This stuff is genuine: https://www.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/doctorate/application-and-admission/vae-doctorate. But a lot of the stuff that you see on the web with "VAE degrees by experience" is not. "It is possible to obtain a doctorate through the Validation of Prior Experience (VAE) route. The candidate must have at least three years of professional research experience. They must demonstrate the match between their professional and personal experience and the content of the degree in question."
This is a prestigious school. Most of these doctorates are meant for university staff so they can get a doctorate. At some point, I tried several universities for the publication PhD or Higher Doctorate and most were unable to take non university staff, some mentioned that these were more like honorary doctorates only given to outstanding researchers and others were unwilling to do it because my research did not fit any available faculty expertise for evaluation. It is a lot easier just to do a doctorate from scratch that trying to find a short cut with these options. The papers normally would need to be in a similar subject, they need to satisfy a criteria in terms of indexing, impact factors, etc and they normally need to be authored as a first author or only author to count. There is also the timing factor as many only take papers up to 10 years old. If you already have a research path, just start from scratch and build a new dissertation. The main issue is money, most of these school charge small fortunes to international students for external PhDs. They are not really distance but external meaning that you are not required to be on campus but still expected to produce the research required. They normally require 3 papers for a PhD in a similar subject, this would normally take about 3 to 5 years if you know what you are doing. You can always aim for the leadership Doctorates that are just based on light academic work and a research project that normally is about 100 pages based on a company project and does no need to be published. If you browse in this forum, there is probably not even one person that has been able to profit from these opportunities from top universities like Oxford or his one at the Sorbonne. There are some people that have been able to get publication doctorates from places like Azteca or Nicaragua but with limitations of credibility and acceptability, many people have problems getting NACES evaluations from Azteca or Nicaragua that accept PhDs by publication only.
