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How to Write a Journal Article from a Thesis

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Table of Contents

You are almost done with your PhD thesis and want to convert it into a journal article. Or, you’re initiating a career as a journal writer and intend to use your thesis as a starting point for an article. Whatever your situation, turning a thesis into a journal article is a logical step and a process that eventually every researcher completes. But…how to start?

The first thing to know about converting a thesis into a journal article is how different they are:

Thesis Characteristics:

• Meets academic requirements
• Reviewed by select committee members
• Contains chapters
• Lengthy, no word limits
• Table of contents
• Lengthy research of literature
• IRB approval described in detail
• Description and copies of tools used
• All findings presented
• Verb tenses may vary

Journal Article Characteristics:

• Meets journalistic standards
• Reviewed by a panel of “blind” reviewers
• Word limits
• Manuscript format
• Succinct research of literature
• IRB described in 1 to 3 sentences
• Essential and succinct tool information
• Selected findings presented
• Verb tenses are fairly consistent

Converting your thesis to a journal article may be complex, but it’s not impossible.

A thesis is a document of academic nature, so it’s more detailed in content. A journal article, however, is shorter, highlighting key points in a more succinct format. Adapting a thesis for conversion into a journal article is a time-consuming and intricate process that can take you away from other important work. In that case, Elsevier’s Language Editing services may help you focus on important matters and provide a high-quality text for submission in no time at all.

If you are going to convert a thesis into a journal article, with or without professional help, here is a list of some of the steps you will likely have to go through:

1. Identify the best journal for your work

• Ensure that your article is within the journal’s aim and scope. How to find the right journal? Find out more .
• Check the journal’s recommended structure and reference style

2. Shorten the length of your thesis

• Treat your thesis as a separate work
• Paraphrase but do not distort meaning
• Select and repurpose parts of your thesis

3. Reformat the introduction as an abstract

• Shorten the introduction to 100-150 words, but maintain key topics to hold the reader’s attention.
• Use the introduction and discussion as basis for the abstract

4. Modify the introduction

• If your thesis has more than one research question or hypothesis, which are not all relevant for your paper, consider combining your research questions or focusing on just one for the article
• Use previously published papers (at least three) from the target journal as examples

5. Tighten the methods section

• Keep the discussion about your research approach short

6. Report main findings in the results

• Expose your main findings in the results section in concise statements

7. Discussion must be clear and concise

• Begin by providing an interpretation of your results: “What is it that we have learned from your research?”
• Situate the findings to the literature
• Discuss how your findings expand known or previous perspectives
• Briefly present ways in which future studies can build upon your work and address limitations in your study

8. Limit the number of references

• To choose the most relevant and recent
• To format them correctly
• Consider using a reference manager system (e.g. Mendeley ) to make your life easier

If you are not a proficient English speaker, the task of converting a thesis into a journal article might make it even more difficult. At Elsevier’s Language Editing services we ensure that your manuscript is written in correct scientific English before submission. Our professional proofers and editors check your manuscript in detail, taking your text as our own and with the guarantee of maximum text quality.

Language editing services by Elsevier Author Services:

How to Choose a Journal to Submit an Article

How to Submit a Paper for Publication in a Journal

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Transforming a Dissertation Chapter into a Published Article

By  Faye Halpern and James Phelan

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As a dissertation writer, you are extremely well positioned to produce a publishable journal article because you know the current scholarly conversations on your topic intimately and have figured out ways to intervene in them. In fact, it might seem that the journey from dissertation chapter to journal article ought to be a relaxing day trip: extract the chapter from the rest of the dissertation, delete any references to other chapters and to your new manuscript as itself a chapter, trim as necessary to fit the word limit of your chosen journal, and send it off.

You might round off the day by kicking back and rewarding yourself with an adult beverage. Such thinking is likely to feel intuitively correct because of a common way we conceive of the dissertation’s purpose: to demonstrate to already-certified members of your profession (aka your committee) that you have mastered the fundamental research skills of that profession by carrying out a well-designed and original research project.

But our experience as editors of scholarly journals has taught us that effective chapters and publishable journal submissions have important differences. Indeed, the cumulative effect of those differences makes the two modes closely related but ultimately distinct genres. Consequently, moving from chapter to article is an act not of extraction but of adaptation.

To be sure, the challenges of this generic adaptation are not as great as those involved in adaptations from one medium to another (e.g., Greta Gerwig directing Little Women ), but we believe that thinking about your task as more than an extraction-cum-copyediting will increase your chances for success. In what follows, we will focus on the nexus of writer, audience and purpose in each genre in order to highlight their differences and, thus, help you identify strategies for your adaptation.

To illustrate our points, we will refer to a hypothetical dissertation within our shared field of literary studies: an investigation of the uses of unreliable narration in the British and American modernist novel that seeks to contribute to conversations within the fields of narrative theory and modernist studies. While this one example won’t represent all dissertations in all fields, we hope our commentary on it will help you think through the opportunities and challenges of your own possible adaptations.

Audiences: In-House/Out in the Field

Attending to audience helps identify what are paradoxically the most subtle and most significant differences between the genres -- subtle because their effects are easy to miss, significant because they influence so many other properties of the two genres. You write your dissertation chapters for your committee members, and you write your journal articles for a much larger audience of scholars in your field, most of whom don’t know you from Adam. Since your committee members are representatives of your field, you have reasons to think that writing for them shouldn’t be different from writing for the audience of a scholarly journal. If your committee members judge your work highly, won’t readers for journal articles do the same?

As the adage has it, appearances are deceiving, and thus the answer is “not necessarily.” Your committee members do not apply the same standards to your chapters that they do to others’ journal articles, and readers for journals will not apply the standards of your committee members to your submissions. Understanding why opens up the differences between the two genres.

Let us return to the purpose of the dissertation: to demonstrate to already-certified members of your profession that you have mastered the fundamental research skills of that profession by carrying out a well-designed and original research project. In contrast, the purpose of a journal article is to make a contribution to scholarly conversations about significant issues in a given field that substantially alters the dimensions, directions or stakes of those conversations.

Again, the differences may appear insignificant, but thinking about them, first from your perspective as writer and then from the perspective of your committee members as readers, uncovers their importance. From your perspective, one of the main challenges of writing a dissertation is that you’ve never written one before. Consequently, you’re undertaking a task that you learn how to do only by doing it, a situation that puts you in the Kafkaesque position of being fully ready to write your dissertation only after you’ve finished it. What is true of the dissertation is also true of its individual chapters. It’s therefore unlikely that a simple extraction will be sufficient.

In addition, the criteria for assessing quality in each genre aren’t exactly the same. Your committee members apply three main criteria: 1) Does the chapter answer the so-what question and thus make a worthwhile contribution to the relevant scholarly conversations? 2) Does it demonstrate that you have acquired the skills -- from doing thorough research to analyzing your objects of study to marshaling these materials into a coherent argument -- to do publishable research? and 3) Does it fit well with the rest of the dissertation? For journal reviewers, the question of fit is off the table, and the demonstration of skills is simply a necessary condition. Thus, their main criterion is the answer to the so-what question, and they put an even greater premium on the significance of your answer.

Suppose the writer of our hypothetical dissertation seeks to adapt a chapter on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms that traces the evolution of Frederic Henry’s narration from unreliable to reliable and concludes with a few paragraphs linking this evolution to Hemingway’s innovations with the genre of narrative tragedy. The writer’s committee has applauded the chapter for its insightful close readings of the narration, its move from the fine-grained analyses to a big-picture argument, and its fit with the larger dissertation because it shows how Hemingway adds a distinctive use of unreliability within the period.

But to make the work publishable, the writer would need to adapt the chapter so that it clearly identifies both its central question(s) and the significance of its response to the so-what question. Perhaps the writer would shift the focus so that the dominant question is about Hemingway’s generic innovation with narrative tragedy, creating the need to give more prominence to his handling of the plot. Perhaps the writer would decide to offer a direct comparison/contrast between Hemingway’s handling of unreliability and, say, William Faulkner’s. This shift would of course involve drawing on material from the chapter on Faulkner, but it would also mean deciding on whether to use that material primarily in the service of highlighting Hemingway’s technique or to give it equal standing and thus seek mutual illumination.

The writer’s choices about the central question(s) would also have consequences for how they make the case for the significance of their intervention. Guided by the need to establish that significance, the writer would adjust their treatment of work by other scholars, engaging more or less fully with those discussed in the chapter and even perhaps bringing others into the conversation.

Core Argument: Interdependence/Self-Sufficiency

Since an effective chapter is well integrated into the larger argument of your whole dissertation, it is interdependent with other chapters. Since a journal article, by contrast, is a stand-alone entity, you need to find strategies to move from interdependence to self-sufficiency.

A first step, as noted above, is to identify the presuppositions or ideas from other chapters you and your committee members bring to this one. A second is to identify the elements of the chapter that tie it to the rest of the dissertation. These elements may be extended passages or allusions to what comes before or after, or, indeed, things taken for granted because already discussed.

A third step follows closely from the second: examining whether those elements are crucial to your case for the specific contribution you want the journal article to make. If so, then you need to find a way to include them that will be clear to readers who are not part of your dissertation conversation. If not, you obviously need to delete them, but you should also ask whether deletion by itself will be enough. Perhaps it will reveal a hole that must be filled with other material so the adaptation results in a self-sufficient argument that makes a substantial intervention.

Suppose the writer of the hypothetical dissertation decides to do the comparison-contrast between Hemingway and Faulkner in order to provide mutual illumination. The writer would need to do at least the following: draw on material from the dissertation’s introduction that stakes out the writer’s position in the debates about unreliability, select and refashion material from both the Hemingway and Faulkner chapters to fit the new purposes of the essay, and cut back on the discussions of material not directly related to each author’s use of unreliability. As the writer made these revisions, they would be guided by their purpose of changing conversations about Hemingway’s and Faulkner’s handling of narrative technique.

Voice: Other Scholars’/Yours

What about the dissertation chapter whose contribution to the whole involves a recognizably distinct intervention in a scholarly conversation? Even then, there might be salient differences between the two genres. Journal articles need to let readers know within the first one or two pages what their scholarly intervention is, whereas dissertation chapters often spend many pages laying out what other scholars have said before turning to how they add to that conversation.

Why? Dissertations want you to give equal weight to two sometimes conflicting aims: 1) demonstrating you know the field and 2) making a contribution to it. In demonstrating you know what previous scholars have said (which might also, as an apprentice scholar, feel like paying necessary homage to the leading lights in your field), you are allowed to sideline your own voice for long stretches.

The case is different for journal articles. Even as it’s crucial for you to situate yourself within conversations among other scholars, your voice needs to ring out loud and clear from beginning to end.

In another article , we've recommended thinking of the introduction to a journal article as requiring a “hook and an I”: authors need to provide a scholarly context that allows readers to see how the author’s own intervention advances the field. We cautioned against ignoring one in favor of the other. In adapting a dissertation chapter, you’re more likely to have favored the hook, so you need to emphasize the “I.”

Beyond the introduction, journal articles need you to refer throughout to what other scholars have said concerning different points you make -- you need a hook line -- but you should keep your voice prominent as you play out that line. Strategies include shaping summaries of other scholars’ arguments to highlight your difference from them and using footnotes rather than the body of your essay to bring in work that is related to but not as directly pertinent to your argument. Dissertations allow you to sideline your own voice in other ways. Dissertation chapters often include a myriad of examples. One of us, Faye, has a friend in a history department who told her that she took great pains to include examples from different primary sources to support each claim she made. She carefully chose these examples to demonstrate to her committee members that she had visited many different historical archives, and they were duly impressed.

But journal reviewers of an extracted chapter would be far less impressed. They don’t need you to prove you have done the research. Instead, they need to understand what your argument is and how it offers a substantial answer to the so-what question. If you think of your examples less as a means to underline your argument and more as occasions to advance it, you will be better able to decide how many -- and which ones -- to use.

Scope: For a Chapter/For an Article

Dissertation chapters and journal articles often differ in the scope of their concerns and in the size of the claims they make about their respective arguments. Many dissertations produce their scholarly intervention more at the level of the whole project than at the level of individual chapters. Because chapters are not stand-alone pieces, they can have diverse functions -- some of which have little to do with making a scholarly intervention of the kind found in journal articles. Some chapters can be devoted to providing methodological or theoretical groundwork, others to extending a previous argument by treating more examples that support it. Indeed, when the dissertation makes its intervention through the cumulative weight of the whole, it may not have a single chapter that directly attempts to meet the criteria for journal articles.

