converting phd thesis to journal article

• Publication Process

How to Write a Journal Article from a Thesis

• 3 minute read

Table of Contents

You are almost done with your PhD thesis and want to convert it into a journal article. Or, you’re initiating a career as a journal writer and intend to use your thesis as a starting point for an article. Whatever your situation, turning a thesis into a journal article is a logical step and a process that eventually every researcher completes. But…how to start?

The first thing to know about converting a thesis into a journal article is how different they are:

Thesis Characteristics:

• Meets academic requirements
• Reviewed by select committee members
• Contains chapters
• Lengthy, no word limits
• Table of contents
• Lengthy research of literature
• IRB approval described in detail
• Description and copies of tools used
• All findings presented
• Verb tenses may vary

Journal Article Characteristics:

• Meets journalistic standards
• Reviewed by a panel of “blind” reviewers
• Word limits
• Manuscript format
• Succinct research of literature
• IRB described in 1 to 3 sentences
• Essential and succinct tool information
• Selected findings presented
• Verb tenses are fairly consistent

Converting your thesis to a journal article may be complex, but it’s not impossible.

A thesis is a document of academic nature, so it’s more detailed in content. A journal article, however, is shorter, highlighting key points in a more succinct format. Adapting a thesis for conversion into a journal article is a time-consuming and intricate process that can take you away from other important work. In that case, Elsevier’s Language Editing services may help you focus on important matters and provide a high-quality text for submission in no time at all.

If you are going to convert a thesis into a journal article, with or without professional help, here is a list of some of the steps you will likely have to go through:

1. Identify the best journal for your work

• Ensure that your article is within the journal’s aim and scope. How to find the right journal? Find out more .
• Check the journal’s recommended structure and reference style

2. Shorten the length of your thesis

• Treat your thesis as a separate work
• Paraphrase but do not distort meaning
• Select and repurpose parts of your thesis

3. Reformat the introduction as an abstract

• Shorten the introduction to 100-150 words, but maintain key topics to hold the reader’s attention.
• Use the introduction and discussion as basis for the abstract

4. Modify the introduction

• If your thesis has more than one research question or hypothesis, which are not all relevant for your paper, consider combining your research questions or focusing on just one for the article
• Use previously published papers (at least three) from the target journal as examples

5. Tighten the methods section

• Keep the discussion about your research approach short

6. Report main findings in the results

• Expose your main findings in the results section in concise statements

7. Discussion must be clear and concise

• Begin by providing an interpretation of your results: “What is it that we have learned from your research?”
• Situate the findings to the literature
• Discuss how your findings expand known or previous perspectives
• Briefly present ways in which future studies can build upon your work and address limitations in your study

8. Limit the number of references

• To choose the most relevant and recent
• To format them correctly
• Consider using a reference manager system (e.g. Mendeley ) to make your life easier

If you are not a proficient English speaker, the task of converting a thesis into a journal article might make it even more difficult. At Elsevier’s Language Editing services we ensure that your manuscript is written in correct scientific English before submission. Our professional proofers and editors check your manuscript in detail, taking your text as our own and with the guarantee of maximum text quality.

Language editing services by Elsevier Author Services:

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How to Submit a Paper for Publication in a Journal

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6 Simple Steps to Convert a PhD Thesis Into a Journal Article

What can you do with your PhD manuscript after years of research, sweat, tears (at least that was my case) and revisions? Put it on your mom’s bookcase to proudly showcase to all her friends? Use it as a book stopper? As the world of academia involves attracting funds, research, and publishing, you may find yourself asking, is turning your dissertation into a publishable journal article possible? Yes, definitely yes!

The world has become more fast-paced and competitive, and academia is no different. Today, the concept of ‘publish or perish’ has led to a massive pressure to publish your academic work in order to succeed in the world of scholarly research. The advantages are clear, turning a thesis into a journal article is the best opportunity to present your work to a wider audience, which can get you the funds you need for further research and also act as a great marketing tool for job seekers. This constant pressure to publish can hurt quality, however, your PhD thesis has gone through multiple rounds of revisions by supervisors and reviewers to ensure it meets the high quality benchmarks required to earn your doctoral degree. So, converting a thesis to a journal article should be easy, right? Sometimes it is, but not always.

