If you are writing a PhD thesis, you may be thinking about how to get your work published when you’re done. One option is to convert your thesis – or part of your thesis – into an academic journal article.
And if you want to do this, you’ll need to:
Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail to see how the process works.
To maximize your chances of publication, pick a suitable journal. The journal’s scope – i.e., the kind of work it publishes – is the most important factor here.
Specialist journals with a narrower scope may be more open to submissions from early career academics than larger, multidisciplinary journals (simply because there is more competition for Nature than, say, the American Journal of Potato Research). But the most important thing is that your work fits the research interests and approaches of the publishing journal.
Other things to consider when choosing a journal include:
For more advice, check out the Think. Check. Submit. campaign.
A PhD thesis is, typically, a long, detailed account of your research. By comparison, a journal article will usually be more focused.
As such, part of turning your thesis into a journal article involves deciding what you will include. This could be a case of setting out your overall argument in clear, concise terms. Or it could be looking for parts of your PhD research that you could use for standalone articles.