Ah, you might think, in that case I’ll just condense my whole dissertation into an article-length piece. But the result is often that no aspect of the article gets sufficient time, leaving reviewers scratching their heads at the leaps in logic and turning up their noses at the inevitably superficial consideration of examples. Your dissertation does more, as a whole, than any journal article, but a single journal article does more than any individual chapter.

We advise a different strategy. Rather than shrink your dissertation to fit, isolate and expand. What are the smaller, original claims you make along the way to making the big one? Maybe you can flesh out one of those claims and clarify its significance by elaborating on the evidence that supports it and bringing in new evidence. Conversely, maybe you have a striking piece of evidence you use in your dissertation that can be analyzed to yield a substantial claim that you hadn’t yet considered.

Your dissertation is not a display case for a single fully formed diamond. It’s a storeroom of gems in various stages of processing, and you are the lapidary.

Fit: For the Dissertation/For the Journal

Finally, although the dissertation gives you the freedom to choose the scholarly conversations you want to respond to, submitting a portion of it to a journal requires finding a match between your choices and the scope of the journal. More often than not, finding that match will involve some adjustment of your chapter.

Suppose the writer of our hypothetical dissertation wanted to submit something to Narrative . Doing so makes good sense because unreliability, a narrative technique that has generated considerable scholarly debate, is a topic of interest to the journal’s readers. But the hypothetical chapter would need to be revised before it would fit with the journal’s mission, which is to publish work that sets up two-way traffic between narrative theory and interpretation.

Consequently, the writer’s submission would need to do more than analyze Hemingway’s uses of unreliability. It would need to link those analyses with one or more issues in the debate about unreliability and indicate how Hemingway’s practice warrants some revisions or extensions of particular positions in the debate, or even perhaps opens up new ways of thinking about unreliability.

We close with a personal anecdote about what we call Genre Conflation Syndrome, the more general condition underlying the assumption that chapters and articles belong to the same genre. Faye vividly remembers the comments an external reader gave her about what she thought was the clever opening of an article she had submitted to a journal. The opening subtly parodied the esoteric, jargon-laden voice of expertise that, in her view, scholars in writing programs often adopted in order to persuade faculty in other disciplines to listen to what they had to say -- a voice she argued in the rest of the article against adopting. The problem was that readers of the article, acting in good faith, put time into struggling to understand this parody, only to find out they needn’t have bothered. The external reader described feeling manipulated and disinclined to trust the author for the rest of the article (which the reader ultimately advised rejecting).

Faye was baffled: it had worked so well as the opening of a talk! She conflated the genres by assuming that talks are just like articles, just shorter and with fewer examples. It was only after Faye thought through the differences in audiences and purposes between talks and articles (e.g., that talks, paradoxically, have more room for an extended display of wit) that she was able to make the adaptations necessary to turn the talk into an article.

We hope our reflections here will enable you to successfully engage in the necessary generic adaptations as you move from chapter to article -- and that such success will inoculate you against any future bouts of Genre Conflation Syndrome.

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• Writing Tips

How to Turn Your Thesis into a Journal Article

4-minute read

• 11th September 2019

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:

• Pick a journal with a scope that matches your research interests.
• Decide which parts of your thesis you want to use for the article.
• Think about whether to co-author the article with someone else.
• Check the journal publisher’s website for author instructions.
• Have the article proofread by an academic editor.

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail to see how the process works.

1. Pick a Journal

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:

• Article rejection rate.
• Journal metrics (e.g., the impact factor ).
• Journal reputation (e.g., the turnaround times for acceptance/publication).

For more advice, check out the Think. Check. Submit. campaign.

2. Plan Turning Your Thesis into a Journal Article

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.

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When planning your article, you will therefore need to:

• Have a clearly defined research question.
• Find the parts of your thesis that are most relevant to your question.
• Summarize the aims, methods, results, and outcomes involved.
• Rewrite key sections to make them self-standing.
• Tweak the article to fit the journal requirements.

The first step, then, is creating a paper outline with the factors above in mind.

3. Consider Co-Authorship

If anyone else made a significant contribution to your research, such as your PhD supervisor, you may want to ask them about co-authoring your article. As well as ensuring academic fairness – i.e., crediting them for the contribution they made – this has a couple of distinct advantages:

• You can benefit from their experience of publishing academic work.
• Having an established name with a good reputation in your field of study on the paper may boost your chances of publication.

Remember, though, anyone credited as an author on an article must have made a significant contribution . If they have not, you may want to mention them in a footnote or an “Acknowledgements” section instead.

4. Check the Author Instructions

Before writing your article, check the journal publisher’s website for author instructions. These should tell you all you need to know about:

• The journal’s submission guidelines (e.g., review by an ethics committee).
• The journal’s style requirements (e.g., word count, terminology)

Make sure to follow these guidelines when preparing your journal article.

5. Have Your Article Proofread

Finally, once you have drafted an article, have someone check it.

Asking a colleague is a good first step, as they may have feedback on content. But you’ll also want to ask a professional proofreader to review your document before submission, thus ensuring it is typo free.

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How to Turn Your Thesis Into a Journal Article

In many cases, publishing thesis is often one of the requirements for graduate students to finish their academic program. Publishing research findings is one of the more important ways to share research data with the scientific community. However, the structure of it is different from that of a research article. In this article, we shall discuss how to turn your thesis to journal article.

Characteristics of a Thesis and a Journal Article

Differences Between a Thesis and a Journal Article

While both contain similar sections, you cannot simply publish your thesis research as a journal article. Converting it into a journal article has many steps. It is important to recognize that an article is much shorter than the thesis. However, turning your thesis into a journal article will not be a simple matter of copy and paste. You will need to use the data in your thesis as the starting point for writing your article.

Related: Planning to publish your Ph.D. research in a good journal? Check these journal selection guidelines now!

The  many differences  between a thesis research and a journal article are as follows:

• A thesis meets academic requirements while a journal article meets journalistic standards.
• The abstract of an article is usually shorter than that of a thesis.
• The introduction in a thesis is used to show that you are familiar with the literature in your chosen field. In a research paper , the introduction is much shorter as it is assumed that your target audience is familiar with the necessary background to understand your work. The introduction to your paper will, therefore, focus more on setting the stage for the data/research output that you are about to present.
• The results section in a thesis will include all your findings. In a paper, this would be too much detail. The data in this section should be only what you need to support your research problem or hypothesis. Often, the results in former may represent two to three different papers.
• The discussion in your paper will be much more focused than in your thesis. It will be guided by the results presented in the paper. Finally, only citations of articles actually mentioned in your paper will be listed in the references section.

Turning Thesis Research to Journal Article

As a researcher, you need to publish your work to advance your career and make contributions to the research field. Now that the differences have been outlined, how do you actually write one?

1. Identify a Suitable Journal

You could start by  journal selection . Look at your reference list. Chances are at least some of the papers you read were published in journals whose scope would match your work. Selecting a journal also allows you to tailor the paper to the specific requirements of that journal. Ensure that your research article coincides with the aim and scope of the journal. Understand the journal’s guidelines, recommended manuscript structure, and reference style

2. Reduce Redundant Length of Your Thesis

An important aspect of turning your thesis research to journal article is focusing on the word count without deleting crucial information. In order reduce word count , extract the data that answers just one research question. This should result in a more focused information than your thesis research presented. Discuss results in context with your problem statement-that is the focus of your paper. Good language and structure are crucial – your paper may get rejected even though it contains valuable data if it is difficult to understand. Use your data to tell a coherent story and avoid sweeping conclusions your data cannot support. Ensure that your title matches the contents of your paper. Paraphrase the content without changing the meaning.

3. Modify Introduction as Abstract

Repurpose the introduction as an abstract by shortening your thesis introduction to 100-150 words. Remember to maintain key points of the introduction to hold the reader’s attention. Formulate the introduction and discussion of thesis as basis for the journal article’s abstract. Furthermore, consider combining multiple research questions or focus on just one for the journal article.

4. Focus on Relevant and Selective Information

Since the discussion, methods and methodology, and results section of your thesis is an in-detail explanation of your research, these sections must be kept short while writing in a journal article.  Familiarize yourself with the target journal’s standards by referring previously published papers and understanding their format. Most importantly, provide interpretation of main findings in the results section in concise statements or tabular formats. Avoid repeating your results in the discussion section. However, discuss how your findings expand and support previous perspectives of the research. Finally, mention how future studies can build upon your work and address limitations in your study.

5. Limit the Number of References

As your thesis is a work of several years put together, it involves numerous literature reviewing. However, while turning your thesis to journal article, you must include only limited references that are relevant to the research question addressed in the journal article. Focus on using most recent references. Consider using reference management tools such as Zotero, Mendeley, Quiqqa, etc. to make the referencing process easier and efficient.

It is an academic requirement that you publish your data for the benefit of the scientific community. Considering that the structure of journal article is different from the structure of a thesis, turning a thesis to journal article must be done following logical steps as mentioned above.

Did you ever have to convert your thesis to journal article? How did you plan it? What strategies did you use while reducing the word count of your thesis? Let us know in the comments section below! You can also visit our  Q&A forum  for frequently asked questions related to different aspects of research writing and publishing answered by our team that comprises subject-matter experts, eminent researchers, and publication experts.

I was Searching For This From So Many days. Thank you for Sharing

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

Are we also going to talk Code of Conduct in Research, as authorship is part of the conduct (ethics)?

Regards, Elvia

I guess you are referring to our upcoming webinar on Assigning Authorship & Contributorship | Tips for Researchers. We will be discussing the ethical dilemmas in authorship during the session.

We would request you to register and attend the webinar for additional insights on this topic.

Meanwhile, we would recommend you to share your queries with us on our FREE Q&A forum . In addition, you may download our FREE mobile app to stay updated on the latest resources in research writing and academic publishing.

What about the Topic? we need to rephrase the topic or keep it same with Thesis topic?

Hi Shahid, Thank you for your question. Your thesis topic would be a cumulative title for all the chapters described in your thesis. When you publish your thesis as a journal article, every chapter would be published as an individual article in most cases. You may or may not use the same title that you have used for that particular chapter in the thesis. Your thesis would have chapter names that are more suited to the overall objective of your thesis. On the other hand, your manuscript should ideally have a catchy and search-optimized title highlighting a general perspective. It may not be the same as your thesis title. However, if your thesis chapter title meets the requirement of the manuscript you intend to publish, you can go ahead with the same.

You could also go through our articles on writing good research paper titles: https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-tips-on-choosing-an-attractive-research-title/ https://www.enago.com/academy/writing-a-good-research-title-things-to-avoid/ https://www.enago.com/academy/write-irresistible-research-paper-title/

Did you get a chance to install our FREE mobile app . Make sure you subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.enago.com/academy/subscribe-now/ .

Hi Dr. Durga, Amazing article and I am sure it will surely help the writers to write more carefully and also plagiarised free.

Greeting from Enago Academy! Thank you for your positive comment. We are glad to know that you found our resources useful. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Happy reading!

i just read the article and also the comments section it’s so helpful. thank you so much for sharing it.. good work!

Thanks a lot for this informational blog which surely going to help the students pursuing the Phd. Nowdays due to assignment burden students started taking the help of professional academic experts. There are many writing services.

Thank you for the very useful article. I will definitely look into it.

Writing a book: needed advice and help at one point. I found enago academy in my search of Answers. You were a Great Help! I hope to use your services again, if I am stuck on correct writing principles! Thank You for being here. K.R. Plante

This helped me a lot; thank you for this informative article.

Thanks for writing such an informative blog which will surely be a great help for the students as well as the institutions

Great article! One question…. should I cite the thesis in the paper? If so, how do I do that efficiently since it would be all over the place?

good, insightful piece of text.

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Can I publish parts of the Ph.D thesis as a paper in a journal?

I recently finished my PhD thesis which will be published as a book soon. Now I'm wondering if it's possible or allowed to submit parts to a journal?

Normally the process would be the other way round I think: Submitting papers and "gluing" them together for the thesis. I've read the guidelines of some journals which state "that the work described has not been published before" or that "Papers must present scientific results that are essentially new".

• publications

• 1 Could you be a bit more specific as to what you mean by "published as a book"? Are you simply making a few bound copies, are you self-publishing or is this going to an academic publisher? –  Pedro Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 15:49
• Oh sorry :) It is going to a publisher and can be ordered there. –  John Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 15:59
• 2 See also this complementary question . –  JeffE Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 19:53
• This question is probably field dependent. For example, in sociology in France it is usually not possible to publish in a journal something that has been made available on the web, (and books are the most important research outputs). –  Benoît Kloeckner Commented Aug 23, 2012 at 7:52
• The field of the dissertation is Management Information Systems. But the content is a mixture of biometrics and machine learning. –  John Commented Aug 23, 2012 at 12:46

2 Answers 2

As a general rule, you cannot publish anything as original research that has already been published. (You may be able to reprint it in other venues, but most research journals do not do this.)

