Research & Research Study

Constructing a thesis using published works mirrors contemporary research practice in many disciplines, assures additional specialist feedback from reviewers, impresses examiners, and improves your CV for subsequent research or other applications. Candidates and supervisors should plan the process of undertaking the research and writing the related papers in detail. Early discussions regarding the research plan should include an analysis of the way in which information is disseminated within the disciplinary field. This will provide the candidate with a realistic impression of the length of time it takes a paper to be published. For instance, in some science disciplines major journals have 10 editions in a year, whereas the major journals in education may publish biannually.

Behind any research paper there is rigorous research activity – the paper is the final report on that activity. All research theses involve the definition and exploration of a specific problem. They entail a survey and analysis of the current thinking in the field, the design of a data collection activity, and analysis of the results (in most fields of study). Each of these components can generate a research paper or papers for the thesis. Candidates who intend to write papers for their thesis should consider publishing in conference proceedings initially as an excellent introduction to the way in which research papers are written and presented in their field, and also to initiate discussion with those already established in the field. The more substantial findings from the thesis are usually presented to refereed journals.

If you are planning to attend a conference, you may need to write an abstract (or the paper) up to a year in advance of the conference. If you are intending to write for a journal you need to factor in the writing time (usually at least 6 weeks), the submission time and acknowledgment from the journal editor (usually about 3 weeks), the amount of time it takes the journal to review the article (usually between 2-4 months at a minimum), the amount of time it takes to amend the paper in response to the reviewers (usually between 1-3 months), the final submission of the paper, and then the wait for final publication (which can be up to 18 months after the final accepted submission). Candidates should work closely with their supervisors during these stages as the supervisors will have the best knowledge of the publication process in that discipline. It isn’t necessary for the paper(s) to be published before the thesis is submitted.

Each discipline will have a different number of publications that are acceptable for a thesis by publication. As a general rule you need to have enough papers to highlight the important findings from your research in a logical and coherent way. The publication order may be quite different from the way that you sequence them in the thesis. Most theses by publication have between 2 – 8 papers in combinations of sole and co-authored texts. It is not enough simply to bind these publications together. The candidate needs to include a critical introduction to the work, sections that link the papers together, and a concluding section that synthesises the material as a whole. In some cases a larger exposition component can provide the framework for location or ordering of the papers. Above all, candidates must consider the coherence of the thesis as a whole, and the way in which each paper contributes logically to that coherence. A thesis is a connected story where the whole is greater than the parts.