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PhDs by publication

Contents (click to jump to a section)

• Overall Introduction
• Introduction to the UK's older Retrospective model of PhD by (prior) publication
  • Symptoms
  • First principles
  • Second principles
  • Reference cases, real and imagined
  • One candidate's experience
  • Another candidate's experience
  • Conclusions in 2003
  • Further points (Aug 2007)
    • References
  • Further points and conclusions (2019)

By Stephen W. Draper,   Department of Psychology,   University of Glasgow.

Overall Introduction

Up until about 2002, UK universities awarded PhDs by research on an "Anglo-traditional" model: often three years full time work (and fees), doing some original research, and writing a dissertation of perhaps 80,000 words reporting that research written as a coherent piece of work for the examiners. Subsequently, as a separate activity, the students might (or might not) rewrite parts of it into one or more external publications such as journal articles or books.

Meanwhile universities in Scandinavia and some other north European countries had a different model (which I will call the "Nordic" model), where research students published journal articles, and their PhD thesis was comprised of several "chapters" which were un-edited copies of those publications, plus an unpublished literature review, and an unpublished introduction to discuss the connections and relationships between the parts that made it a connected and coherent piece of work on a larger scale.

Perhaps starting with the University of Stirling in 2007, UK universities have more recently allowed both formats (the university of Glasgow by about 2017). The Nordic model is better for the careers of intending academics in disciplines where journal publications are the main measure of value. The two models differ in the specifications for the content of the document submitted; but are identical in expectations about the length of study expected, allowed and required, and in the fees. They are also both "prospective" models, where the student has not done either the research or the writing in advance.

The rest of this web document concerns another model for PhDs – PhD by prior publication i.e. based retrospectively on research completed and published in advance by the candidate, before they considered qualifying for a PhD. This latter model was also at first called (like the Nordic model) "PhD by publication", but is actually significantly different from both Nordic and Anglo-traditional prospective models.

Introduction to the UK's older Retrospective model of PhD by prior publication

The underlying motivation for universities was that they wished to push towards all academic staff having a PhD without losing mid-career staff, especially those who had an established track record of published research. Consequently their modified regulations generally required the candidate to be a staff member.

This, then, was a change in both the format of the submitted writing AND in the time, registration, and fees requirements.

The following material was mainly put together in January 2003 in the early days of this new format, when I had already acted as external examiner for two of these at two different universities, and naturally had also looked at my own university's regulations on this. What seemed clear was that the idea or spirit behind the regulations of various universities was essentially the same, but the details, in those early days, differed markedly. Furthermore, reflection on the issues suggested that perhaps all universities should reconsider their regulations as it was easy to imagine and indeed often to find actual cases they could not at present cover sensibly.

In the discussion that follows, it may be worth remembering that there are other types of doctorate already on the books: DScs; and course-work based doctorates.

Symptoms

1. 2-5 thousand words
2. 10-15 thousand words
3. 10-25 thousand words
4. No limit in the regulations, but the first candidate was more or less forced to write 30,000 words.

A closer look comparing different universities' regulations reveals a second more fundamental area of variance and a real, unresolved, latent difficulty: there is not only no consensus on length, there is no real agreement on purpose or format. The confounding issue is whether the accompanying document is meant to be an application form, i.e. a bureaucratic document, written as a communication to the examiners, directly arguing about the worth of the submission (even though there is nothing comparable to this in a Anglo-traditional PhD submission), or whether it is meant to be an academic document that goes in the library as a communication written for other scholars.

One of the underlying causes of this confusion within and between attempts to write regulations for this new mode of PhD constitutes the third problem. It applies much more widely than to this topic, but has particular importance here. It is apparent that in drafting the regulations the authors were thinking about what the examiners would need and find convenient, and were not thinking about what would be lodged in the library as the permanent contribution to knowledge by the candidate for other scholars round the world. I interpret this in turn as a case of specifying one possible process (in fact an arbitrary and probably non-optimal selection of one) when the actually important thing is to specify the properties of the end product, and to use the examiners to make a judgement and certification on whether those properties were achieved in each case. This is particularly important for a higher degree in research (in contrast, say, to a road driving test); and particularly important for a new mode where the people drafting the regulations have no experience of the ways the intention might in fact be satisfied. In the light of this failing, I will next discuss the issues from first principles. We do not know if the regulation authors failed to consider first principles, but their failure to state them has demonstrably led to bad regulations; and, I shall argue, has furthermore left their universities unable to cope with cases they almost certainly would wish to cope with. In fact universities seem not to publish anything about the purpose of PhDs by publication. This can only slow the evolution of regulations to better forms, while leaving candidates at the mercy of divergent interpretations by examiners and supervisors.

First principles

1. Comparability: Does the work presented satisfy all the essential criteria of a conventional PhD, though by different superficial means?
   
2. Will there be a permanent library record, accessible by scholars round the world, in some way of comparable utility for those scholars to conventional PhDs?

