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PhD as a series of articles, rather than a traditional thesis

Brian Leiter

A graduate student writes:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a PhD 'by published/publishable papers'? An obvious answer might be: "The crucial advantage is having published articles, or articles that are immediately ready to submit to journals." But someone who completes a traditional PhD dissertation can publish during candidature as well. So, I'm curious if there are any further advantages or disadvantages of the 'by publication' route? It might be most helpful to know what people on hiring committees think (even if there may be considerations that members of a hiring committee wouldn't consider relevant when evaluating a job candidate). 

Thoughts from readers?  Signed comments preferred.

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14 responses to “PhD as a series of articles, rather than a traditional thesis”

  1. Thom Brooks

    My PhD was a collection of articles — and I'd highly recommend this format to others. Given the importance of publishing strong journal articles for hiring and promotion, it is striking (to me) that this format is not widely followed. It offered an excellent opportunity to learn how to craft good articles. The lessons learned have proven enormously useful since — and publications were much easier to come by as chapters were already self-standing and ready for submission.

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  2. Mcdickenson

    I wonder if your student saw the recent AER article, "One Essay on Dissertation Formats in Economics," (Stock and Siegfriend 2013; http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.103.3.648). They identify several advantages with the broader trends of doing multi-article rather than single-treatise dissertations. See http://mattdickenson.com/2013/05/27/essay-dissertations/ and http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2013/05/21/rise-of-the-three-essays-dissertation/

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  3. Kareem Khalifa

    My dissertation was not a series of articles, though I wish it had been. In addition to having published/nearly-publishable articles, there is a certain set of skills involved in making a paper publishable (e.g. managing one's burden of proof, black-boxing certain issues that are peripheral to the paper's main thesis, presenting ideas in a "referee-friendly" manner, motivating one's contribution succinctly, etc.) that one hones by writing articles but that are less likely to be developed if one writes a dissertation as a book-length argument. I would say that it's better to learn these skills as a grad student than as a newly-minted PhD. In my case, it took a couple of years after my tenure clock had started to figure these skills out, and also involved placing my first few publications at less prestigious journals as I worked out some of the kinks. (Having said that, it all worked out…)

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  4. KW

    "Someone who completes a traditional PhD dissertation can publish during candidature as well." Yes, but someone can publish while working as a roughneck on an oil rig. The point is that in dissertations composed of separate papers, the work done to complete the degree coincides much more with work that is required to publish. As a creature of finite means and lifespan, this always struck me as a point in favor of the format, other things being equal.

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  5. Alex G

    I intended to write a series of freestanding papers for my dissertation. I kept to that for a while (enough to have a couple of papers to send to journals and a writing sample for the job market). Eventually the project took on the shape of a more traditional dissertation so I'm now left doing a bit of mining (which is fine). Overall, I think the series of papers is the way to go, but here is one concern. When on the job market, you'll need a clear and exciting abstract of your dissertation. I think a good abstract is more important than many people realize and I think it would have been very difficult to write one (not impossible!) on the basis of a series of papers. I get the sense that (i) not everyone likes this style of 'dissertation', so it could be a negative if such a person were on a search committee and could very plainly see from the abstract that a candidate has diverged from what's (irrationally) expected and (ii) that a candidate benefits from leaving a search committee member in the position to think to him or herself – Candidate X has that cool project on Y. I absolutely think this 'problem' can be overcome, but it's worth bearing in mind as one starts down the path of writing freestanding (but hopefully related) papers that one eventually needs to be able to say in a sharp and probably cohesive way what one is working on.

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  6. Dale Miller

    I've always been reasonably prompt about producing individual papers, but I have a hard time staying focused on longer projects, with the result that they take years longer than they should. In all likelihood, I'd have finished my Ph.D. at least two years earlier had the portfolio of papers option been available as an alternative to a traditional thesis. So there would be a huge advantage to going the portfolio route for someone with my particular neurosis. Then again, it was only when I embarked on the dissertation that I discovered that *I* have it (a diagnosis confirmed by a subsequent monograph).

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  7. Julia

    My dissertation was kind of a hybrid. Like a traditional dissertation, it had an overarching thesis and an ongoing train of thought. Yet, I wrote my chapters as if they were individual journal articles. I think this model works great – one gets the benefits of having a punchy dissertation project and abstract for one's job applications, and at the same time, one has papers ready to go for conference presentations, publications, writing samples, etc. It might require writing some transitions between chapters before turning in the dissertation to make it more reader friendly, but that really doesn't take a lot of time.
    Also, I got the advice that one's dissertation should yield at least three publishable papers. On the paper/hybrid strategy, it's always clear how far one is in reaching this goal. With a more traditional dissertation, it might be harder to extract to original paper-length contributions out of the larger narrative.

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  8. Simon van Rysewyk

    A PhD Thesis composed of peer-reviewed publications is viewed very favourably by PhD examiners: since the papers/chapters in the Thesis have already been reviewed and published and/or accepted for publication, much time is saved in examining the Thesis itself, which is good for the student and examiners!