The good thing is that, in most cases, you will be able to publish more than one article from your thesis (I did so by avoiding plagiarism and without overlapping any of the content across the articles). However, there are a few things to consider. First, the legalities of publishing your thesis; most journals will have no issues with this but it is good practice to mention the work in the credits or in the cover letter. Second, the practicalities, which I will cover herewith. A journal article generally presents a rationale from which a research gap was identified, then how the study intends to fill it, the methods, results and discussion, and often a conclusion. This is also included in a PhD thesis. So why don’t we go straight from the degree approval to the submission page of a target journal? It all comes down to the length! PhD theses vary from subject to subject, but they are far longer than a journal article, probably over 10 times the length needed for an article. Here are a few best practices to help you convert your thesis into a journal article

Get the basics right . Does your PhD thesis cover more than one aspect of your research topic? Then each topic should be treated as an independent theme for a journal article. That is, each chapter could potentially be turned into separate journal articles once you make the necessary modifications to comply with structural guidelines (i.e., abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussions).

Focus on the specifics. When describing the methods, a PhD thesis requires all the specifics, but journal articles can make use of citations to reduce the word count, so effectively cite known approaches or standard laboratory procedures.

Paraphrase effectively . The content in a PhD thesis are expected to be thorough, but journal articles shouldn’t be wordy. So paraphrase content from your thesis; I normally discourage direct quotations, so write concise alternatives using your own words to express meaning.

Get some perspective. Discuss what you’re doing with your supervisors and other colleagues that contributed to the work. This may be obvious but they have walked the road longer than you and will be able to provide some great advice.

Consider writing a review article. The work done on understanding a research topic is remarkably time-consuming, and often covers a wide breadth of knowledge. This can be turned into a review article where you summarize the latest contributions to the field. I published one review from my PhD work considering that during the background review process, I decided to focus on a slightly different direction for my work, and it is today my best effort in converting my thesis to a journal article. One thing to remember is that although review articles do not report original research, they can analyze and often link various studies in an innovative way to promote future research.

Select your target journal carefully. We may all want to publish in a high-impact journal, but if the basics of your research are not well covered by the aims and scope of the journal, you will face a rejection even before your article is sent for review. Read the journal guidelines carefully to comply with all the requirements.

We hope these tips help you turn your PhD masterpiece into a publishable journal article. The work is sound, the background is comprehensive, so jump in. You are ready to step into the next level of building your publication list. Good luck!

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• Writing Tips

How to Turn Your Thesis into a Journal Article

4-minute read

• 11th September 2019

If you are writing a PhD thesis , you may be thinking about how to get your work published when you’re done. One option is to convert your thesis – or part of your thesis – into an academic journal article .

And if you want to do this, you’ll need to:

• Pick a journal with a scope that matches your research interests.
• Decide which parts of your thesis you want to use for the article.
• Think about whether to co-author the article with someone else.
• Check the journal publisher’s website for author instructions.
• Have the article proofread by an academic editor.

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail to see how the process works.

1. Pick a Journal

To maximize your chances of publication, pick a suitable journal. The journal’s scope – i.e., the kind of work it publishes – is the most important factor here.

Specialist journals with a narrower scope may be more open to submissions from early career academics than larger, multidisciplinary journals (simply because there is more competition for Nature than, say, the American Journal of Potato Research ). But the most important thing is that your work fits the research interests and approaches of the publishing journal.

Other things to consider when choosing a journal include:

• Article rejection rate.
• Journal metrics (e.g., the impact factor ).
• Journal reputation (e.g., the turnaround times for acceptance/publication).

For more advice, check out the Think. Check. Submit. campaign.

2. Plan Turning Your Thesis into a Journal Article

A PhD thesis is, typically, a long, detailed account of your research. By comparison, a journal article will usually be more focused.

As such, part of turning your thesis into a journal article involves deciding what you will include. This could be a case of setting out your overall argument in clear, concise terms. Or it could be looking for parts of your PhD research that you could use for standalone articles.

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When planning your article, you will therefore need to:

• Have a clearly defined research question.
• Find the parts of your thesis that are most relevant to your question.
• Summarize the aims, methods, results, and outcomes involved.
• Rewrite key sections to make them self-standing.
• Tweak the article to fit the journal requirements.

The first step, then, is creating a paper outline with the factors above in mind.

