Article-based doctoral thesis

[adel9216]

Hello,

Are article-based doctoral thesis common in your field? Would you recommend PhD Candidates to follow that route instead of a traditional thesis, especially if they want to become academics ?

Thanks

[Caracal]

Hello,

Are article-based doctoral thesis common in your field? Would you recommend PhD Candidates to follow that route instead of a traditional thesis, especially if they want to become academics ?

Thanks

If it isn't standard in the field it is probably a bad idea. The fields where a dissertation is really a couple of articles packaged together are mostly fields where production of papers is the standard currency for tenure and promotion. In a book field, I would assume it would usually put students at a significant disadvantage on the job market. In my field, if I saw that someone had gotten their degree based on several articles instead of a full length dissertation, I would be suspicious that the program was just allowing students to convert papers written for class into doctoral work and that such a student wouldn't really have done extensive research and writing.

Maybe that assessment wouldn't be fair, but that would be my suspicion.

[Puget]

In my field (psych/neuro) a standard dissertation is 3-4 papers (some hopefully already published or at least submitted) plus general intro and general discussion chapters that pull it all together into a program of research. Papers are indeed the coin of the realm, so there is very little value in writing a lot of text that only your committee will ever read.

[Kron3007]

Yeah, completely field dependent.

In my STEM field, the article based thesis has become the norm and it would be unusual to see a traditional thesis (we get the odd one).  In the end, our "academic currency" is peer reviewed journal articles, and a PhD student would generally be expected to have a couple (at least) from their time as a student.  Books or book chapters are less useful, so we would expect them to write their findings as articles and have most of them submitted and some accepted before defending.  Producing both a full length traditional thesis and then writing papers based on it would be inefficient and a waste of everyone's time.

If you are in a book field, I suspect it would be the reverse...

[mamselle]

In most humanities, I wouldn't even think of it.

But ask your profs. (Where have we said this before?)

M.

[pgher]

Yeah, completely field dependent.

In my STEM field, the article based thesis has become the norm and it would be unusual to see a traditional thesis (we get the odd one).  In the end, our "academic currency" is peer reviewed journal articles, and a PhD student would generally be expected to have a couple (at least) from their time as a student.  Books or book chapters are less useful, so we would expect them to write their findings as articles and have most of them submitted and some accepted before defending.  Producing both a full length traditional thesis and then writing papers based on it would be inefficient and a waste of everyone's time.

If you are in a book field, I suspect it would be the reverse...

+1

[Parasaurolophus]

In analytic philosophy, the stapled-together dissertation is increasingly common (although the parts aren't usually actually published). Programs with an official article-based thesis policy, however, are rare. Continental philosophy and history of philosophy still do the bookish thing.

My sister is in a psych program whose dissertation requirements are actually predicated on the article model (without much stapling).

My own was a (shortish, at ~180 pages including references and index) coherent whole, all but one of whose chapters I then separated out and published. I think that was the best of both worlds, really.

[adel9216]

In most humanities, I wouldn't even think of it.

But ask your profs. (Where have we said this before?)

M.

Hello, just because I am posting questions here does not mean I did not ask my advisor's

[mamselle]

I know, but it has in the past.

What did your advisors say?

M.

[Ruralguy]

My PhD. granting institution flatly required traditional diss.. Of course, you can then just strip out the intro and maybe some explanatory material, and the core chapters really were just the basis for  3 articles. But field in general seems to be going for dissertations that are stapled articles.

[Sun_Worshiper]

It is increasingly common in my social science field, although still a minority of dissertations. I would probably advise a candidate to go for the traditional dissertation but to have two or three distinct empirical chapters that could be stand-alone articles, but it really depends on what kind of research they do and what their professional goals are.

[Kron3007]

It is increasingly common in my social science field, although still a minority of dissertations. I would probably advise a candidate to go for the traditional dissertation but to have two or three distinct empirical chapters that could be stand-alone articles, but it really depends on what kind of research they do and what their professional goals are.

Is that not almost the same?

Our article based thesis still has an intro, a lit review (which is sometimes published as a review paper), research chapters (which are essentially articles), and a conclusion.  So it is still a single thesis, but the chapters are stand alone ( ie. Have their own intro, materials and methods, results etc.).

[Sun_Worshiper]

It is increasingly common in my social science field, although still a minority of dissertations. I would probably advise a candidate to go for the traditional dissertation but to have two or three distinct empirical chapters that could be stand-alone articles, but it really depends on what kind of research they do and what their professional goals are.

Is that not almost the same?

Our article based thesis still has an intro, a lit review (which is sometimes published as a review paper), research chapters (which are essentially articles), and a conclusion.  So it is still a single thesis, but the chapters are stand alone ( ie. Have their own intro, materials and methods, results etc.).

I've been on two committees where the candidates wrote article-based dissertations and in each case they wrote three article-style papers, each with their own lit review, theory, and methods sections. There were also short intro and conclusion chapters that bookended the three essays. Probably field specific, but this is what I have seen.

My dissertation, in contrast, had a longish intro chapter, followed by lit review and theory chapters (and possibly a stand-alone methods chapter - I can't remember). Then I had two empirical chapters followed by a chapter to discuss the results and their implications and, finally, a conclusion. I published the two empirical chapters as stand-alone articles down the line.

[research_prof]

If by "article-based" dissertation you practically mean putting the papers you have published together, write an intro and a conclusions sections, and submit your dissertation, then yes, it is very common in my STEM field too.

[Puget]

As a broader point, it seems to me that, aside from early course work, we shouldn't be asking PhD students to write much of anything that isn't publishable. So in paper fields the dissertation should be papers and in book fields it should be a book, but it is practically malfeasance to make students write a book in a paper field-- it has no value for their CV and isn't even training them for something they will likely ever do again.