":887,"date":"2023-02-01T15:29:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T23:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/gradwriters\/?p=887"},"modified":"2023-02-01T15:29:14","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T23:29:14","slug":"dissertation-by-publication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/gradwriters\/2023\/02\/01\/dissertation-by-publication\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissertation by Publication"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Gillian Saunders<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a very long time, writing a single book-length manuscript was the only way to complete a PhD.\u00a0 In the past few decades, however, the traditional manuscript-style dissertation has been recognized as somewhat of a \u201cstrange\u201d and \u201cungeneralizable\u201d genre: its audience is limited, and dissertation-writing skills are minimally transferable to the real world (Duke & Beck, 1999). The possibilities for variation in dissertation structures and genres has quietly expanded, and other options are becoming more acceptable and even preferred (see, for example, Anderson et al., 2020; Anderson & Okuda, 2021; Anderson et al., 2021; Dong, 1998; Paltridge, 2002; Paltridge and Starfield, 2020; Paltridge et al., 2012; Par\u00e9, 2019; Thomas et al., 2016).<\/p>\n

You have options! One of those is the \u201carticle-based\u201d dissertation, also known as the \u201cmanuscript-style\u201d dissertation, or \u201cdissertation by publication.\u201d In the sciences, a lot of dissertations are now completed by publication\u2014as many as 40%\u2014and in the field of education, around 10\u201315% of dissertations might contain at least some published or publishable work.<\/p>\n

Here, I\u2019ll weigh some pros and cons of writing your dissertation in this genre and attempt to answer some questions you may have if you\u2019re considering this structure. As always, you should consider which format best suits your research questions, methodology, and discipline, and consult with your supervisor about how to proceed.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is an article-based dissertation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

An article-based dissertation consists of several articles (usually three or four, but I\u2019ve heard of there being as many as nine) that either have already been published during the course of a student\u2019s PhD studies, or are ready to publish. The PhD candidate should be the first author or first co-author, if co-authorship is permitted (but this varies across disciplines, so check with your supervisor first if you\u2019re considering co-writing any parts of your dissertation). Each article should be a stand-alone document that can be understood independently from the rest of the dissertation, with its own introduction, literature review, methodology, results, and discussion sections, as applicable. In order for the final product to be a cohesive \u201cdissertation,\u201d though, it might also need sections or chapters that introduce the overarching research questions, topic, and methods, as well as \u201cbridging\u201d sections to link the articles.<\/p>\n

Reasons to write one: <\/strong><\/p>\n