PhD Discussion Forum

I don't think a PhD by publication is necessarily easier, it's quite a specific thing and essentially you HAVE to meet the minimum numbers of papers, whereas in a traditional thesis it's more desirable than necessary. But what I was actually saying is that students often put a huge amount of pressure on themselves unnecessarily. In my field, most postdocs are highly specialised which makes recruitment almost random. If you have four papers in even a slightly different topic you won't get a job over the person who has two in exactly the same topic as the vacancy. It's sad but true. Of course, if there was a vacancy in exactly your topic it would be better to have more publications than less, but only if they are good quality. I saw someone who didn't even get an interview for her own supervisor's vacancy because her previous two papers were so sloppy.

As abababa said, chapters are usually longer than papers and padded out with things that wouldn't normally go in a paper. In my experience it's much easier to turn a paper into a chapter than the other way round, but it depends. A paper needs to be MUCH more polished than a chapter so I found it easier to do that work first and then add all the extra bits for the chapters.

The standards for getting a PhD are lower than those required to stay in academia, yes. Just like you can pass an undergraduate degree with the minimum requirements, but that wouldn't be enough to get you onto a PhD place. The only difference is that with postdoc vacancies, there isn't some kind of universal standard. It's like hitting a very narrow moving target, which causes a lot of achievement-oriented people to completely freak out.

Hi Springtime,

Your understanding is about right for STEM fields at least. Although you get out of a PhD what you put in. If you put zero effort in, you are only gaining that sweet sweet Dr title and lose out on a lot of other valuable skills. Publications are not necessary but you still want to use the time to grow.
PhD by publication in my university at least, is an utter bureaucratic pain and for some reason people expect more from a PhD by publication. With a standard thesis you can put in extra unpublished data to bulk it pout and explain minor points more clearly without having to worry how your publication fits into your thesis.
Thesis chapters and publications have a different writing style that make copying and pasting difficult. Usually a thesis chapter is bigger than a publication but rewriting them shouldn't to difficult

I agree with other responses. Three papers has become a kind of gold standard across most STEM subjects but it never used to be this way. I talk to a lot of senior academics in my department and they've said to me that in their personal experience of my field, it was common 20 years ago to have no papers (and try to turn chapters into papers later); and 10 years ago it was common to have one and excellent to have two. Nowadays 3 is a guaranteed pass and a good way of standing out above others in very competitive postdoc applications. In short, the more papers you have, the more you'll stand out.

However, the pressures involved are -- if you ask me -- a little unfair. Some theses, particularly in Europe, follow a three-paper structure. So you write three papers and that's your thesis, combined with an introduction to tie them all together. In my field, unfortunately, we still follow a traditional PhD thesis structure *and* we're also expected to publish 3+ throughout our PhD. Which means the best students are expected to write this enormous document alongside publishing three or more papers, which is a lot more pressure because a chapter is typically more involved than a paper in my department. Rather than doing one or the other, there's now this weird pressure to do both.

In my old department, the "best" students -- those most interested in academia -- typically tried to commit to not just meeting that goal but even exceeding it, getting 3-5 publications alongside a bunch of talks and conference papers. They tell themselves that they need to do that to get a job. Of course they DO get jobs, but in most cases would have done so even without putting that much extra pressure on themselves.

The least committed -- those who decide early on they just want a cool title on their credit card -- might aim to get one or two papers. Those who genuinely want to do well elsewhere then make the most of all the other related opportunities that will help them in industry (such as developing software or taking on small managerial tasks around the department). But there's always some 10-20% of students who honestly don't care about anything and who just drift towards the end. I've seen people scrape through their viva with no publications.

So if you really don't care anymore, take the pressure off yourself and try to think about what you need to do to succeed in industry, and if there's any way you can build that up from where you are. It might help to switch gears and make finishing the PhD a lot more enjoyable if you know you're still working towards something that is genuinely useful.

The requirements for a PhD depend on each institute. What have other students done in the past in your uni? What does your supervisor/s say you need to do in order to submit for examination?

In terms of finishing on time- only you will really know the answer to that. Why don't you set yourself some daily goals and weekly goals to help get motivated. I would stick to specific goals like write the abstract for the next paper, rather than things like writing two paragraphs or X amount of words each day. I also found that bullet pointing the layout of each chapter was the easiest way for me to write. I would have the heading following by what needed to be in each chapter and each day I'd focus on one paragraph at a time. When you feel like not writing do another task that meaningful, like references, formatting and editing graphs and tables to fit into your thesis.