Of course, the trick is what counts as "already published". Nowadays, many publishers (including all mathematics publishers, for example) do not count informal distribution on the internet as prior publication. It's common not to count extended abstracts from conference proceedings, although the journal may require some revisions or extensions. Nobody counts submitting a dissertation as prior publication, even if the university makes it available for download or purchase, and technical reports are generally in the same category.

On the other hand, publication as a "real book" definitely counts as prior publication and would rule out journals. Of course, this just brings up the question of what a "real book" is. Basically, if it's published by a serious academic publisher, with some nontrivial selection and editorial advice, then that counts as publication. On the other hand, if it's some random publisher printing copies of Ph.D. theses and selling them online, then you could make a strong case that it's not really published (and that this is not so different from ordering a dissertation copy).

However, I think you need to discuss this explicitly when submitting your paper. For example, you could add a sentence to your submission letter along the lines of "This work is based on my thesis from University X, which is available for sale by Y but has not been traditionally published". It's much better to deal with this upfront than to have someone later ask "Wait, why is someone selling copies of this work online?"

• 1 I think Dave Clarke and I fundamentally agree, but I felt it was worth expanding on the issues. –  Anonymous Mathematician Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 21:43
• Thanks for the answer! Basically that's what came to my mind upfront. The publisher will be a well known one, but it'll be published as a dissertation. This means there will be no editorial advice except in layout questions. Selection is based on the grade. So to sum up, I'll check the contract with the publisher and also ask the potential journal(s) if submission is allowed under this constraints. –  John Commented Aug 23, 2012 at 12:42
• If you are going to reuse some material in whole or part, you have to have permissions from the copyright holders. So the people you have to contact are the people who have contracted the book. Your situation is the reverse of what i've normally heard. Usually one turns the diss into papers, and then based on feedback, works those papers into the book. There the journal editors are usually happy to let you turn your short paper into part of a chapter in a published book. I suspect book editors are going to be less obliging, unless you can argue that the publications are going to help sell it. –  user10636 Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 12:24
• As a rule of thumb, I would say any publication with an ISBN/ISSN is an official publication, anything without that is nonofficial and OK for submitting to conference/journal. –  THN Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 14:59

In general, this is allowed, even encouraged.

The answer depends on what kind of book you are publishing. If it is the regular dissertation, then you can publish in journals. If it is a properly published book by Springer or equivalent, then I doubt that you can publish again.

• Thanks for the quick response! What do you mean by regular dissertation? It'll be published as a book available on amazon, etc. in German. Why does this distinction matter in your opinion? –  John Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 15:55
• If it's published by a scientific publisher, then you (probably) cannot republish it as papers. If it is just published in the dissertation series, then you can. Check with the publisher. –  Dave Clarke Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 17:24
• 3 @John: If you are dealing with a real publisher, you will sign a contract. Check the terms of your contract. –  Jukka Suomela Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 17:47
• Ok, thanks for your responses so far! Yes indeed I'm currently waiting for the contract and I'll check it. I was wondering whether (given the contract with the publisher of the book permits it) a journal accepts content, which has been published in some altered form already. As the dissertation is in German, I'll have to rewrite the parts and translate them, so it won't be exactly the same. –  John Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 18:46
• 5 Yeah, whether the journals approve is at least as big an issue as whether the dissertation publisher does. –  Anonymous Mathematician Commented Aug 22, 2012 at 21:44

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Thesis content and article publishing

Journal publishers usually acquire the copyright to scholarly articles through a publication agreement with the author. Their policies then determine what authors can do with their work.

Below are publisher policies regarding graduate students’ reuse of their previously published articles in their theses, and policies on accepting journal submissions that first appeared in an author’s previously released thesis.

If an article is co-authored with a member of the MIT faculty, or if you have opted-in to an OA license , the MIT open access policy  is likely to apply to the article, which allows for the extension of additional rights to graduate student authors through MIT for reuse.  Short excerpts of published works may also be available for reuse under the MIT Libraries license agreements .

See this page for information about who owns the copyright to your thesis (generally, it’s either MIT or you).

Please contact Ask Scholarly Communications with questions or if you need information that does not yet appear below.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Reuse of author’s previously published article in author’s thesis

Check the terms of your publication agreement .

Submission of new article by author that first appeared as part of author’s thesis

Allows :  “ We do not regard dissertations/theses as prior publications.”

American Chemical Society

Allows : “Authors may reuse all or part of the Submitted, Accepted or Published Work in a thesis or dissertation that the author writes and is required to submit to satisfy the criteria of degree-granting institutions…. Appropriate citation of the Published Work must be made as follows “Reprinted with permission from [COMPLETE REFERENCE CITATION]. Copyright [YEAR] American Chemical Society.”

“If the thesis or dissertation to be published is in electronic format, a direct link to the Published Work must be included using the  ACS Articles on Request link.”

See also this FAQ for thesis info.

Each ACS journal has a specific policy on prior publication that is determined by the respective ACS Editor-in-Chief. Authors should consult these policies and/or contact the appropriate journal editorial office to ensure they understand the policy before submitting material for consideration.

American Geophysical Union

Allows : “If you wish to reuse your own article (or an amended version of it) in a new publication of which you are the author, editor or co-editor, prior permission is not required (with the usual acknowledgements). However, a formal grant of license can be downloaded free of charge from RightsLink by selecting “Author of this Wiley article” as your requestor type.”

Allows : “Previously published explicitly does not include oral or poster presentations, meeting abstracts or student theses/dissertations.”

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Allows : “ Upon publication of an article or paper in an AIAA journal or conference proceeding, authors can use in their own theses/dissertations (with permission of AIAA if required by copyright).”

From here : “In most cases when AIAA is the copyright holder of a work, authors will be automatically granted permission by AIAA to reprint their own material in subsequent works, to include figures, tables, and verbatim portions of text, upon request. Explicit permission should be sought from AIAA through Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) ; all reprinted material must be acknowledged and the original source cited in full.” 

American Institute of Physics

Allows : “A uthors do not need permission from AIP Publishing to reuse your own AIP Publishing article in your thesis or dissertation (please format your credit line: “Reproduced from [FULL CITATION], with the permission of AIP Publishing”)” Author agreement says the version of record can be used . 

Allows : Publishing the work in a thesis is not considered prior publication according to author warranties in the publication agreement.

American Meteorological Society

AMS seems to require permission. Email [email protected] . It can take 10 days to hear back. They will then ask that you include the complete bibliographic citation of the original source, as well as the following statement with that citation for each: © American Meteorological Society. Used with permission.

American Physical Society

Allows , “ provided the bibliographic citation and the APS copyright credit line are given on the appropriate pages.”

Allows Language from Physical Review journals page: “Publication of material in a master’s or doctoral thesis does not preclude publication of that material in the Physical Review journals.”

American Society for Clinical Investigation

After Jan 4, 2022 : “Effective with the January 4, 2022 issue of JCI, authors retain copyright on all articles, which are published with a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).”

Prior to Jan 4, 2022 : “ Permission can be obtained via Copyright Clearance Center . Copyright or license information is noted on each article.”

Likely allows : D oesn’t explicitly call out theses but says posting on preprints isn’t prior publication. 

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Allows : “Authors can include partial or complete papers of their own (and no fee is expected) in a dissertation as long as citations and DOI pointers to the Versions of Record in the ACM Digital Library are included. Authors can use any portion of their own work in presentations and in the classroom (and no fee is expected).”

Likely allows . Prior publication rules apply to “peer reviewed” publications.  

Cambridge University Press

Allows : “Permissions requests are waived if t he author of the work wishes to reproduce a single chapter (not exceeding 20 per cent of their work), journal article or shorter extract in a subsequent work (i.e. with a later publication date) of which he or she is to be the author, co-author or editor.”

Policies set by individual journals.

Allows : “ ​​ Use and share their works for scholarly purposes (with full acknowledgement of the original article): Include in a thesis or dissertation (provided this is not published commercially).”

Allows : “ Elsevier does not count publication of an academic thesis as prior publication.”

Emerald Publishing

Allows . Authors should use the submitted version or accepted manuscript version.  Use of the final published version is permitted in print, but not electronic versions of theses.

Allows : “We are happy for submissions to Emerald to include work that has previously formed part of your PhD or other academic thesis. Please submit your paper in the usual way but declare the existence of the uploaded thesis to the Editor of the journal. If the Editor wished to consider the paper further, the paper would go through our standard anonymised peer-review process.”

Allows , with some requirements

Theses not specifically addressed , but permitted subject to editorial discretion. Individual journals may have their own policies.

Institute of Physics

Allows. A uthor may use the final published version or figures/text, and should include citation and a link to the version of record. “When you transfer the copyright in your article to IOP, we grant back to you certain rights, including the right to include all or part of the Final Published Version of the article within any thesis or dissertation.”

Inter-Research Science Center

Reuse of published content is “generally free of charge,” but you must get permission. Email: [email protected]

Not addressed , except to say, “ Permission to re-use any previously published material must have been obtained by the authors from the copyright holders.”

International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) INTERSPEECH conference

Allows , with citation. “ISCA grants each author permission to use the article in that author’s dissertation….”

Mathematical Sciences Publishers

Allows , with citation. “The Author may use part or all of this Work or its image in any future works of his/her/their own.”

Unclear, but the author agreement says , “The Author warrants that the Work has not been published before, in any form except as a preprint.” We suggest asking your editor.

National Academy of Sciences

Allows , with citation. “ PNAS authors do not need to obtain permission in the following cases: …to include their articles as part of their dissertations.”

Not addressed . “ What constitutes prior publication…will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Allows , with citation. “ Authors have the right to reuse their article’s Version of Record, in whole or in part, in their own thesis.”

Allows . “ Nature Portfolio will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.”

Oxford University Press

Journals have their own policies . OUP uses the Copyright Clearance Center for permissions . Contact your editor.

Royal Society of Chemistry

Allows , but says, “ Excerpts or material from your dissertation that have not been through peer review will generally be eligible for publication. However, if the excerpt from the dissertation included in your manuscript is the same or substantially the same as any previously published work, the editor may determine that it is not suitable for publication in the journal.”

Allows — in addition, a special agreement with Springer for MIT authors allows for reuse for scholarly and educational purposes.

Policy varies by journal but according to Springer: “There are no overriding ethical issues as long as the dual publication is transparent and cross referenced. Transparency is key, though a few journals might reject such an article for the reason of non-originality.”

Taylor & Francis

Allows — authors retain the right to “Include your article Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM) or Accepted Manuscript(AM), depending on the embargo period, in your thesis or dissertation. The Version of Record cannot be used.”

Allows : “ Y ou may share any version of your article with individual colleagues and students… as submission of thesis, or doctorate.”

Allows : “ The following types of “prior publication” do not present cause for concerns about duplicate or redundant publication: Dissertations and theses in university archives.”

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Formatting Your Thesis as an Academic Journal Article

For all thesis formatting and submission deadlines and information, also reference the SJSU Graduate Studies Thesis Guide .

SJSU is now using Montezuma Press as the interface with graduate students finishing their theses. They will review your formatted manuscript free of charge, or you can hire them to format it for you. 

Citations and References

If you wish to format your thesis as an Academic Journal Article, working with your thesis chair, find an article in an academic journal that is similar to your thesis topic and scope.

• This will likely be an article you have cited in your literature review.
• Be sure the journal publishes studies that use data collected over the same time length and of the same type that you are collecting or using in your thesis.
• Read the Author Guidelines for that journal.
• Articles do NOT always follow the rules in Author Guidelines
• When you turn in the thesis, you will have to provide a link to the specific model article and Author Guidelines you used on this thesis information form [pdf] to guide reviewers.
• Format your thesis exactly in the same manner as your selected article (See example below). Note:

         ✓    the heading style          ✓     the way that figures and tables are set out, and          ✓     the citation and reference style.

• All theses must include standard front pages formatted as described in the SJSU 14 Formatting Rules and in this example [docx] .

Graduate Studies prefers that theses contain three chapters:

• Introduction with literature review ( optional, unless your journal article has already been published with multiple authors or if the article introduction does not contain a literature review , in which case an introduction chapter is required )
• Full Journal-ready article ( You may add a second abstract in Chapter 2, if the journal abstract format differs from the thesis format ).
• All margins must follow Graduate Studies’ rules, regardless of journal specifications.
• Line spacing must be either single or double-spaced. No fractions are permitted.
• Double column layouts overall are NOT permitted.
• Figures and tables must be inserted in the text shortly after their citation, but after the end of the paragraph ( even if journal Author Guidelines specify that figures be placed at the end of the manuscript ).
• Do not use endnotes. If a journal you have selected uses footnotes, you may utilize them ( you will need to document this in your article ).