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  9. Justin Fisher

    Having written a real dissertation and (of course) many papers, I think the 3 papers option is probably a whole lot easier. At least for me, the difficulty of a writing project seems proportional to something like the square of its size (at least for the sizes we're talking about here). A useful comparison is a jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle with twice as many pieces typically takes much more than twice as long to do, because, especially in the early stages of putting the puzzle together, there are just so damn many pieces to keep track of and to imagine how they might fit together. Pretty much the same thing seems to apply for philosophical writing projects.

    My advice would be: If you plan to write books in the future, write a real dissertation because this will be good practice, and (ideally) you'll get useful feedback from your professors along the way, a luxury you likely won't have if you wait to write your first book later. But many philosophers are very happy not writing books, and would be happier never being forced to learn how. If you count yourself among those philosophers, then I'd consider the three-paper option seriously.

    One caveat though: I can't speak for other hiring committee members, but I'm personally much less impressed, ceteris paribus, by people who opt for a three-paper option because, as I said, I think that option is a lot easier. So there is a risk that you'll set yourself back in some people's eyes for taking the easy way out. (Related to Julia's hybrid option, you might try to get the best of both worlds by marketing as a single dissertation what in fact are three quite independent papers strung together.)

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  10. Marcus Arvan

    I am a bit surprised that no one has mentioned a potential downside of the series of article option, and what I had at least always implicitly assumed to be a main justification for a traditional dissertation: namely, that our aim in developing philosophers should not be simply producing people who can publish articles and get jobs, but to develop philosophers capable of deep, systematic thought and theory construction. Many of the "dissertations as a handful of articles" I have read recently come across to me as only very loosely connected sets of potentially publishable papers. But when — if not in graduate school — is a person going to be well-trained to think more deeply and systematically than that?

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  11. B

    I found it very useful to write a dissertation this way. Mine was not just a series of self-standing papers (and I do not think anyone would get away with that). They were thematically related, and tied together by an introduction and conclusion that synthesized the chapters. I think Marcus may misunderstand the complaint against the so-called "traditional" dissertation. Where I studied, some felt that "traditional" dissertations often present quite idiosyncratic histories of a problem or issue.

    As for the original concern about hiring committees, I can only give my own perspective. I don't recall dwelling on the nature of anyone's dissertation. When I sit with candidates I ask them about their research, the papers they have published, and the things they are working on. My concern is whether they can speak about such things in a clear and persuasive way to a non-specialist. I may raise an objection, or ask how it relates to something I know more about, giving them a chance to demonstrate that they have a handle on the material. I honestly cannot imagine discussing whether the dissertation was traditional or not when reflecting on hiring.

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  12. Chike Jeffers

    I sometimes feel unsure what the difference is, when I read comments like B's. If the "papers" dissertation is not a series of self-standing papers, how are these papers so different from chapters in a standard dissertation? Is it that they touch on common or similar themes but there is no single argument or purpose that the papers collectively serve? I wonder then what exactly is being synthesized in the introduction and conclusion. And I certainly don't understand the complaint that traditional dissertations present idiosyncratic histories of a problem or issue (neither why that could be a general description of what traditional dissertations do nor why that would be a bad thing, per se).

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  13. David Chalmers

    I have considerable sympathy for what Marcus says. To put things sociologically, my sense is that there is a strong correlation between dissertation style and the sort of philosopher one becomes. Those who write PhD by papers more often become the sort of philosophers who publish journal articles and who work broadly and unsystematically on many topics. Those who write PhD by dissertation more often become the sort of philosophers who publish books and who work deeply on a single topic or systematically on multiple topics. Of course some of the correlation is explained by pre-existing dispositions, but my sense is that some of it is causal: that is, the sort of PhD one writes has some effect on the sort of philosopher one becomes.

    Anyone making the decision about what sort of PhD to write should take this into account. I don't think either style of philosophy is the "right" sort. At the level of individual philosophers either route may be reasonable. There are clearly some short-term advantages for PhD-by-papers. But from a long-term perspective, even for those who go on to do article-style philosophy, there's a lot to be said for at least starting with a deep and sustained investigation of a topic.

    At the level of the whole field, there's clearly been a trend in recent years toward article-style philosophy, with PhD-by-papers playing at least some role in that trend. I think it's good to have both styles of philosophy, but deep and sustained investigations of a topic play a special role in structuring the field. So I'd hate to see things evolve to a state where article-style philosophy became the norm and book-style philosophy became marginal. From this point of view, there's something to be said for regarding the traditional model as the default model, although one to be applied flexibly.

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  14. David Chalmers

    P.S. I should add that it's certainly possible to do "book-style" philosophy in a series of deeply interconnected articles. And likewise, as Julia suggests above, it's possible to do a PhD in the format of a series of papers that nevertheless constitutes a deep and systematic investigation of a topic. This hybrid model isn't always possible, but when it's possible it can end up having the main advantages of both of the other models.

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