3. Consider Co-Authorship

If anyone else made a significant contribution to your research, such as your PhD supervisor, you may want to ask them about co-authoring your article. As well as ensuring academic fairness – i.e., crediting them for the contribution they made – this has a couple of distinct advantages:

• You can benefit from their experience of publishing academic work.
• Having an established name with a good reputation in your field of study on the paper may boost your chances of publication.

Remember, though, anyone credited as an author on an article must have made a significant contribution . If they have not, you may want to mention them in a footnote or an “Acknowledgements” section instead.

4. Check the Author Instructions

Before writing your article, check the journal publisher’s website for author instructions. These should tell you all you need to know about:

• The journal’s submission guidelines (e.g., review by an ethics committee).
• The journal’s style requirements (e.g., word count, terminology)

Make sure to follow these guidelines when preparing your journal article.

5. Have Your Article Proofread

Finally, once you have drafted an article, have someone check it.

Asking a colleague is a good first step, as they may have feedback on content. But you’ll also want to ask a professional proofreader to review your document before submission, thus ensuring it is typo free.

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Research Guides

Submit and publish your thesis.

• The Graduate Thesis: What is it?
• Thesis Defences
• Deadlines and Fees
• Formatting in MS Word
• Formatting in LaTeX
• Making Thesis Accessible
• Thesis Embargo
• Review and Release
• Your Rights as an Author
• Re-using Third Party Materials
• Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
• Turning Thesis into an Article
• Turning Thesis into a Book
• Other Venues of Publication

Turning Your Thesis into an Article

Creating an article from your thesis means more than just copying and pasting. The audience for the thesis is your committee whereas for an article it may be fellow researchers, professionals working in the field, policy makers, educators, or the general audience. Your article manuscript will need to be modified accordingly. This section is based on Extracting a journal article from your thesis from Taylor & Francis publishing tips for authors.

Plan the article

Identify the central message that you want to get across. This could be a new theory, novel methodology or original findings. Make sure that your article follows a coherent argument and targets the journal audience.

Decide on the kind of article you want to write - will it be a report, position paper, critique or review? What makes your argument or research interesting? How might it add value to the field?

Select a journal

Selecting the right journal means reaching the audience you intend for your article to speak to. To start identifying potential journals:

• Look at your own bookshelf / reference list. Where have authors published on similar topics?
• Search the library catalogue
• Consult Ulrich’s Web serials database  (subscription resource)
• For open access journals specifically - search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• For student journals - see the Directory of Student Journals at UofT
• Talk to your advisor, colleagues or  liaison librarians

Automatic journal finders can recommend a journal based on your manuscript title/abstract:

• Jane: the Journal/Author Name Estimator
• Enago Open Access Journal Finder
• Elsevier journal finder  

To further narrow down the list:

• Study the “Aim and Scope” or similar section on editorial policies on the website to evaluate the fit and any specific content requirements;
• Skim through past issues, abstracts, table of contents - are there similar papers that have been published?
• How will your paper be reviewed? The journal’s website should mention the details of peer review process;
• Check details of copyright / license agreements and whether publication before or after your thesis submission is allowed .

Is it a trusted journal or publisher?

How to identify a deceptive publisher? See the Deceptive Publishing Checklist created by U of T.

Write the article

You may choose to approach writing your thesis with an aim to publish it as an article or several articles, known as an integrated/publication-based/sandwich thesis. Alternatively, you can reformat and convert your completed thesis into an article to fit the scope and style of a journal article. In both cases it will be helpful to:

• Carefully read and follow “Author Guidelines” for instructions on on preferred layout, word limits, reference style
• Use the criteria the reviewers will use and make sure your article addresses them
• Request and consider the input of your supervisor, colleagues, or other contributors to the research on which your thesis is based
• Reach out to friends or colleagues to prood-read your manuscript prior to submission

Additional resources on converting your thesis into an article:

• Adapting a Dissertation or Thesis Into a Journal Article by APA
• Eight top tips to help you turn your PhD thesis into an article by Elsevier
• Extracting a journal article from your thesis by Taylor & Francis
• << Previous: Publishing Your Thesis
• Next: Turning Thesis into a Book >>
• Last Updated: Sep 15, 2023 3:23 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/thesis

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How to Convert Your Dissertation into a Journal Article

Adapting your thesis into a shorter article.

Converting your dissertation into a shorter academic article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal is a daunting task that is rarely addressed in the realm of academia. 

Many junior academics face challenges when embarking on this process, among them: writer’s block, fear of rejection, and criticism. Familiarize yourself with this important roadmap that outlines how to effectively condense your dissertation into a publishable journal article. You can increase your chances of publication success, as either a novice or seasoned researcher and author, by following these tips below:

Journal identification

First, do a quick self-assessment. Are you fully informed about the specific criteria required to evaluate a scholarly journal’s credibility ? It is important to keep in mind that your journal should: 

• Be peer-reviewed
• Have a high academic rigor, ranking, and reputation
• Be indexed in databases that are credible and recognized in the field
• Be in collaboration with editorial board members who are affiliated with reputable, prestigious academic institutions or universities, and
• Have a minimum of 30% acceptance rate criteria or below

Shortening your thesis

Having a strong story with a unique and authentic voice is pivotal for a successful academic publication. Check whether you will be able to turn your original extensive research, which undoubtedly embodies an engaging story, into a shorter and to-the-point academic narrative. 

Manuscript reformat

You should have a clear understanding of the differences between a master’s thesis (or a doctoral dissertation) and a journal article in terms of their format , content, and organization. While a dissertation is process-oriented, a journal article is content-oriented. Also, unless advised otherwise by your journal’s format guidelines, your manuscript’s length should generally vary from 3,000 to 5,000 words and your required academic writing manuals should be the most recent edition of the APA writing style (7 th edition) or an alternative writing manual recommended to authors by your target journal (e.g., MLA, Chicago, Harvard, etc.).

Adapt your story arc 

The structure of the story in a journal article will be significantly different from that crafted in an academic thesis or a dissertation. For example, keep the literature review section in your journal manuscript relatively brief. When crafting a journal article, focus on the following: 

• Theoretical/conceptual framework, and
• Significance and contribution to the field and to the literature.

Your article’s section structure

Develop a clear understanding of how the structure of your journal article should be established. For example, your manuscript should generally comprise three sections. See the specific elements you should include in each part:

Introduction

• Introduction and the context of your research
• Problem statement
• Research questions (for qualitative studies) or hypotheses (for quantitative research)
• Study’s significance to the field
• Conceptual/theoretical framework
• Review of the literature

Method and Design

• Population and sample size 
• Procedures of data collection and analysis (i.e., tools, instruments, and materials to gather, analyze, and synthesize data)
• Validity, reliability, generalizability, transferability, and replicability
• Discussions
• Comparison and contrast with the current body of literature
• Implications
• Challenges and limitations
• Recommendations or directions for future research 
• Conclusions
• A-ha moments, lessons learned, messages to take in a to-go box, etc.

Thus, whether a novice or an expert author, always ask yourself if you have a thorough comprehension of how to properly incorporate these essential components of each of the three parts into your academic manuscript. 

Identify your target audience 

Identify who will be reading your work. Do a detailed inquiry of who will benefit from your work, as the goal is for your research to contribute to your field’s literature. Once your target readers are identified, set out to write each part of your journal article accordingly.

Final words

In this blog entry, we have provided you with practical recommendations when setting out to craft your article for publication in a reputable journal. They will guide you in the right direction before, during, and after the writing process. We hope you will find them practical and helpful to get your own unique piece of scholarly work published sooner than anticipated.

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How to Turn Your Thesis Into a Journal Article

In many cases, publishing thesis is often one of the requirements for graduate students to finish their academic program. Publishing research findings is one of the more important ways to share research data with the scientific community. However, the structure of it is different from that of a research article. In this article, we shall discuss how to turn your thesis to journal article.

Characteristics of a Thesis and a Journal Article

Differences between a thesis and a journal article.

While both contain similar sections, you cannot simply publish your thesis research as a journal article. Converting it into a journal article has many steps. It is important to recognize that an article is much shorter than the thesis. However, turning your thesis into a journal article will not be a simple matter of copy and paste. You will need to use the data in your thesis as the starting point for writing your article.

Related: Planning to publish your Ph.D. research in a good journal? Check these journal selection guidelines now!

The  many differences  between a thesis research and a journal article are as follows:

• A thesis meets academic requirements while a journal article meets journalistic standards.
• The abstract of an article is usually shorter than that of a thesis.
• The introduction in a thesis is used to show that you are familiar with the literature in your chosen field. In a research paper , the introduction is much shorter as it is assumed that your target audience is familiar with the necessary background to understand your work. The introduction to your paper will, therefore, focus more on setting the stage for the data/research output that you are about to present.
• The results section in a thesis will include all your findings. In a paper, this would be too much detail. The data in this section should be only what you need to support your research problem or hypothesis. Often, the results in former may represent two to three different papers.
• The discussion in your paper will be much more focused than in your thesis. It will be guided by the results presented in the paper. Finally, only citations of articles actually mentioned in your paper will be listed in the references section.

Turning Thesis Research to Journal Article

As a researcher, you need to publish your work to advance your career and make contributions to the research field. Now that the differences have been outlined, how do you actually write one?

1. Identify a Suitable Journal

You could start by  journal selection . Look at your reference list. Chances are at least some of the papers you read were published in journals whose scope would match your work. Selecting a journal also allows you to tailor the paper to the specific requirements of that journal. Ensure that your research article coincides with the aim and scope of the journal. Understand the journal’s guidelines, recommended manuscript structure, and reference style

2. Reduce Redundant Length of Your Thesis

An important aspect of turning your thesis research to journal article is focusing on the word count without deleting crucial information. In order reduce word count , extract the data that answers just one research question. This should result in a more focused information than your thesis research presented. Discuss results in context with your problem statement-that is the focus of your paper. Good language and structure are crucial – your paper may get rejected even though it contains valuable data if it is difficult to understand. Use your data to tell a coherent story and avoid sweeping conclusions your data cannot support. Ensure that your title matches the contents of your paper. Paraphrase the content without changing the meaning.

3. Modify Introduction as Abstract

Repurpose the introduction as an abstract by shortening your thesis introduction to 100-150 words. Remember to maintain key points of the introduction to hold the reader’s attention. Formulate the introduction and discussion of thesis as basis for the journal article’s abstract. Furthermore, consider combining multiple research questions or focus on just one for the journal article.

4. Focus on Relevant and Selective Information

Since the discussion, methods and methodology, and results section of your thesis is an in-detail explanation of your research, these sections must be kept short while writing in a journal article.  Familiarize yourself with the target journal’s standards by referring previously published papers and understanding their format. Most importantly, provide interpretation of main findings in the results section in concise statements or tabular formats. Avoid repeating your results in the discussion section. However, discuss how your findings expand and support previous perspectives of the research. Finally, mention how future studies can build upon your work and address limitations in your study.

5. Limit the Number of References

As your thesis is a work of several years put together, it involves numerous literature reviewing. However, while turning your thesis to journal article, you must include only limited references that are relevant to the research question addressed in the journal article. Focus on using most recent references. Consider using reference management tools such as Zotero, Mendeley, Quiqqa, etc. to make the referencing process easier and efficient.

It is an academic requirement that you publish your data for the benefit of the scientific community. Considering that the structure of journal article is different from the structure of a thesis, turning a thesis to journal article must be done following logical steps as mentioned above.

Did you ever have to convert your thesis to journal article? How did you plan it? What strategies did you use while reducing the word count of your thesis? Let us know in the comments section below! You can also visit our  Q&A forum  for frequently asked questions related to different aspects of research writing and publishing answered by our team that comprises subject-matter experts, eminent researchers, and publication experts.

I was Searching For This From So Many days. Thank you for Sharing

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

Are we also going to talk Code of Conduct in Research, as authorship is part of the conduct (ethics)?

Regards, Elvia

I guess you are referring to our upcoming webinar on Assigning Authorship & Contributorship | Tips for Researchers. We will be discussing the ethical dilemmas in authorship during the session.

We would request you to register and attend the webinar for additional insights on this topic.

Meanwhile, we would recommend you to share your queries with us on our FREE Q&A forum . In addition, you may download our FREE mobile app to stay updated on the latest resources in research writing and academic publishing.

What about the Topic? we need to rephrase the topic or keep it same with Thesis topic?

Hi Shahid, Thank you for your question. Your thesis topic would be a cumulative title for all the chapters described in your thesis. When you publish your thesis as a journal article, every chapter would be published as an individual article in most cases. You may or may not use the same title that you have used for that particular chapter in the thesis. Your thesis would have chapter names that are more suited to the overall objective of your thesis. On the other hand, your manuscript should ideally have a catchy and search-optimized title highlighting a general perspective. It may not be the same as your thesis title. However, if your thesis chapter title meets the requirement of the manuscript you intend to publish, you can go ahead with the same.

You could also go through our articles on writing good research paper titles: https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-tips-on-choosing-an-attractive-research-title/ https://www.enago.com/academy/writing-a-good-research-title-things-to-avoid/ https://www.enago.com/academy/write-irresistible-research-paper-title/

Did you get a chance to install our FREE mobile app . Make sure you subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.enago.com/academy/subscribe-now/ .

Hi Dr. Durga, Amazing article and I am sure it will surely help the writers to write more carefully and also plagiarised free.

Greeting from Enago Academy! Thank you for your positive comment. We are glad to know that you found our resources useful. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Happy reading!

i just read the article and also the comments section it’s so helpful. thank you so much for sharing it.. good work!

Thanks a lot for this informational blog which surely going to help the students pursuing the Phd. Nowdays due to assignment burden students started taking the help of professional academic experts. There are many writing services.

Thank you for the very useful article. I will definitely look into it.

Writing a book: needed advice and help at one point. I found enago academy in my search of Answers. You were a Great Help! I hope to use your services again, if I am stuck on correct writing principles! Thank You for being here. K.R. Plante

This helped me a lot; thank you for this informative article.

Thanks for writing such an informative blog which will surely be a great help for the students as well as the institutions

Great article! One question…. should I cite the thesis in the paper? If so, how do I do that efficiently since it would be all over the place?

good, insightful piece of text.

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How To Transform a PhD Thesis into Journal Articles

Posted by Rene Tetzner | Feb 23, 2021 | How To Get Published | 0 |

How To Transform a PhD Thesis into Journal Articles Assuming that you have now chosen the most interesting and innovative aspect of your thesis to develop into an article and copied into a new file the material that you think might prove useful as you write your article, what should you do with it all? The answer will depend to some extent on the content and structure required by the journal(s) to which you would like to submit the paper, but still more important is what you want your paper to be and do.  

There are two especially important questions here: What do you wish to achieve by publishing the paper? And what kind of argument do you wish to make with the material you have chosen to discuss? Do you want, for instance, to build on current theories by either confirming or contradicting them? Do you intend to apply theories and results to real-life situations? Do you feel the need to report new discoveries and vital information to your scholarly community as quickly as possible? Will the argument you have made in your thesis about the material you plan to use in your paper be appropriate for the paper or will a slightly (or even very) different argument be more effective for this material now that it is isolated from the rest of the thesis? Remember that there is no need to repeat the argument(s) you constructed in your thesis, and revisions even to central claims of that thesis may prove effective. Your article will, after all, be an original piece of work that is for your readers (if not yourself) completely separate from your thesis, and it will be a better paper if you focus on developing a single compelling argument based on the material you have chosen to isolate.   

You will also need to provide a framework for the research you are borrowing and rewriting from your thesis. In a doctoral thesis there is usually considerable space in which to outline and review previous scholarship along with other background information, as well as to describe and discuss your methodology and its implications at length. The material for your paper has been severed from this larger framework, however, so it will require a new and more concise framework if it is to stand on its own as a complete article. Background scholarship should, for instance, be dealt with much more briefly, with the focus being to inform readers concisely about how your work in the article (not the thesis) fits into that scholarship, so source references will usually be limited to those specifically relevant to the material in the paper. Your methodology will still require careful and detailed description, but here, too, brevity should be combined with a precise focus on the research presented in the article. In short, the material you use from your thesis will need to appear in a tighter, thinner and more controlled theoretical and methodological framework than that used in your thesis, yet this framework will nonetheless need to provide everything necessary for readers to be able to understand the research reported in your article and its significance.

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How to create a journal article from a thesis

Affiliation.

• 1 School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Queensland, Australia. [email protected]
• PMID: 22866554
• DOI: 10.7748/nr2012.07.19.4.21.c9220

Aim: To identify strategies to assist in the publication of research arising from a postgraduate thesis or dissertation.

Background: There are many benefits to publishing a journal article from a completed thesis, including contributing knowledge to the writer's chosen field, career enhancement and personal satisfaction. However, there are also numerous obstacles for the newly graduated student in crafting an article fit for a specialist publication from a thesis.

Data sources: The author conducted a search of the title, abstract and keywords of the Cinahl, Scopus and Proquest databases, from 1990 to 2010: The author searched for the words: 'journal article' or 'manuscript; 'thesis' or 'dissertation'.

Review methods: The author excluded papers if: they pertained to allocation of authorship to someone other than the academic adviser; related to undergraduate issues rather than graduate dissertations; were discussions of the merits of a PhD by 'publication' instead of 'by thesis'; were not published in a peer-reviewed journal; or were not in English.

Conclusion: The relationship between adviser and student changes as the student becomes a graduate, and new roles for the student and adviser need to be negotiated.

Implications for research/practice: Students need to realise that writing a paper from a thesis is usually going to be more difficult than they anticipate, but the application of strategies discussed in this paper should make the task manageable. Furthermore, universities might wish to consider alternatives in which published papers emerge before the examination of a thesis, such as requiring students to write a paper as part of their coursework.

• Academic Dissertations as Topic*
• Nursing Research*
• Periodicals as Topic*
• Publishing*

CONVERT YOUR PHD THESIS INTO JOURNAL ARTICLES

Researchers are under immense pressure to publish. Without publications your career will stagnate and you could find yourself unemployed and unemployable. This difficult situation is often described as “Publish or Perish.” A simple way to get early publications is to convert your PhD thesis into journal articles.

There is significant effort involved to publish PhD thesis work, but the vast majority of the work is already done. You reviewed the literature, planned and carried out the experiment, analyzed the data, and made conclusions. However, writing a thesis is different than writing a journal article. In this guide, we offer tips on how to convert your PhD thesis into journal articles.

Is this Self-Plagiarism?

Self-plagiarism is the reuse of one’s own work. Journals are very active in preventing this type of academic fraud. Logically you are wondering whether converting your thesis into journal articles is indeed self-plagiarism.

Though each journal will have their own specific take on this, generally this is not considered self-plagiarism. In most cases, the copyright for a thesis remains with you, the author. Additionally, the journal articles will be substantially different from your thesis. You may combine chapters, update the literature cited, change the scope to reflect the journal’s audience, and significantly rewrite the text.

It is best practice to cite your thesis, where appropriate, in your journal articles. Also, be up front with the editor when you submit your paper and tell them that you converted portions of your PhD thesis into the article. They can offer guidance.

Experimental Chapters

A good place to start your conversion is to look at each experimental chapter – the chapters describing your methods and research findings. Often, each experimental chapter can be a standalone research article. Reread each experimental chapter and determine if there is enough data to be a research article. If not, try combining experimental chapters together until you have a good enough ‘story’ to be a research article.

Next, you will need to convert these thesis chapters in the actual research articles. Journals have a rigid structure that must be followed. Typically:

Introduction Materials and Methods Results Discussion Conclusions

Journals also have strict word limits, therefore it is likely that you will need to cut out a lot of text during the conversion. Update the introduction and discussion with relevant information and citations to the target audience of the journal. Often, thesis chapters can include very basic information. Know your audience and write for them. Also remember to be concise.

If you are combining experimental chapters, remove redundancies, especially in the materials and methods, results, and discussion. Convert text into figures and tables where you can. Update existing figures and tables to conform with the journal guidelines and to include combined data from the multiple chapters. Be mindful of any figure and table limits of your target journal.

Literature Review

An often overlooked place to convert your thesis into journal articles is the literature review chapter. A lot of effort went into researching the relevant literature for your thesis work. Your academic supervisors and thesis committee members benefitted from reading your literature review, and other researchers in your field can too. You can turn this chapter into a standalone research article – a review article.

First, determine which portions of your literature are relevant. For example, if your thesis focused on a novel experimental method to measure X, then it could make sense to write a literature review about all techniques that measure X – including yours.

Next, pull out the relevant portions of your thesis and use them to form an outline for your literature review article. Modify the text to match your target audience (the journal audience). You will likely identify gaps in your outline. Research the current literature and fill them.

A PhD thesis can have many different reference sources, such as journal articles, books, conference proceedings, and dissertations. Be sure to update your references to include mainly peer-reviewed journal articles.

Publications are usually all that matters to advance your career as a researcher. A good place to start publishing is to convert your thesis into journal articles. By following this guide, you can take your experimental chapters, and your literature review and turn them into published journal articles.

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