Important Notes

• Each section of the thesis or dissertation should be unique. It is not permissible to copy the same content from one section to another and claim that it represents journal articles submitted to separate journals.

Note: If you have been working closely with your thesis advisor, although it is not mandatory, you should generally expect to list them as a co-author on your journal submission. In some cases you may want to include your entire thesis committee as co-authors, if they have been actively helpful to the development of your paper. Discuss the question of authorship with your committee as early in the process as you feel comfortable doing so.

• Publishing an Academic Article Workshop created by Dr. Carolina Prado

SJSU Journal Formatting Example: [pdf]

Final Considerations: Citation style and format must be precise and consistent throughout the document. All references should be peer-reviewed academic journal research papers or other primary sources in your field. Internet-only sources should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

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Publishing a Master’s Thesis: A Guide for Novice Authors

Robert g. resta.

1 Swedish Cancer Institute, Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, WA USA

Patricia McCarthy Veach

2 Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN USA

Sarah Charles

3 Jefferson Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, PA USA

Kristen Vogel

4 Center for Medical Genetics, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, IL USA

Terri Blase

5 Department of Maternal Fetal Medicine, Advocate Christ Medical Center, Oak Lawn, IL USA

Christina G. S. Palmer

6 Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USA

7 Department of Human Genetics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USA

8 UCLA Semel Institute, 760 Westwood Plaza, Room 47-422, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA

Publication of original research, clinical experiences, and critical reviews of literature are vital to the growth of the genetic counseling field, delivery of genetic counseling services, and professional development of genetic counselors. Busy clinical schedules, lack of time and funding, and training that emphasizes clinical skills over research skills may make it difficult for new genetic counselors to turn their thesis projects into publications. This paper summarizes and elaborates upon a presentation aimed at de-mystifying the publishing process given at the 2008 National Society of Genetic Counselors Annual Education Conference. Specific topics include familiarizing prospective authors, particularly genetic counseling students, with the basics of the publication process and related ethical considerations. Former students’ experiences with publishing master’s theses also are described in hopes of encouraging new genetic counselors to submit for publication papers based on their thesis projects.

Introduction

Scholarship is important for growth of a profession and for clinical care. For these reasons, the American Board of Genetic Counseling (ABGC) endorses scholarly activities through Practice Based Competency IV.5 (American Board of Genetic Counseling 2009 ). Boyer ( 1990 ) describes four types of scholarship (Scholarship of Discovery, Scholarship of Integration, Scholarship of Application, and Scholarship of Teaching), all of which are endorsed by ABGC and required of accredited genetic counseling training programs. The first three types of scholarship, which involve generating new knowledge or applying existing knowledge to an important problem, are the basis of the ABGC’s requirement that students in accredited programs engage in scholarship and complete a scholarly product. The ABGC defines a scholarly product to include: a master’s thesis, an independent research project, a literature review/case report, a formal needs assessment, design and implementation of an innovative patient, professional, or community educational program, and/or preparation of a grant proposal.

The purpose of this article is to encourage students to disseminate their scholarly work (except grant proposals) through a journal publication. This article was developed from an Educational Breakout Session (EBS) at the 2008 National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) Annual Education Conference and draws upon the experiences of a past editor and current assistant editor of the Journal of Genetic Counseling ( JOGC ), a student mentor, and recent genetic counseling graduates who successfully turned their student thesis projects into peer-reviewed publications.

Engaging in scholarship is important for increasing genetic counselors’ self-knowledge, but dissemination of scholarship is essential for the growth of the genetic counseling field. McGaghie and Webster ( 2009 ) identify a wide range of types of scholarly products that promote broad dissemination of information, including peer-reviewed journal articles (e.g., original research, case reports, review articles), book chapters, books or monographs, edited books, essays, editorials, book reviews, letters, conference reports, educational materials, reports of teaching practices, curriculum description, videos, simulations, simulators, and web-based tutorials. As evidence of the importance of disseminating scholarship to the field of genetic counseling, dissemination of scholarly products is actively promoted by the NSGC, the major professional organization for the genetic counseling profession. A prominent example of NSGC’s commitment to dissemination is the JOGC , a professional journal devoted to disseminating peer-reviewed information relevant to the practice of genetic counseling. The success of this journal over nearly two decades is a strong indicator of the value genetic counselors place on publishing journal articles as an essential product of scholarship.

Individuals who have completed a master’s thesis or equivalent should consider publication. This “call to publish” student work is based on evidence that a large proportion of students engage in a scholarly activity with publication potential. A recent survey of 531 genetic counselors suggests that 75% of respondents fulfilled their scholarly activity requirement via a master’s thesis (Clark et al. 2006 ). Among this group, 21% classified their thesis as “hypothesis driven” and 20% classified it as a “descriptive study.” Although the research may be relatively small scale given the time and resource constraints of short training programs (≤2 years), it nonetheless offers a rich and varied source of information about the practice of genetic counseling that could be shared with the broader community through publication. Yet Clark et al. ( 2006 ) found that only 21.6% of respondents who completed a master’s thesis had submitted a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. It appears that many students do not submit their research for professional publication, perhaps due to a combination of time constraints, lack of mentoring and support, unfamiliarity with the publication process, lack of professional confidence, and fear of rejection (Clark et al. 2006 ; Cohen et al. 2008 ; Driscoll and Driscoll 2002 ; Keen 2006 ). Because this is one aspect of scholarship that has received limited attention, guidance regarding the details and vicissitudes of the publication process, and acknowledgement that master’s theses can be successfully published, are needed.

Of course, one might question why students should or would publish the results of their graduate work. The answer is complex, without a “one size fits all,” because scholarship can be intrinsically and/or extrinsically motivated. McGaghie and Webster ( 2009 ) describe intrinsic motives as including sharing knowledge, career advancement, status improvement, collegial approval, personal pleasure, and response to challenge; extrinsic motives include academic pressure, commitment to patient care, practice improvement, and promoting the use of new technologies. Although the reasons genetic counselors publish articles have not been empirically evaluated, Clark et al. ( 2006 ) (i) concluded that a substantial number of genetic counselors consider active involvement in research (a form of scholarship and precursor to publication) to be a core role, and (ii) found that respondents endorsed a range of intrinsic and extrinsic motives for their involvement in research. These reasons included interest in the subject, contributing to the field, personal development/satisfaction, diversifying job responsibilities, job requirements, lack of existing research on a particular topic, and career advancement. It is reasonable to infer that these reasons would extend to publication as well.

The work that culminates in a master’s thesis provides the basis for a professional journal article. However, writing a professional journal article differs from writing a master’s thesis. This article, therefore, provides practical ideas and considerations about the process for developing a master’s thesis into a peer-reviewed journal article and describes successful case examples. Research and publication occur in stages and include many important topics. Previous genetic counseling professional development articles have partially or comprehensively addressed the topics of developing and conducting a research project (Beeson 1997 ), writing a manuscript (Bowen 2003 ), and the peer-review process (Weil 2004 ). This paper expands on previous articles by describing the publication process and discussing publication ethics, with emphasis on aspects pertinent to publishing a master’s thesis. It is hoped that this article will encourage genetic counselors to publish their research.

The primary audience for this article is genetic counselors who are conducting a master’s thesis or equivalent or who completed a thesis in the last few years which remains unpublished. The secondary audience is other novice authors and affiliated faculty of genetic counseling training programs. Although the focus of this paper is on journal publications which are subject to a peer-review process (e.g., original research, clinical reports, and reviews), some of the basic information applies to a variety of publishing forms.

The Publication Process

Publish before it perishes.

Like produce and dairy products, data have a limited shelf life. Research results may be rendered marginal by new research, social changes, and shifts in research trends. For example, a study of patient reluctance to undergo genetic testing due to concerns about health insurance discrimination conducted in December 2007 would have been obsolete when the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (Pub.L. 110–233, 122 Stat. 881, enacted May 21, 2008) was enacted 5 months later. Or studies of whether patients think they might undergo testing if a gene for a particular condition were identified become less relevant once the gene is actually mapped and sequenced.

The hardest part about writing is actually writing. Making the time to sit down and compose a report of research findings is a very difficult first step. As noted in the three case examples, this is particularly true for a recent graduate whose time is occupied with searching for a new job, moving to a new city, and learning the details of a new job. However, the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes, and the greater the risk that your data will grow stale. If you do not write it, the paper will likely not get written. The three case examples identify strong mentorship, ongoing communication with co-authors, constructive criticism, and commitment to publication by every author as key elements for successfully preparing a manuscript. The following sections describe basic processes for preparing a paper. See also Table  1 for helpful references about technical aspects of manuscript preparation.

Table 1

Selected Resources For Manuscript Preparation

Choosing a Journal

Research delivered to an inappropriate audience is ignored. Many journals publish genetic counseling research—as demonstrated by the three case examples—and therefore, choosing the right journal is critical (Thompson 2007 ). The first step is to decide who the audience should be. Is it important to reach genetic counselors? Medical geneticists? Or is the audience outside of the genetic counseling community? Some genetic counseling research is of interest to researchers in patient education, decision-making, or the social sciences. Clinicians such as surgeons, radiology technicians, psychologists, and family practice physicians might benefit from a greater understanding of genetic counseling and how it interfaces with their specialties.

The next step is to decide whether the journal is interested in the type of research conducted. For example, does the journal publish articles mostly on medical and clinical issues? Does it publish qualitative research? A description of the scope, aims, and types of research that are published is located in the “Instructions to Contributors” section on the web page of most journals. A look at the journal’s editorial board might also provide a good idea of a journal’s theoretical approaches, philosophical orientation, and research interests. Another strategy is to contact the journal’s editor or a member of the editorial board prior to submitting a manuscript to discuss the appropriateness of the manuscript for the journal. Many editors welcome such pre-submission contact since it reduces their workload of reading inappropriate manuscripts.

A journal’s “impact factor” may be important to some authors when considering where to publish a manuscript. The impact factor is a—perhaps imperfect—statistical measure of a journal’s importance. The impact factor was developed in the early 1960s by Eugene Garfield and Irving Sher and is technically defined as A/B, where A = the number of times articles published in that journal were cited and B = the number of citable articles published by the journal (letters and editorials are not usually citable articles) (Garfield 1994 ). An impact factor of one indicates that on average, articles published in the journal were cited once by other authors.

A journal’s impact factor can vary greatly from year to year, and its practical utility is widely debated (Andersen et al. 2006 ; Chew et al. 2006 ; Greenwood 2007 ; Ha et al. 2006 ; The PLoS Medicine Editors 2006 ). Genetic counselors often publish small studies and case reports. The journals that might publish such papers usually have impact factors of ten or less. Thus the impact factor may be a less important consideration for many genetic counselors when deciding where to publish.

A publisher’s copyright policy may also influence the choice of where to publish. The majority of publishers own the copyright (United States Copyright Office 2008 ) and authors do not have the right to copy, re-use, or distribute their own publications without buying reprints, which can be a significant source of income for publishers. Some journals, like the Public Library of Science (PLoS), are completely Open Access and make all articles fully available online. Other journals have Delayed Open Access, which makes articles publicly available after a specified period of time, often a year or two. Many journals, such as the JOGC , promote Hybrid Open Access in which authors, for a fee, can make their articles publicly available. Some journals will make select articles publicly available, usually those that attract media attention. For grant-funded research, consider the requirements of the funding source; some granting agencies require that the research results be made publicly available at some point.

Peer Review

Peer review is the process in which two or three experts evaluate a manuscript to determine whether it is worthy of publication. Peer review is the backbone of scholarly publishing; no research manuscript gets published until a team of reviewers and journal editors vets it. Ideally, reviewers are objective, constructively critical, open-minded, fair, and insightful. Some journals blind the reviewer to the author’s identity, in hopes that the authors’ reputations or professional relationships will not influence the review. Some journals will let authors suggest reviewers or request that certain people not review a manuscript. A journal’s peer review policies may be another important consideration in choosing where to submit a manuscript.