Here I offer one way of expressing the essential properties of a conventional PhD. The regulations in each university, and the forms examiners must use, express these in various slightly different ways, as you may verify for yourself. However I perceive there as being very widespread consensus in the academic community (at least in the UK and USA) as to the real essential requirements.

• 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 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, ....). Thus a literature review and a critical self-evaluation are more or less essential in fulfilling this requirement.

• It should be a "thesis" i.e. a single coherent argument, with the components (e.g. empirical work, research design, literature review, critical self-evaluation) all subordinated to, related to, and serving to support, this single argument.

• There is no bar whatsoever on re-using the candidate's work in both publications and in a PhD; but they mustn't use same work in more than one degree submission.

We might note in passing that there is an implicit divergence in aim between the new mode of PhD by publication on the one hand, and on the other the new tendency to require explicit coursework training on research for PhDs and the "new route" PhDs by coursework. The former is about judging by results alone, while the latter are tending towards judging by training not research contribution.

Second principles

• Quantity. An average Anglo-traditional 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 may have easily satisfied the quantity implicit criterion, depending on the discipline.

• Quality. If the publications were peer-refereed then an examiner would be in a 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.

• Scale, scope, integration. If quantity and quality are satisfied, the only remaining issue is whether the candidate is capable of taking a view wider than that required in a single paper: of relating and integrating the body of work as a whole. In my view, that is the main purpose of the accompanying specially written essay. However if a book has been submitted as part of the published work, this is probably not an issue – yet the regulations do not allow for this. Where a book is submitted, the essay is either unnecessary or else might often be much shorter. In one of the PhDs I examined, the candidate mentioned that someone had already asked him if his book (part of his submission) was in fact a book from a PhD. It seems clear to me that current regulations show no awareness of the kind of submissions that have already in fact been made in some places.

Reference cases, real and imagined

1a. "Dear sir, I have been awarded the Nobel prize, and, as the citation mentioned, largely on the basis of my paper [ref]. I therefore hereby apply for a PhD by publication." Any university that turned this down would lay itself open to ridicule on the front pages of newspapers. Why should such a researcher have to write a 25,000 word essay when the argument, giving overwhelming reasons for the award, can be expressed in one sentence?

You might say that this is very rare, and that in such rare cases the university might immediately and reasonably respond by awarding an honorary DSc or some such. However essentially similar cases may be less dramatic, but still compelling.

1b. "Dear sir, my paper [ref] has become the most cited paper in the area of X in the last 5 years, and is widely regarded as having created a new field of research. I therefore hereby apply for a PhD by publication."

1c. Here is a real case. David Huffman invented in 1952 what was soon called "Huffman coding" as his final year undergraduate project. (Try typing "huffman coding" into a search engine, or look here or here. Huffman coding has a variable codeword length, allowing text compression; but despite this, no codeword is a prefix of any other, so simple unambiguous decoding is still straightforward.) It became adopted in engineering practice, and taught in undergraduate texts. Should he have been eligible for a PhD by publication without further work?

These three scenarios raise several issues. 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?

2. A conventional PhD is often turned into a book. If a published book is submitted, should this be eligible by itself? It seems clear that it should be, without any accompanying essay (contrary to many current regulations). On the other hand if but only if the examiners demand it, it should be open to them to demand after all an accompanying essay to cover any academic deficiencies they perceive, particularly if the book were aimed at an audience that wasn't essentially academic. This seems a clear argument that the minimum size of the accompanying essay should be zero, that a single book should be quite enough in quantity, but that it might (or might not) require a substantial accompanying essay or commentary.

3. A set of articles published in refereed journals, plus an essay providing a critical overview discussing their relationship to an overall theme or research programme. This seems the only case current regulations clearly envisage. Such a case does NOT really need any argument about why this constitutes a PhD: that would be clearly carried implicitly by the set of academic documents submitted, which would also make a coherent submission to the library.

4. A set of papers that have been published, but which are not academic (enough) in nature. I have heard secondhand of a case of this being submitted. (Secondhand i.e. I spoke to someone directly involved in such a case.) This is quite likely to occur in fields such as marketing, business, or perhaps school teaching, where there are many publications for practitioners. The examiners might feel in many such cases that there was a significant set of publications, there was useful empirical work, there were novel ideas and a contribution to knowledge, there was impact on the field – but the writing reporting it was not academic e.g. it was not self-critical, or did not adequately relate the work to other published literature. One reasonable response to this type of case might be to allow another new mode for a PhD, where the candidate had to write a full thesis (say 80,000 words) but did not have to satisfy the time and fee requirements (i.e. take at least 3 years etc.). Such candidates would have already done all the practical work, and had all the ideas: they would just need to do much MORE writing than the currently foreseen "explanatory essay".

One candidate's experience

Chronology

1. Enrolled.
2. Successfully completed viva 18 months later.
3. Summary document of 30,000 words was required (supporting books and journal papers 300,000 words).
4. "Summary" document structured as conventional PhD thesis.

Reflection