By now, we're all familiar with Capitol Technology University being one of the few American universities to offer dissertation-only doctorates. As an alternative, you can publish three articles in "high-impact" journals. According to a former student, who posted on Degree Forum and chose the publication option, CapTech is not particularly picky when it comes to journal choices. Now, there is a third option...sort of. In lieu of two of the three peer-reviewed articles, you can present at two peer-reviewed, international conferences. When I last looked, I only saw this option on the Engineering Management and Healthcare Technology pages, but it's possible that they just didn't update all the 40+ doctoral program pages. https://www.captechu.edu/degrees-and-programs/doctoral-degrees/engineering-management-phd
Do you know the CTU starting process? Do students join already knowing which of these paths they want to pursue and specific topics or is that explored early in the program? Do they give guidance, templates, or other materials to give a pathway to that end point? I think I understand the output at the end, but I’m curious as to the guidance or if it’s expected at this level the students will figure most of it out independently.
I think it depends on how many credits you transfer. If you're starting with nothing, you're put into exploratory courses. If you're transferring a lot of credits, you'll be one or two classes away from starting your dissertation proposal. I would assume that, by the time you're in the dissertation proposal course, you need to have decided whether you're going to do a dissertation or three publications. That would be discussed with the advisor who's assigned to you. Their doctoral courses have no structure. The DSc in Cybersecurity and PhD in Business Analytics programs might be exceptions because they appear to have some content courses. Otherwise, you're just making discussion board posts to document your progress while also having periodic phone calls with your advisor. Oh, and there are some CITI training courses you have to complete, but that's the case with every research doctorate. For those who are familiar with European PhDs by publication, this is not the same. The student at Degree Forum dropped out of the program, published three articles, and now wants to reenter the program. They're trying to figure out whether those publications will count. In a European PhD by publication, you're not publishing while in the program. You're coming to the program having already published.
I am pretty sure in all PhD programs the work you do gets published during your program, and that counts towards graduation. It needs to be based on the research you do during the program. This case may be an exception since the person dropped out and then came back on the same topic, but I doubt you can come in with publications and graduate with just that.
This is the only school that I know of that offers publication-only PhDs. There's no coursework. Your entire program consists of either writing a dissertation or writing three research articles for publication. In other American PhD programs, some might require students to publish one article prior to graduation or to write an article of publishable quality, but this is in addition to writing a dissertation and taking content courses. I saw one EdD program that allows students to publish two articles instead of writing a dissertation or capstone paper, but it, too, required content courses just like 99.9% of American doctoral programs. The PhD by publication is something I haven't seen offered in the U.S. These programs are intended for accomplished researchers who have already published multiple peer-reviewed articles. During the degree program, they combine their research together into one body of work. It's basically a competency-based program. You've already demonstrated that you're potentially worthy of a PhD before entering the program.
Let me correct myself. How each country does PhD by publication is different. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/06/29/what-exactly-is-a-phd-by-publication/