In practice, peer review is not always ideal (Benose et al. 2007 ; Curfman et al. 2008 ; Hames 2007 ; Wager et al. 2006 ). Nonetheless, no better or viable alternative has been proposed. Reviews may sometimes appear to be arbitrary, unfair, and poorly performed. Reading such reviews can be very difficult and frustrating, even for experienced authors. However, it is a reviewer’s job to be critical, and there may be elements of truth in even the most negative reviews. Some editors may be willing to send a manuscript to another reviewer if an original reviewer produces a harshly critical or poorly thought out critique. Some journals have a formal appeals process if a manuscript is rejected or an author feels a review is inaccurate, inappropriate, or biased. However, sometimes it is simply easier to submit the manuscript to a different journal. Case # 2 describes a successful example where submitting a manuscript to a different journal led to publication.

The manuscript rejection rate varies widely across journals, but about half of all manuscripts are rejected or require significant revisions (Armstrong et al. 2008 ; Hall and Wilcox 2007 ; Liesegang et al. 2007 ). About half of rejected manuscripts are published in other journals (Armstrong et al. 2008 ; Hall and Wilcox 2007 ; Liesegang et al. 2007 ). Even among articles that are accepted for publication, the vast majority will require significant revisions. All three case examples describe manuscripts that underwent significant revision. Thus, prospective authors should not be disheartened if a manuscript is rejected or needs extensive re-writing; this is the rule rather than the exception . Many editors are willing to work with authors who have questions about specific comments or how best to incorporate the reviewers’ suggestions. Busy journal editors would rather answer questions up front than have to laboriously edit a revised manuscript and send it back for further revisions.

Peer review, and the subsequent manuscript revisions, along with the number of manuscripts submitted to the journal, are probably the most critical bottlenecks in determining how long it takes before a manuscript appears in print. Typically, a year or more may pass from the time of submission to the publication date. The three case examples include their timeframes to highlight the need for perseverance and patience with the publication process.

The clearest way for authors to respond to editors’ and reviewers’ comments is to prepare a table that lists each comment and how the authors addressed them, item by item. Some reviewers’ comments may be inaccurate or simply unrealistic (e.g. “The authors should re-do the entire research study...”); these can be discussed in the table or in the cover letter that accompanies the table. Additional information about the peer-review process can be found in Weil ( 2004 ).

Acceptance!

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the publisher or the journal editor will send a copyright transfer statement that spells out ownership of the article. This statement must be signed and returned in short order before the manuscript will be published. The corresponding author will receive page proofs, usually electronically, which must be read by the author for accuracy and returned fairly quickly (usually 2–3 days). Many publishers are reluctant to make significant changes in the page proofs, and they may charge for substantial revisions. Thus, the version of the manuscript that is submitted to the journal before the page proofs are generated should be very close to what the author wishes to see in print. Usually at this time publishers will offer the author the option to purchase reprints to allow the author to share the publication with other researchers, co-authors, and colleagues. Some journals will provide a limited number of free reprints or a complimentary copy of the issue of the journal in which the paper appears. The steps in the publication process are summarized in Table  2 .

Table 2

Steps in the Publication Process

a ∼50% of manuscripts are rejected or require significant revision before being accepted for publication

Ethics of Publishing

“Scholarship (like life) is not always fair or precise.” (Thompson 1994 )

Manuscript preparation and submission for publication can be complicated by ethical issues. Many authors may not be aware of these ethical conundrums, let alone have a plan for addressing them. Ethics is not a stagnant concept. As research methodologies and research questions evolve, new ethical issues in publishing arise. This section contains a description of several issues broadly relevant to the publishing practice of genetic counselors, particularly as students or recent graduates. However, it is important for genetic counselors-as-authors to keep abreast of ethical issues relevant to their own work.

“Ethics” are principles that govern the behavior of individuals or groups (Merriam-Webster 1974 ). Ethical codes of conduct exist in order to preserve the integrity of a profession, ensure the public’s welfare, and protect scholars. Ethical issues particularly relevant to writing for publication, include: (1) authorship determination, (2) disclosure and conflicts of interest, (3) plagiarism, (4) subject confidentiality, (5) accuracy of information, and (6) publishing in multiple sources.

Authorship Determination

Consider the following situation: A student conducted an excellent study for her master’s thesis project. At the beginning of the project, her supervisor promised her that she would have first authorship on any manuscripts based on the project. However, when the time came to write the paper, the student procrastinated. Finally, after the supervisor repeatedly “nagged” her, she submitted a draft to her, but it was very poorly written. The supervisor decided the only way to salvage the paper was to totally rewrite it herself. Now the supervisor thinks that she deserves to be the first author. Is this ethical? Does it matter if the project was the student’s master’s thesis rather than a project in which she was voluntarily involved? Are there guidelines that might be implemented in advance to handle this kind of situation?

This complex situation may be all too familiar for many supervisors and students. It raises issues about valuing contributions to the publication process, the power differential between supervisors and students, determining when renegotiation of authorship is warranted, and setting expectations and priorities up front. Whenever manuscripts are authored by more than one individual, order of authorship should be negotiated as early in the process as possible. Only individuals who have actually contributed to the work should be listed as authors. Their order should indicate “...the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status” (Shadish 1994 ) (p. 1096). In the sciences, the first and last authors typically are the individuals that made the greatest contributions to the project (Laflin et al. 2005 ). Many journals require a listing of each author’s contribution to the manuscript in order to make sure each person meets the journal’s requirements to be listed as an author.

Student authors pose a special situation. Doctoral students usually are the first authors of papers based on their dissertation research (Nguyen and Nguyen 2006 ). Authorship order is less clear for masters’ projects because masters’ students may lack sufficient knowledge and skills to conduct a project and prepare a manuscript of publishable quality without considerable input from their supervisor (Shadish 1994 ). Thompson ( 1994 ) recommends that when there is any question as to who made the primary contribution, the student should receive higher authorship. His recommendation helps to protect the person who has less power in the situation. Often students are involved in studies that are not based on their own master’s or doctoral research, but rather are connected to an existing research program, such as case examples 1 and 2. In those situations, some authors contend that their involvement should be creative and intellectual in order to warrant authorship; otherwise, student input can be credited in an acknowledgement section (Fine and Kurdek 1993 ; Holaday and Yost 1995 ; Thompson 1994 ).

Negotiating authorship is an important step that should begin in the initial stages of a project. This step usually involves assessing and agreeing upon each person’s tasks, contributions, and efforts. The amount of supervision required for an individual’s contributions is usually considered as well (Fine and Kurdek 1993 ). Sometimes renegotiation of authorship order is necessary due to unexpected changes and/or substantial revision of the manuscript. The key is to remember that authorship is negotiated. Questions to consider throughout this negotiation process include: Who had the original idea for the basis of the publication? Who designed and conducted the study that generated the data? Who will write most of the first draft of the paper? Is the study part of someone’s research lab? Students should maintain early and on-going communication with their co-authors about their investment of time and efforts and the outcomes of those efforts (Sandler and Russell 2005 ). However, scholarly contribution is more important than actual time and effort expended when determining authorship. For more information regarding authorship determination, it may be useful to review guidelines for discussing and clarifying authorship order (Gibelman and Gelman 1999 ) or developing individualized contracts for research collaboration (Stith et al. 1992 ). These guidelines also may be useful for initiating discussion of authorship as part of the curriculum in genetic counseling training programs.

Take another look at the authorship scenario. At the time of the original negotiation of authorship, it is likely that the supervisor (and other parties) believed the student warranted first authorship due to her creative contributions and time allotted to the study. In most authors’ minds, first authorship is equated with substantial contribution to writing the manuscript, usually the first draft, so it is important the student understand this is part of the responsibilities of being first author. Typically students have no experience writing a journal article, and so some procrastination is likely. In this scenario, the authorship dilemma may have been averted by having in place a plan to mentor the student, providing support, and delineating a specific process for writing the first draft of the manuscript.

Manuscripts invariably undergo substantial revision as co-authors and reviewers weigh in, so it is not unusual that the supervisor would revise the student’s first draft. This activity does not prima facie warrant a change in authorship order. However, by developing a specific plan to support the student’s writing, it may minimize the extent of the supervisor’s revisions. It is possible, though, that the student’s procrastination and poor writing should initiate a renegotiation of authorship order because the level and nature of her contributions to the work may be changing. The supervisor and student should discuss the reasons for changing authorship order; the supervisor should not unilaterally make this change without discussion. Keep in mind that the bar for changing authorship should be much higher if the paper is based on the student’s master’s thesis than if it is based on a project in which she was voluntarily involved. It is also important to inform students early in the process that most research is a collaborative effort, requiring time, energy, and sometimes funding, and therefore their collaborators have expectations that their contributions will be rewarded through publication. Developing an a priori policy for renegotiation may often reduce misunderstandings and minimize conflict.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Consider the following situation: A student conducted a study to evaluate a new program that her clinic is offering to its patients. She interviewed ten patients who participated in the program about their experience. Nine of these patients were in general agreement about the value of the program, while the 10th patient was quite negative about her experience. The student’s impression of this patient is that she is a generally negative person. The student believes that the patient came into the program expecting not to like it. Furthermore, the student is concerned her clinic will lose funding for this program if she reports this patient’s responses. The student decides to exclude her data from the paper. Is this decision ethical? Why or why not?

One ethical issue raised in this scenario involves determining when it is appropriate to exclude data points. Data collected from research can be messy, and it is not unusual for some data points to be excluded from analyses. However, there must be an explicit methodology for excluding data points or subjects, and this information usually is reported in the manuscript. Examples for exclusions include: missing data (e.g., a participant did not complete a majority of the items on a questionnaire); measurement error (e.g., the recorded measurement of a biological process or part of the anatomy is simply impossible); small sample sizes (e.g., an insufficient number of individuals from a minority group participated in the research resulting in numbers too small for meaningful analysis). In the scenario described above, the rationale provided for excluding the 10th patient’s experience is not sufficient to warrant exclusion. Instead, it appears that exclusion of this individual is based on a desire to promote the new program in the student’s clinic. In order to eliminate this form of conflict of interest, one could consider involving a clinic outsider in the analysis and interpretation of the data. By including a clinic outsider in the project, editor and reviewer concerns about the integrity of the data, analyses, and conclusions will be allayed.

Most journals provide another “safeguard,” by requiring a statement about possible conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest statement requires the author to acknowledge in writing the nature of any circumstances that might bias the process and/or outcome of their work. For example, any project and published report that might result in direct financial gains for an author(s) should be disclosed to a journal’s editor and to the readership. Examples of possible conflicts of interest include conducting a study of the effectiveness of a genetic test funded by the company that developed and is marketing the test, or a program evaluation study whose outcome would determine the continuation of the investigators/authors’ jobs.

Plagiarism is a familiar concept to most people. Everyone generally understands the importance of “giving credit where credit is due.” Yet, the National Science Foundation estimates that the prevalence of plagiarism may be as high as 50% (Roig 2001 ). Probably many of these incidents are unintentional and/or occur because the authors were unaware of some of the nuances regarding plagiarism. Although there is some variability within and across disciplines about the specific behaviors that constitute plagiarism, there is general agreement about two broad types (Roig 2001 ): cryptamnesia -an individual thinks their idea is original when it actually was presented by someone else previously; and inappropriate paraphrasing —an individual uses another person’s published text without properly citing that use, and/or using their statements with little or no modification. Specific examples of inappropriate paraphrasing include: (1) publishing another person’s work as one’s own; (2) copying part of another author’s paper and claiming it as one’s own; (3) copying text from another source without using quotations marks and without citing that source in the text; (4) paraphrasing text from another source without providing an in-text citation; (5) summarizing material from another source without clearly connecting the summary to that source; and (6) using copyrighted materials without author/publisher permission (East 2006 ; Lester and Lester Jr. 1992 ).

Additional types of plagiarism include ambiguous use of citations. For instance, an individual includes a citation in a paragraph but does not clearly indicate which content in the paragraph is from the cited work. Another type of plagiarism is self-plagiarism . Self-plagiarism occurs when an individual includes published work of their own for which they do not own the copyright (e.g., reprinting a table from one of their previously published papers); repeating verbatim text from a previously published article. Permission to reprint material from the publisher must be obtained.

Plagiarism is a serious ethical breach which can result in a legal penalty. Strategies for avoiding plagiarism include limiting the use of direct quotes; avoiding the use of secondary sources—it is always better to read and cite an original source when available; and restating ideas in one’s own words while providing in-text citation of the work that contains the original ideas (East 2006 ; Lambie et al. 2008 ; Lester and Lester Jr. 1992 ). When in doubt regarding the originality of one’s words, it is best to cite the source(s) on which they are based. In this regard, it may help to bear in mind that readers will assume all words in the paper are the author’s unless the source(s) are cited.

Subject Confidentiality

Published papers must be written in a way that no subjects can be recognized by others without their written consent (Gavey and Braun 1997 ). Given the unique nature of genetics, family members may also need to provide written consent (McCarthy Veach et al. 2001 ). When possible, identifying information should be removed or disguised (e.g., use of pseudonyms) and data based on multiple subjects should be reported in aggregate (group) form. Institutional review boards (IRBs) play a critical role in assuring protection of subject confidentiality. Many journals require authors to indicate either in the paper or a cover letter that they have obtained institutional review board approval to conduct their animal or human subjects study. In some cases, an ethics board may have been consulted regarding ethical dilemmas reported in a clinical paper and this should be acknowledged in the paper.

Accuracy of Information

Authors are responsible for rigorously checking the accuracy of their facts, data, and conclusions. However, despite one’s best efforts, substantial errors sometimes are not discovered until after a paper is published. In that case, the corresponding author should contact the journal immediately and ask that an erratum be published. On a related note, authors have a professional responsibility to make data sets reported in published papers available to other professionals. This practice allows for verification of the findings and conclusions, and it also makes possible research replications and extensions of the original study. The length of time for retaining research records depends on institutional policy and sponsor policy, so it is important to be aware of how these policies apply to the research generated by a master’s thesis. Often institutional review boards require researchers to state how long they will maintain a data set, and the researchers must adhere to that time frame.

Another accuracy issue concerns modifying and reporting the use of published material (e.g., an interview protocol, psychological instrument, curriculum) without clearly describing the precise nature of the modifications. Interpretation of findings and their comparison to other studies using the “same” instrumentation may be severely compromised when an author fails to report modifications. Further, professional courtesy suggests that permission be sought from the author before changing her or his material. Also, use of published material requires crediting the author(s) of that material by including relevant citations.

Publishing in Multiple Sources

In the sciences, a manuscript should not be under review by more than one journal at a time. It is, however, acceptable to submit material for presentation at a conference prior to its actual publication in a journal, as the authors in case examples 1 and 3 did. Some conferences publish proceedings , and some journals will not publish work that is already published in a Proceedings unless the two papers differ substantially. When in doubt, it is good practice to contact a journal’s editor to determine the journal’s policy. Journals typically only publish original work, but on occasion there may be interest in reprinting an article. Reprinting a previously published paper requires written permission from the owner of the publication copyright. As a matter of courtesy, one should also seek the corresponding author’s permission, even if the author does not own the copyright.

Examples of Success

The benefits of sharing knowledge within the medical community and with the public via publication have been delineated. The publication of original work contributes to the advancement of the genetic counseling field overall, and at the individual level, authorship establishes a level of professional credibility, enhancing opportunities for future employability, funding and job satisfaction. The opportunity to develop a genetic counseling master’s thesis into a manuscript should therefore not be overlooked. Below are the personal accounts of three recent graduates who successfully transformed their individual master’s theses into published manuscripts. These examples were not systematically ascertained, and as such, do not necessarily represent all experiences with trying to publish a master’s thesis. These stories provide “first-hand accounts” of the authors’ experiences and, while acknowledging the challenges, demonstrate commitment to publishing their own projects throughout their careers. Table  3 contains a list of helpful hints gleaned from these cases.

Table 3

Helpful Hints for First Time Authors

Case 1: Consider Writing Your Thesis and Journal Article Concurrently

As a result of personal determination, and above all, strong mentorship, I was able to turn my master’s thesis work into a manuscript published in Patient Education and Counseling , titled “Satisfaction with genetic counseling for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations among African American women” (Charles et al. 2006 ). My work was a small component of an existing research project being conducted within a university academically affiliated with my genetic counseling training program. The project was an evaluation of the overall effects of “Culturally Tailored vs. Standard Genetic Counseling Protocol” among African American women.

I started by reviewing previous publications this group of researchers had produced and using these as a guide for my first draft, followed by multiple revisions. Approximately 17 months elapsed between first submission and publication. We submitted the manuscript in its original form in May 2005. We received the reviewers’ comments later that summer, and submitted revisions five months later. The article was accepted in that same month, published online five months later and in print seven months after the online version appeared. Shortly after graduating from my program I submitted an abstract of the work to NSGC for presentation at the 2005 Annual Education Conference, and subsequently learned that it was selected for the NSGC Beth Fine Student Abstract award.

My experience may be unusual because I worked on the manuscript and thesis project concurrently. Composing separate but related documents while still juggling second year genetic counseling student responsibilities was certainly a challenge. Preparing a comprehensive thesis project is a very different task than manuscript composition, the latter of which is more focused and narrow in scope. Challenges posed by this concurrent approach included ensuring that text requirements and deadlines specific to each document were met, as well as incorporating and addressing the reviews of both the training program and peer-reviewers. The main benefits of this approach were that I was still in school and therefore geographically close to my mentors, which facilitated ongoing communication throughout the process, and that the manuscript was under review by a journal before I started my new job.

Factors contributing to the successful publication of this project include mentorship, accountability, and commitment to publication by every author. Supportive, constructively critical, and well published, my mentors had high standards and knew the process. Frankly, I did not want to disappoint them. I found setting deadlines and meeting them, along with the accountability of in-person meetings (as opposed to email), to be effective approaches. Finally, publishing the project was a stated goal of the authors at the initiation of the project. I will not claim that the process was easy, but the goal is certainly attainable and worthwhile.

Case 2: You Need Not Publish Every Thesis Finding—Pick The Most Interesting and Relevant

As is the case for many graduate students, the first time I attempted to publish was after I completed my thesis. My thesis concerned the development of a minority research recruitment database and was the result of my graduate research on underserved populations.

Following graduation, I started my first job as a genetic counselor in a new city. During the overwhelming process of adjusting to “my new life,” my thesis advisor asked me to submit a manuscript to the American Journal of Public Health in response to a call for abstracts on genetics topics. Unfortunately, the deadline was only one week away. I scrambled to cut down my lengthy thesis to a reasonable length and submitted it, knowing that it was not my best work given the time constraint. Needless to say, it was rejected.

I decided that before resubmitting the manuscript to a different journal, I would need to take a different approach to the paper, more or less starting over. While my research results were interesting, they were limited in their application. I decided to publish instead on the success of our research initiative, as other researchers could learn from our process. Since I was changing the focus of the manuscript, I had to do an additional literature search and produce much of the writing from scratch. Most of this work had to be completed in my free time. While it was difficult to stay motivated, working on my manuscript when first starting a job was manageable as my caseload was lightest in the beginning. After several weeks of hard work, I submitted the manuscript to Health Promotion Practice .

About one month later, the editor contacted me and asked me to resubmit my manuscript with revisions. Three different reviewers provided feedback. Initially, it was overwhelming to read through their comments and frustrating, particularly when the reviewers contradicted each other. Despite my frustration, with my co-authors’ guidance I forged ahead and resubmitted, only to have the editor and reviewers ask for additional revisions. There were comments from the same three reviewers, however, far fewer in number. Still, I was beginning to think they would never accept the manuscript. I once again called upon my co-authors for guidance and was able to address the reviewers’ comments and resubmit the manuscript once again.

This time when I heard from the editor, the manuscript was finally accepted. What started out as a 120 page thesis ended up being published as an eight page paper (Vogel et al. 2007 ). It took approximately 8 months of writing and revising before the manuscript was finally accepted and an additional year before it came out in print. While the entire process was a true test of patience and determination, it was ultimately worth it. The experience gave me the foundation to carry on my research career and continue to publish successfully.

Case 3: Expectations and Mentorship are Crucial

I defended my thesis, received my Master’s degree, and was about to move back to the Midwest to start my new job as a genetic counselor, but my long “To-Do” list had one remaining item: Publish master’s thesis. I started the initial master’s thesis process with the expectation from one of my thesis advisors, and now a co-author, that research is not “put down and set aside” until published. I never questioned the process; if I was going to work with this advisor, I would be publishing. I was excited to undertake this challenge and impressed by my thesis advisor’s dedication, mentorship, and desire to see our hard work recognized. Nearly two years later, I could proudly say that this expectation, held by all of my thesis advisors and me, was accomplished. The manuscript, published in the JOGC , describes qualitative research regarding communication of genetic test results within a family (Blase et al. 2007 ).

In the beginning, I was unfamiliar with the publication process, but because of the support and guidance of my advisors, I began to learn the process, and so the frustrations and uncertainties were minimal. I also had a great working relationship with my co-authors that included communicating regularly and setting and meeting deadlines. After deciding the JOGC was the most appropriate venue for my research, I spent a good deal of time reducing and reformatting the 80 page thesis to a 20–25 page manuscript to meet the journal’s guidelines. Given the page constraints, this process necessitated determining which data to focus on and re-framing some information to appropriately fit the readers of my selected journal. Conversations with my advisors were instrumental in this phase.

There was nothing quick about publishing my master’s thesis. I graduated in June 2005, received an email shortly thereafter from one of my advisors about how to begin constructing a first draft of a manuscript, and began working on the manuscript in July 2005. I submitted the manuscript to JOGC in May 2006 and subsequently was informed by the editor that based on the reviews, revisions were required before the manuscript could be considered for publication. In September 2006, after two rounds of revisions, my manuscript was accepted, and by June 2007 it was published in the journal.

Although ultimately I was successful in publishing my master’s thesis, the process had its moments of frustration. I remember getting my first round of comments from the reviewers; I thought I was never going to get to the point of publication. My co-authors supported and encouraged me by explaining that revisions are truly part of the process. I was overwhelmed by the reviewers’ list of questions and changes after my initial submission, followed by additional reviews and revisions. Not only did I have to figure out how to keep the manuscript a priority in light of my new job, but I had to weed through and address the reviewers’ comments, and the suggestions of each co-author. The guidance of my thesis advisors, now co-authors, helped me navigate this process.

I have gained much through this experience. The process has opened doors for me including opportunities to work with other professionals with impressive publishing experiences, as well as speaking and poster presentation opportunities at national conferences. I also have greater confidence about the publishing process. What seemed like such a daunting and impossible task is now an attainable outcome. Although my master’s thesis was my most recent publication, the thought of taking on the publication process again is not nearly as intimidating as I once thought.

Publication of original research, clinical experience, and literature reviews are vital to the growth of the genetic counseling field and to the delivery of genetic counseling services. Publishing also promotes personal growth by counting toward maintenance of ABGC-certification as well as establishing the author as a credible and respected authority both within and outside the genetic counseling field. This professional recognition in turn can lead to employment opportunities, speaking engagements, research funding, and career advancement.

Submitting a manuscript for publication also can be an intellectually challenging, emotionally trying, and time-consuming task. But similar to life’s other difficult tasks, the rewards and satisfaction are commensurately great—to see your name in print, have your work cited by other authors, and know that you have contributed in a meaningful way to the practice and understanding of genetic counseling. Transforming a master’s thesis into a journal article is an obvious first step in developing and sustaining a commitment to publishing for our genetic counseling profession. Common themes in the three success experiences include the importance of mentorship and clear expectations for publishing, recognition of the length of the process and concomitant need for perseverance in the face of revisions, awareness of personal and professional benefits in terms of presentations at national meetings, awards, and motivation to continue publishing. Hopefully the information provided in this article will help to de-mystify the publishing process, promote consideration of ethical issues in publishing, and stimulate genetic counseling students and new graduates to embrace a “Publish for Success” philosophy.

Acknowledgments

This paper was developed from an Educational Breakout Session (EBS) sponsored by the Jane Engelberg Memorial Fellowship Advisory Group at the 2008 NSGC Annual Education Conference.

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Research Guides

Submit and publish your thesis.

• The Graduate Thesis: What is it?
• Thesis Defences
• Deadlines and Fees
• Formatting in MS Word
• Formatting in LaTeX
• Making Thesis Accessible
• Thesis Embargo
• Review and Release
• Your Rights as an Author
• Re-using Third Party Materials
• Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
• Turning Thesis into an Article
• Turning Thesis into a Book
• Other Venues of Publication

Publishing from your thesis before or after graduation

"Will repository submission affect my publishing plans?"

... this is a common question for someone looking to publish from their thesis before or after graduation.

Most journals welcome submissions based on a thesis or dissertation. Some may have additional requirements, such as to:

• Let them know about the university’s requirement to make your thesis publicly available
• Submit a manuscript that is substantially different than the thesis content
• Embargo the thesis until after publication, etc.

Your steps will depend on the following scenarios:

Scenario 1 - you ARE NOT planning on publishing your thesis before or after graduation

In this case:

• You can submit your thesis without an embargo
• Your thesis will become publicly available in TSpace  and Library and Archives Canada after your convocation and will be widely indexed via search engines and indexes
• Use the TSpace-generated permanent URL to share and cite your thesis - see example of such citation below

Tajdaran, K. (2015). Enhancement of Peripheral Nerve Regeneration with Controlled Release of Glial Cell Line-derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) (Master’s Thesis, University of Toronto). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1807/74747

Scenario 2 - You ARE planning on publishing your thesis AFTER graduation

Most journals are interested in “original, previously unpublished” research. Some journals consider theses as a form of “prior publications”, others do not, and the majority does not have a clear definition. It will be best to check journal policy before you submit your thesis.

Nature Research will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.

►►►How to check journal policies:

• MIT Libraries' list of policy excerpts from major publishers
• Journal’s website - usually under Information for Authors or Copyright / Permissions or Editorial Policy; or in the publication agreement if available online
• If such information cannot be located online, contact the editors directly
• If the journal requires that you place an embargo on your thesis until after publication, see the SGS instructions on how to request an embargo on your thesis .

Scenario 3 - You ARE planning on publishing (or have already published) from your thesis BEFORE graduation

You may want or be expected to publish parts of your thesis before your thesis is submitted, such as with an integrated/publication-based/sandwich thesis. The most important thing to keep in mind here is copyright. You own copyright of your written materials, and a publisher may require copyright transfer of your manuscript.

You need to ensure you retain certain rights or obtain permission in order to satisfy the university’s requirement of making your thesis openly accessible via TSpace, ProQuest and Library and Archives Canada (LAC). For more details on these repositories, see the  Review and Release  section of this guide.

Check whether the journal requires prior notification about U of T’s open access requirement for theses. Some journals want to be notified of this mandate whether or not they restrict the re-use of articles in theses.

Check whether the publisher requires copyright transfer . This should be stated on their website, in the publication agreement, or you can inquire directly with the journal.

If the publisher does not require copyright transfer , i.e. author retains copyright, then you can reuse your article/chapter in your thesis; no permission needed.

If the publisher requires copyright transfer , follow these steps:

Check if the publisher has special provisions for reusing your published work in your thesis. They may permit the inclusion of a non-final version, such as your submitted or accepted manuscript. See more below on understanding different article versions for sharing .

►►►How to check journal policies:  See MIT Libraries' list of policy excerpts from major publishers or the journal/publisher website.

For example, Taylor and Francis policy allows to:

Include your article Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM) or Accepted Manuscript(AM) , depending on the embargo period in your thesis or dissertation. The Version of Record cannot be used. https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/copyright-and-you/

Check if the article is distributed under a Creative Commons license. This may allow re-use.

►►►How to check journal's CC license:  See the journal/publisher website or contact the journal directly.

If the publisher requires copyright transfer, has no special provisions and does not publish under a CC license, you will need to contact them to request permission to include your article in your thesis. You can:

• Negotiate making the article available as part of the thesis in TSpace, ProQuest, and LAC Theses Portal; 
• Request an embargo [link to Lisa’ section on embargo] if the publisher only permits open sharing after some time post-publication;
• If permission is denied you may include in place of the chapter an abstract and a link to the article on the journal website.

If you have specific questions about your situation, publisher policy or author rights, contact the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office at [email protected] for a consultation (best before you publish!)

Understanding different versions of a published article

A publisher may distinguish between the versions of an article that you may be allowed to include in your thesis:

• Submitted manuscript / pre-print - version you initially send in (often permitted)
• Accepted manuscript / post-print - version after peer review but before copyediting, layout editing, formatting, etc. (sometimes permitted; publisher may require an embargo/access restriction for a period of time)
• Version of record / final publisher’s PDF - version that appears in the journal (many publishers do not permit sharing this version)

►►►How to check article versions permitted for sharing:

• MIT Libraries’s list of policy excerpts from major publishers
• Sherpa/RoMEO database of publisher policies
• Journal’s website - usually under Information for Authors or Copyright/Permissions or Editorial Policy; or in the publication agreement if available online
• << Previous: Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
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• Last Updated: Sep 15, 2023 3:23 PM
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The Graduate School

University information technology (uit), main navigation, published articles as dissertation chapters.

• Submission Procedure
• Policies for Theses and Dissertations
• Coauthored Theses and Dissertations
• Approval Requirements
• Publication Requirements
• Copyright Page
• Statement of Thesis/Dissertation Approval
• Dedication, Frontispiece, and Epigraph
• Table of Contents and List of Figures/Tables
• Acknowledgements
• General Formatting Requirements
• Parts Composed of Related Chapters
• Headings and Subheadings
• Tables and Figures
• Footnote and Reference Citations
• Appendix or Appendices
• References or Selected Bibliography
• Documentation Styles
• Writing Styles
• Print Quality
• Accessibility in the PDF
• Electronic Version Submitted for Thesis Release
• Distribution of Theses and Dissertations
• Alternate Text
• Color Contrast
• Accessibility Issues in Table Construction
• Heading Space
• Double Space
• Single Space

Previously Published, Accepted, and Submitted Articles as Chapters of a Dissertation

• Alternate Figure/Table Placement

In the case where students use a previously published, submitted, or accepted article as one or more chapters of their dissertation, the following rules apply. 

Each previously published reprint and accepted or submitted article (or chapter as an article prepared for publication) is treated as a separate chapter. The dissertation must have a general abstract that covers all components. A general introduction and general conclusion are recommended. If a dissertation incorporating previously published articles as chapters is selected, references must be placed at the end of each chapter—not at the end of the manuscript. Each set of references may follow a different style guide, depending on the journal in which the chapter is published or will be published. Table titles and figure captions must be locally numbered. 

Copyright issues frequently arise with previously published material. Students need to obtain permission to duplicate copyrighted material (and, possibly, multiple author releases). A full credit line (stating “Reprinted with permission from” followed by the source) must be placed on the part-title page preceding a reprint or as a footnote on the first page of a chapter that contains a previously published article that has been reformatted to the University of Utah’s format requirements outlined herein. 

For all previously published chapters, permission to reuse or reprint or adapt must be provided by the student to the Thesis Office. Releases from coauthors must also be provided, even if the coauthors are members of the student’s committee or even if the student is the leading author. 

Reprints (published article pages inserted as images on the pages of the manuscript) are acceptable. However, some departments require that previously published articles be reformatted to match all other chapters. Check with your department and committee to see if they accept the use of reprints. 

Reprints are preceded by a part-title page. The chapter title must match exactly the title of the journal article. The part-title page must include the attribution required by the publisher. The reprints are accepted as they are except that they must fit within the thesis margins and manuscript pages must be numbered consecutively with the rest of the text. All other chapters (whether accepted, submitted, or in preparation) must fit University of Utah guidelines, as specified in the handbook (margins, subheads, figure and table placement, etc.). 

In the List of Figures and List of Tables, figures and tables from reprints are treated as if they are numbered with respect to the rest of the text. A local numbering scheme must be used. For example, in the List of Figures, the first figure in Chapter 5, which is a reprint, is listed as 5.1. 

The requirement that all print be at least 2 mm does not apply to reprints. The text may be smaller than that as long as the words, figures, and tables are of sufficient resolution to remain crisp. 

Students using reprints should check the accessibility of the document and make adjustments to the document to make sure that it is accessible to screen readers.

As for any other thesis or dissertation, students are urged to submit their manuscripts prior to the defense for a preliminary review. 

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• Preparing your thesis

Publishing material from your thesis

Your rights to publish.

You retain the copyright in your thesis unless:

• your research is sponsored or funded by a funder with a claim on the intellectual property
• your research builds upon existing intellectual property generated by, or jointly invented with, Imperial employees or associates
• you are concurrently an employee of Imperial College London during your period of study

For details see Intellectual property

In principle, you may reproduce, or give others permission to reproduce, parts or the whole of your thesis but you must consider:

• third party works and the permission you have been given to use them - if  your permission does not extend to the intended use, send a second permission request to the owner of the third party copyright work
• any plans to apply for a patent application, meaning that you must postpone communication of your research through an embargo

Discuss any of the above issues with your supervisor.

Publishing in a journal

Journals generally accept papers based on work already written up in a thesis. Individual journal polices on what a journal considers to be prior publication can be found within the ‘information for authors’ section of the journal website. The United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR) have produced this  Thesis prior publications spreadsheet on some of the publisher policies that you can use as guidance. If a publisher is concerned that your thesis has already been published online, you may apply for an embargo .

Your paper should be a reworking of the material in your thesis and written to conform to the journal's style guide. The course (publication section), offered by the Graduate School, offers helps and tips.

When quoting from your thesis or reusing figures, avoid self-plagiarism by citing and referencing any extracts copied or adapted from your thesis appropriately.

Publishing your whole thesis

If you intend to publish your thesis or are approached by a publisher, request a copy of the publishing agreement before signing it - make sure that publication is in your best interests and will not restrict your future use of the content.

Main navigation

• Graduate Students
• Faculty & Staff
• General requirements

Manuscript-Based (Article-Based) Theses

• Initial Thesis Submission
• Thesis examination
• Doctoral oral defence
• Final Thesis Submission
• Thesis Writing and Support Resources
• Letters of Completion/PGWP

FAQ on manuscript-based theses

As an alternative to the traditional format, a thesis may be presented as a collection of scholarly papers of which the student is the first author or co-first author. A manuscript-based doctoral thesis must include the text of a minimum of two manuscripts published, submitted or to be submitted for publication. A manuscript-based Master’s thesis must include the text of one or more manuscripts. Articles must be formatted according to the requirements described below. Note that a manuscript-based thesis must follow the general structure of a thesis as explained here . An FAQ explaining the difference between a standard and a manuscript-based thesis is available here .

Manuscripts for publication in journals are frequently very concise documents. A thesis, however, is expected to consist of more detailed, scholarly work. A manuscript-based thesis will be evaluated by the examiners as a unified, logically coherent document in the same way a traditional thesis is evaluated. Publication of manuscripts, or acceptance for publication by a peer-reviewed journal, does not guarantee that the thesis will be found acceptable for the degree sought.

A manuscript-based thesis must:

• be presented with uniform font size, line spacing, and margin sizes (see Thesis Format under Preparation of a Thesis );
• conform to all other requirements listed under Thesis Components on the Preparation of a Thesis page;
• contain additional text that connects the manuscript(s) in a logical progression from one chapter to the next, producing a cohesive, unitary focus, and documenting a single program of research - the manuscript(s) alone do not constitute the thesis;
• stand as an integrated whole.

Any manuscripts that are under review, accepted or published in a journal must be included in your manuscript-based thesis without changes (i.e. identical to the published or submitted versions). The only change is with respect to the font/size which should be the same as the one used for the rest of the thesis for consistency and homogeneity reasons. So each chapter represents a full manuscript and has its own reference list. Then at the end of the thesis, you have a master reference list which includes all the other references cited throughout the other sections of the thesis, mostly within the general introduction but also from the general discussion.

Depending on the feedback of your examiners and/or the oral defence committee, you may be required to make revisions to your thesis before final submission. The committee’s comments must be addressed in the connecting text between chapters and/or the discussion section. You must not make any changes to the manuscripts themselves in your final thesis.

In the case of multiple-authored articles, the student must be the first author . Multiple-authored articles cannot be used in more than one thesis. In the case of students who have worked collaboratively on projects, it may be preferable for both students to write a traditional format thesis, identifying individual contributions. Consult this page for information on intellectual property and required permissions/waivers.

In the case of co-first authored articles , only one student can use the article in a manuscript-based thesis and must have a written agreement from the other co-first author student(s).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License . Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, McGill University .

Department and University Information

Graduate and postdoctoral studies.

Graduate Research Hub

• Preparing my thesis

Incorporating your published work in your thesis

A streamlined procedure has been approved for obtaining co-author authorisation.  You now only need to provide a Declaration for publication incorporated in a thesis form for the inclusion of in progress or published material in the thesis, that is completed by your Principal Supervisor and the Coordinating Author.

Accepted statuses for publications

• Unpublished material not submitted for publication
• Submitted for publication to [publication name] on [date]
• In revision following peer review by [publication name]
• Accepted for publication by [publication name] on [date]
• Published by [publication name] on [date]

You may include in progress or published material written during your enrolment upon approval from your advisory committee, as part of your thesis, by having either:

• “included publications", in which your publications are included as components that are distinct from the rest of the thesis, in the format described below; or
• “included material” that is drawn from your publications and combined with text that is otherwise written specifically for the thesis.

In this page we refer to both these kinds of inclusion of published work as “incorporated publications”; the first format, where the publications are included as distinct components, is also known as “thesis with publications”.

The  Graduate Research Training Policy (section 4.65) outlines what can be included in the thesis. Your thesis must include a literature review that clearly details the research questions and a general discussion that integrates the work and places the publications into the context of the research question.

You may have to supplement the incorporated publications with additional methods sections as they are often abbreviated in published articles. You are also encouraged to include any data and discussion that was omitted from the article as an addendum in the thesis. Where a publication is included as a distinct component, you are also encouraged to include a critical reflection on the work, which could, for example, acknowledge or address limitations or impacts of the work that have appeared since publication.

When submitting your thesis, you will be required to confirm that:

(a) the work in the incorporated publications is your own, and (b) that any co-authors give permission for the article to be included in the thesis.

To do this, you must complete the  Declaration for publication incorporated in a thesis form.  You will need to submit a completed form for each in progress or published work included in your thesis.

Your principal supervisor must sign the Declaration form for each publication.  Where there is more than one author of a publication, at least one co-author by agreement amongst the authors, should be nominated as the coordinating author (also known as corresponding author), as defined in the University’s Authorship Policy . The coordinating author is responsible for communication between the publishers and managing communication between the co-authors. The coordinating author must maintain records of any authorship agreement.  The coordinating author must also sign the Declaration form.

You must upload all completed Declaration forms as a single combined file to the Thesis Examination System when submitting your thesis for examination.  The signed forms should not be included in the thesis itself. Plan well ahead to obtain the required signatures to avoid delays to your examination.

Don’t forget to include your ORCID when submitting your work to publishers, conference organisers, etc.  This will help you to distinguish your research activities and outputs, and make sure you get credit for your work throughout your career.

The Preface

As detailed in the  Preparation of Graduate Research Theses rules , your preface should outline:

• the publication status of any incorporated publications
• your contribution to any incorporated publications
• any work carried out in collaboration with others
• editorial assistance received
• parts of the work completed outside of your candidature.

There is no prescribed format for a preface; you may wish to include a written description or a table outlining the tasks performed by others and the proportion of the contribution as a percentage.

Usually this means you will have written the initial draft and you performed any subsequent editing in response to co-authors' and editors' reviews.

As specified in the Graduate Research Training Policy , your principal supervisor and coordinating author must declare that:

(a) you are the primary author of the included material, and

(b) you contributed more than 50% of the work towards the publication.

No. You need to have contributed more than 50 per cent for it to be included. You could, however, include this paper as an appendix.

Yes. It is understood that portions of the thesis that have been published or accepted for publication will have been through an editorial process. Such editorial changes should be explicitly acknowledged.

Refer to the Authorship page for information about the requirements and responsible practice.

Format of the thesis

When including complete publications, you should use the author accepted manuscripts of articles that have been accepted or published. This is the final draft as accepted by the publishers, including any changes based on referees’ suggestions before it has undergone copy-editing, typesetting and proofing. If you are certain you will not breach your agreement with your publisher, you may include the published version in your thesis.

If you are using your author accepted manuscript, while some journals request that the version you send them includes any figures or tables at the end of the submitted document, when you reproduce the article in your thesis you should place them where they logically flow within the text. It is also recommended that you use similar formatting (e.g. line spacing, font type and size) as the rest of the thesis.

You can view suggested formats for arranging the chapters of a thesis that includes publications as distinct components here . See also example theses in the University of Melbourne repository.

In most cases it is preferred that you include a separate literature survey.  Even with the literature reviews included in your publications you may find you still need to add further supplementary material if the publications do not directly address all the research questions you are trying to answer in your thesis.  Your supervisors and advisory committee are best able to advise you whether the literature reviews included in your incorporated publications will meet disciplinary expectations and satisfy your examiners that you: - Have clearly detailed your research question/s and how they integrate with the current literature - Have demonstrated sufficient familiarity with, and understanding and critical appraisal of the relevant literature.

No. The policy allows the thesis to be submitted with publications, it is not a thesis by publication. You must include a literature review that clearly details the research question, and a concluding general discussion that integrates the work and places it into the context of the research questions. You should also introduce each publication that is included as a distinct component, explaining its role in the work, and, where appropriate, provide a critical reflection on its contribution.

Yes, but you must cite it correctly and indicate in the preface the source of the information (eg. that the text on page(s) xx is from [name of publication], or that chapter yy is adapted from [name of publication]. In each case you should give its publication status and your contribution to the publication). It will assist your examiners if, at the start of each chapter that includes work drawn from a publication, there is a footnote explaining where the work came from and how it has been used in the chapter. You may wish to include the entire publication as an appendix so that your examiners can see where the material came from.

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If you are including the list of references as part of the publication they do not need to be repeated in the overall reference list/bibliography for the thesis.

Incorporated publications can be referenced via a footnote, but if references to them are included in the bibliography an examiner may be unsure as to whether the work was completed as part of the research.

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If the publication status of your article changes between submission for examination and submission of your final thesis, it is appropriate to include the most recent version (up to the author-accepted version). You should also update the preface to reflect the new status. If you are submitting a list of corrections for approval and/or resubmitting for re-examination you should also note this in your index of changes.

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The following are theses available openly or with University of Melbourne log-in through the University of Melbourne repository that include publications as distinct components in a “thesis with publications” style.

Al Zein, Eza (2019). Taskscape: Caring for Migrant Materials . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/235841

Arundel, Jonathan Paul (2015) The spatio-temporal distribution of honey bees and floral resources in Australia . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/59612

Bamford, Nicholas James (2016) Relationships between diet, obesity and insulin dysregulation in horses and ponies. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/148423

Bibb, Jennifer Louise (2016) Musical recovery: the role of group singing in regaining healthy relationships with music to promote mental health recovery. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/124271

Burfurd, Ingrid Ellen (2018) Beliefs and learning in the laboratory: essays in experimental economics . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/219180

Fan, Yi (2019) Quantification of mandibular morphological changes in 3D . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/225588

Kriesner, Peter (2017) Wolbachia fitness benefits and symbiont interactions in Drosophila . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/207959

Mody, Fallon (2019) Doctors down under: European medical migrants in Victoria (Australia), 1930-60 .   http://hdl.handle.net/11343/221550

Nencini, Sara (2018) Tackling bone pain at the source: identifying and exploring new therapeutic targets . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/216858

Pan, Xuan (2018) Graphene quantum dot based electronic devices . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/222013

Seibt, Susanne (2018) In-situ investigations of molecular self-assembly using microfluidics. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/214671

Smith, Merryn (2018) Non-structural carbohydrate storage and use in eucalypt trees of south-east Australia. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/221163

Uddin, Shihab (2019) Functional aspects of root and leaf development in dryland crop water use under elevated CO2 .   http://hdl.handle.net/11343/219849

Vahedi, Andisheh (2018) The work-family interface and child mental health: longitudinal associations via family functioning across childhood. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/217236

Al Zein, Eza (2019) Taskscape: Caring for Migrant Materials .  http://hdl.handle.net/11343/235841

Schlichthorst, Marisa (2020)   Engaging men in conversations about masculinity and suicide – An evaluation of the Man Up social media campaign .   http://hdl.handle.net/11343/265962

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 09 August 2024

Why I’ve removed journal titles from the papers on my CV

• Adrian Barnett 0

Adrian Barnett is a researcher in health and medicine at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Omitting journal names in your CV could help to prioritize the quality of your science over the prestige of the publication. Credit: Nature

Can you name the journal in which microbiologist Alexander Fleming first reported on the antibacterial properties of penicillin? Or where engineer John O’Sullivan and his colleagues presented the image-sharpening techniques that led to Wi-Fi?

Most of you can easily name the benefits of these breakthroughs, but I expect only a few would know where they were published. Unfortunately, in modern scientific culture, there is too much focus on the journal — and not enough on the science itself. Researchers strive to publish in journals with high impact factors, which can lead to personal benefits such as job opportunities and funding.

But the obsession with where to publish is shaping what we publish. For example, ‘negative’ studies might not be written up — or if they are, they’re spun into a positive by highlighting favourable results or leaving out ‘messy’ findings, to ensure publication in a ‘prestigious’ journal.

Illuminating ‘the ugly side of science’: fresh incentives for reporting negative results

To shift this focus in my own practice, I have removed all the journal names from my CV . Anyone interested in my track record will now see only my papers’ titles, which better illustrate what I’ve achieved. If they want to read more, they can click on each paper title, which is hyperlinked to the published article.

I’m not alone in thinking of this. The idea for removing journal names was discussed at a June meeting in Canberra on designing an Australian Roadmap for Open Research . A newsletter published by the University of Edinburgh, UK, no longer includes journal titles when sharing researchers’ new publications, to help change the culture around research assessment. Celebrating the ‘what’ rather than the ‘where’ is a great idea. This simple change could be extended to many types of research assessment.

Quality over journal titles

It is disorienting at first to see a reference that does not contain a journal title, because this bucks a deeply ingrained practice. But journal names are too often used as a proxy for research excellence or quality. I want people reading my CV to consider what I wrote, not where it was published, which I know is sometimes attributable to luck as much as substance.

Of course, anyone who really wants to judge me by where I’ve published will simply be able to google my articles: I haven’t anonymized the journals everywhere. But removing the names in my CV discourages simplistic scans, such as counting papers in particular journals. It’s a nudge intervention: a reminder that work should be judged by its content first, journal second.

Because I’m a professor on a permanent contract, it’s easier for me to make this change. Some might think that it would be a huge mistake for an early-career researcher to do the same. But there is no stage in our scientific careers at which decisions about hiring and promotion should be based on the ‘where’ over the ‘what’. It would be easier for early-career scientists to make this change if it became normalized and championed by their senior colleagues.

A potential criticism of removing journal names is that there is nothing to stop unscrupulous academics from publishing shoddy papers in predatory journals to create a competitive-looking CV, which could put candidates with genuine papers at a disadvantage. Promotion and hiring committees need to be made aware of the growing problem of faked and poor-quality research and receive training on how to spot flawed science.

However, when a job gets 30 or more applicants, there can be a need for short-cuts to thin the field. I suggest that reading the titles of each applicant’s ten most recent papers would work better than any heuristic based on paper counts or journal names, for only a slight increase in workload.

Imagine a hiring or fellowship committee that receives plain or preprint versions of the every applicant’s five best papers. Committee members who previously relied on simplistic metrics would have to change their practice. Some might simply revert to Google, but others might welcome the challenge of judging the applicants’ works.

Judging researchers is much more difficult than counting impact factors or citations, because science is rarely simple. Simplistic promotion and hiring criteria ignore this wonderful complexity. Changing typical academic CV formats could bring some of it back.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02596-y

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged .

Competing Interests

A.B. is a member of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Quality Steering Committee, which provides national guidance on good research practice. A.B. is paid for his time to attend committee meetings. A.B. was on the organizing committee for the Policy Roundtable: An Australian Roadmap for Open Research meeting, which is mentioned in the article, and received paid accommodation to attend the meeting.

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TicketRev is partnering with the Sacramento Kings and Ticketmaster to launch Kings Price Setter , a new solution that will allow fans to submit offers to the team for single-game premium seats at Golden 1 Center. The partnership, which is for the 2024-25 NBA season, follows a brief pilot with the Kings down the stretch of the 2023-24 campaign. It represents TicketRev’s first formal partnership with an NBA team and first product focused exclusively on premium inventory. “Overall, the goal is that the Kings maximize revenue on their premium inventory, gain further control over that inventory, increase data collection and provide fans a new way to purchase premium tickets directly from the team,” TicketRev co-founder/CEO Jason Shatsky told SBJ. Miami-based TicketRev has previously worked with several MLB clubs (Marlins, Astros, Rays, Royals, Athletics, Giants) and MLS’ New York City FC. The Marlins signed TicketRev’s first multiyear partnership in May to continue using its white-labeled “Make Your Pitch” solution and launch “Seat Upgrades” through the MLB Ballpark app. Ticket offers made through the Make Your Pitch portal during a trial period in 2023 were manually evaluated, but that process was automated ahead of the 2024 MLB season. Submissions through Kings Price Setter will be processed both manually and automatically, with offers placed more than 48 hours in advance of a game guaranteed a response by 24 hours ahead of tipoff time, according to the Kings’ website. Within the Kings Price Setter portal, users are shown a suggested price range before making their offer, which can be modified or canceled while pending and are not charged for until accepted by the team (no additional fees are applied).

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Mob-themed tours don't tell the real stories and legacy of Federal Hill - and they do harm | Opinion

Walter Potenza is a master chef and Italian immigration historian.

Federal Hill in Providence epitomizes a neighborhood of immense cultural significance, profound historical relevance, and outstanding community cohesion. