Stirling PhD can do journal articles instead of thesis

PhD students will be able to obtain doctorates without completing the traditional 80,000-word dissertation in what is claimed to be a pioneering initiative by Stirling University.

Stirling said this week that it would offer PhD students the chance to submit a series of linked peer-reviewed journal articles instead of the standard thesis.

http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2037892

 

I've seen this approach in Holland too. I think it is way more difficult and complicated than getting a PhD the normal route itself. The competition to get published you face is fierce while doing your PhD you compete against yourself. I doubt they graduate many people, perhaps some who have tons of experience in research and works already at that level. My two cents.

 

Isn't this the same as a PHD by publication -which is offered at many European, Australian and other universiites around the world? A PhD by publication is usually a series of published papers (minimum 3-5) with a corresponding paper showing linkage- which can be quite a "mini-thesis" itself in some programs.
(Also called such things as "context document" or "critical essay" or "explanatory essay")
An excellent article on this is available at :

http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/resources/phd.html

How does the Stirling program differ from this-do they omit the corresponding paper and just use published articles or are both required?

 

This has been an option at UF for some time as well.

 

Actually, this seems like more work than a dissertation because one is refining a dissertation down into the publishable articles before they are published. To have a meaningful connecting narrative one might start with an almost complete dissertation and then disassemble it into the these publishable articles while "scrapping" the rest... Sure, you might be spinning off work in the beginning but you'll be working vigorously to get the pieces published. This is way harder than a dissertation, and for many topics in budding disciplines it will be nearly impossible to get several articles published in acceptable peer-reviewed journals. It seems like it would have to be an option to the dissertation and offered alongside.

Dave

 

It is more work. It also takes longer. By the time you submit an article for publication, get comments back from reviewers, submit with changes, get it reviewed again, about a year has already gone by. That's just for one article, not including the time writing it. To get a PhD this way, you usually need to have at least 4 published.

Also there's a cost issue. Many journals charge around $100 per page. For a DL student without grant support, that could be very costly.

 

Interesting. I thought the academic community frowned on "paying for publication."

Is it more common in certain disciplines than others?

Roscoe

 

So true. Sometimes it takes six month (or longer) to learn an article is rejected. I've read that the rejection rate for the top journals is extremely high.

I recently targeted a top journal in my field and received a rejection notice about four months after submission. After revising it a bit, I submitted the article to a smaller, lesser known journal. It's been accepted. But it will take about six months before it's published.

I'm working on a research doctorate (Pretoria) and I'm finding it more useful to write the thesis and then use portions of it for journal articles. A monograph is currently in the works, and a full-length book will follow after graduation.

Roscoe

 

This depends a lot on the quality of the journal. Many journals have little rejection rate.

I would disagree that is more work. The reality is that once you get one article approved, you can play with it and have another two more articles approved just by changing things around (not in the same journal).

The reality is that you need to publish at least few articles in order to have some credibility at the time of examination of the dissertation.

 

It's common in electronics. Many articles are by working engineers and the cost is picked up by the engineer's employer. Some journals will waive the fee for a person who don't have an employeer to pick up the cost.

 

Thanks, Gerry.

Roscoe