Should published work be equated with a doctorate?

Should published work be equated with a doctorate?
I 've come across a couple of interesting articles on this and we've heard of Ph.Ds by published works. But these programs are usually reserved for their own faculty and still require a substantial "jumping through Hoops" to achieve. What is the feeling about this -should people who hold a Masters degree in a discipline and have published several papers be given an opportunity to be considered for a doctorate?
Dr. Steve Draper in his paper Ph.Ds by Paublication at
http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/resources/phd.html
states "Quantity. An average conventional PhD may result in one journal paper (though many result in none). A researcher keen to push publications might get three out of a PhD. Some PhDs are turned into one book. So any PhD by publication that submits more than three papers has easily satisfied the quantity implicit criterion.

Quality. If the publications were peer-refereed then an examiner would be in a very poor position to argue against them of being of adequate quality for a PhD. To do so would be to show the examiner as preferring their personal opinions to those of the candidate's peers.
If the publications are in several different journals (or other refereed outlets) then that is a further good point, as it reduces the possibility of the work being accepted only by some small clique, or any possibility of cronyism.
If the publication outlets are of dubious quality or respectability, or are not peer-reviewed (e.g. they are books), then the examiners must judge each more carefully. However they cannot ask, under current typical regulations, for a rewrite if they feel the work is good but its reporting flawed. "
He makes an excellent case that Ph.D's by publication needs to be more flexible in his paper.
Another interesting paper is at:
:http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030214/cth2.htm

"Published work equated with PhD
Recruitment of PU teachers
Sanjeev Singh Bariana
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 13
Panjab University has equated published work with a doctorate degree PhD in all matters pertaining to recruitment to all posts in the university and affiliated colleges. The condition also extends recruitment of principals in all affiliated colleges of the university.

A committee that had Prof R.J.Hans Gill, the Dean University Instructions, as the Chairperson has made a recommendation to this regard. The committee members included Prof S.L. Sharma, Prof S.L. Kaushik, Prof R.K. Kohli and Mr R.P. Bedi. The recommendations come to the university syndicate for a final decision. For the work to be considered for the award of a PhD, the university has decided that the published work should include a minimum of five papers in journals of national or international standing or an original research-based book. This category would not include a textbook or an edited volume.

The work under consideration will be referred to subject experts who will be nominated by the Vice-Chancellor. These experts will be from outside the jurisdiction of the university but from the same discipline. The experts’ comments and records would be placed before the selection committee for the final verdict.

The committee was constituted by the university following a letter from the University Grants Commission. It was clarified that one of the essential qualifications namely “PhD qualification or equivalent qualification” should be read as “PhD or equivalent published work”. The universities were asked to frame guidelines as per provisions in their Acts and statutes to establish the equivalence of the published work with the PhD. It is, however, felt that the university will have to be careful about standards to be set for equating the published work with a doctorate degree. A senior faculty member felt that in the languages, particularly, it would be difficult to set the equating standards. In the sciences and the social sciences the step was seen as an encouragement for original ideas. A senior research scholar said that the university should also look into giving the weightage to all academic qualifications separately before one went in for the interview. This would make the process of selection easier when a candidate went in for the final interview. This would mean that the candidate’s marks in the graduation and post graduation, besides the quantity and quality of published works and PhD, should be separately given."

Should a person be able to submit 3-5 papers that have been published in lieu of a dissertation/thesis and be evaluated for a Ph.D? Or should the supervised 3-5 year 80,000 word dissertation remain the standard.

 

If the publications are scholarly, if they've been refereed, if they can be strung together to form a unified contribution to the field, and if their compilation adds up, then sure. But I suspect most schools doing this would also require a considerable tretise that threads the works together and forms some sort of uber-conclusion and contribution.

It's gotta add up.

 

Maybe.

That depends on who is doing the equating and on what they are looking for. It depends on the nature and content of the publications. There's lot of variables.

I'm sure that in some contexts accomplishments speak much louder than degrees.

I'm not sure that I agree with that. I've read lots of papers, some in peer-reviewed publications, that don't amount to a whole lot. They certainly weren't a contribution equivalent to a dissertation.

Now the question isn't whether or not published work is equivalent to a doctorate, but whether papers should substitute for a dissertation in a doctoral program.

I guess that would depend on whether or not the content of the papers and the details of how they were produced included everything that universities are looking for in a dissertation.

 

Writing a dissertation is a deliciously agonizing distraction. Even if PhD by publication is an option, I strongly suggest going the dissertation route instead, for several reasons:

1. It provides an opportunity to bring past publication into clean, clear focus, in a cohesive presentation.

2. It provides an opportunity to re-examine "Future Work" sections of past papers and decide if that future work still needs to be done. (Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't -- if it does -- one can now do it. If it doesn't, one can explain why it doesn't and defend that -- more fodder for the dissertation.)

3. It provides an opportunity to respond to any critique or comment one may have received in citations by other scholars.

4. It provides an opportunity to end up with a single end-result, rather than a scattered collection of related end-results. (Thus making it easier to introduce others to the totality of the work.)

5. Monumental tasks of singular focus embiggen the soul.

Ask me once I've reached that damned ellusive half-way point (it keeps getting closer -- one sentence at a time), and my opinion may be different.

 

Addendum

Addendum:

7. Literature searches for papers tend to focus on recent work. Literature searches for dissertations (at least in CS) sometimes have to go back to first principles. Thus, the depth of the dissertation is far deeper than might be required for a series of papers.

 

Hi Quinn: Good post on a good thread. Embiggen??? Yow!

 

That word comes from the animated series The Simpsons.

The word even has its own website:

http://www.embiggens.com/

 

I agree in principle to what has been said overall but I would dispute a few points. Dr. Draper states in his paper:
"Impact on a field is not a relevant criterion for a conventional PhD because impact cannot have emerged when it is submitted, but it is clearly of possible relevance to a PhD by publication. If the impact is clear and large, is it appropriate to demand a large essay, when the compelling argument for impact can be made in a sentence or a page? And if there is impact, then the need for critical self-appraisal seems of little importance since others have clearly done this. Do we want a PhD by publication that would not be automatically awarded to the most important research contributors? Should we insist on candidates jumping through academic hoops, even in cases where that has no value at all for their contribution to knowledge? "

If a person writes a 3 page paper that contributes new knowledge to a field that is published in a trade journal or magazine and read by hundereds or thousands of people isn't that more impactful than an unpublished 300 page dissertation?
Given that most dissertations that are published produce 1-3 publications it would appear alot of dissertations contain alot of "filler" to meet the length requirement required by the university. An abstract can sum up the meaningfull part of most papers.
Is the pupose of the Doctorate for the pursuer, society as a whole , or both? Is it for his gaining of knowledge ,or to provide as Dr. Draper states: It must constitute a contribution to knowledge. That is, it must be original (offering something not offered before), though that might be very different in different cases e.g. new empirical work, new deductive work e.g. a mathematical proof, new arguments, etc.
It must show awareness of, and give the reader a lot of support in forming their own judgement on this, where it stands in relation to other published work: what its nearest neighbours in the literature are, in what ways it is distinctive (original, different, ....)."
Many "professional doctorates" now allow a project in liew of dissertion. A project is still a scholarly work but might not be at the same level of depth as the dissertation.
The standard for a person who submits 5 short papers to be reviewed as doctorally equivalent by Punjab university in social sciences is judged not by length but by " encouragement for original ideas" as well as general qualifications.
I am not against long dissertations.( I've never been disciplined enough to pursue one) . I certainly respect and admire those who have finished one and obtained a doctorate. But I see the impact on the field of study's new knowledge as more relevant than the process used to get there. If you can do this in 10 pages then why write 200?

 

It can be considered for the dissertation. Consider the linked article as an example. Granted, it was a book manuscript and not a piece of published work.

http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/06/2005060801c.htm

 

Laferney said:

There's more to the dissertation than the original contribution. The original contribution, in fact, accounts for about 1 of 5 criteria to be met, and although important, the other 4 are also important.

The dissertation demonstrates that the scholar can:

1. Sustain a single track of research through from start to finish.

2. Present the results of such a sustained effort in a scholarly
manner in keeping with the form/methods of the chosen discipline.

3. Audit prior knowledge in the field and at the fringes of the field (breadth and depth), as well as the standard methodologies of the field.

4. Identify questions to be answered in the discipline and answer one of the more significant ones (using a defensible methodology or methodologies).

5. Pave a road for future scholarly work in the field.

While all of these points can be accomplished in other ways, the single most coherent way to do so is by means of a dissertation.

The bibliography alone can be 10 pages in length.

By publication certainly has a place -- probably for more mature (55+) candidates. A classical dissertation, however, is designed to answer those 5 points in a much more systematic fashion.

 

You make a convincing argument -especially in the amount of research done to produce the dissertation.
Maybe there could be an academic award available for those prolific authors who contribute several innovative ideas to their field but not at the depth of a dissertation? Europe offers "professional doctorates" for research and projects done in the workplace. Maybe we have that model in the USA -where one obtains a Master's degree in his or her field and publishes so many papers in refeered or professional journals to show new contribution to the field, then is awarded a non Ph.D doctorate. A Doctor of Professional Studies is awarded by Middlesex U. on the UK . It is described as: While PhD theses typically make an original contribution to knowledge, the DProf is more concerned with making a significant contribution to practice: it requires high-level practical action, resulting for instance in significant change or development in an organisation or community of practice"
A series of papers that contribute to a profession's growth or practice might meet the needs of those non dissertation people who like to write and publish.

 

Hi - I believe this award already exists. It's called
A JOB!!!
Jack

 

Can't tell if you're response is sarcastic or funny , Jack.
Writing scholarly papers is not a requirement of most jobs unless you're in the academic world.. I know in several medical areas a big focus now is evidence -based research and practice. Nurses, in particular, not the nurses in academia, the one's in real practice ,are being encouraged to document and publish based on real practice. What is wrong with a practice based doctoral degree in a real work setting? Front line people often aren't interested in research-it would be seen as one more thing to do by nurses who are already overburdened. To reward these efforts and contributions to the profession with a "degree" would certainly be an incentive.
I have known Ph.D holders who have been unemployed or wind up working in an area not in their specialty. So their reward for sacrificing 5 years of their life was certainly not their job.

 

There are some workplaces where any kind of interest beyond what one does day to day is considered something to be squashed out of a person.

I remember my first commercial software day-to-day. First day on the job, a co-worker said to me:

"Quinn -- let me tell you now -- all your outside interests -- you will end up giving them up. It's nice to have them -- but they're memories now."

He was wrong -- but the attitude he showed turned out to not be rare. Even my novel writing was frowned upon by some. It's seen as a "distraction" (but it's not like I wrote novels at work).

Being seen as doing something (other than what one does from nine to five) to a level that it gets recognized (such as by an award) is often not cool with the powers that be.

It shouldn't be that way -- but it sometimes is.

(I'm not just guessing -- I've been so much as told that it has cost me in my career to have a wide variety of non-9-to-5 interests.)

 

This is opposed to my workplace where strong outside interests are encouraged as they clearly represent stress management strategies and lend themselves to longevity in the workplace. There are also some whose "outside interests" are clearly their inside interests. By which I mean that their primary interests in life are their "recreational interests." This might be art, mountaineering, bowling, writing or even something exotic, like parenting. It's all good.
Jack

 

I agree. Oftentimes what has kept me from going "nuts" at work is exactly the fact that I am able to get what "the job doesn't give me" by simply going home and doing some research of my own. I don't need a job that gives me those things during the day -- the day job is rewarding in its own way.

As this relates to professional doctorates, I am of the opinion that doctoral work should be above and beyond one's career tasks, but this is just my opinion. I've never been much on the idea that the things one does at work map well to academic correlatives. What one does at work might map well, but even if it does, the processes are entirely different in many cases, even if the outcomes are close.

And the process (method) is an important part of what a doctoral path is about. People who do exceptionally well at something in the workplace may only know what works, but not what fails. They may be very successful "one trick ponies" on a very long and successful trick.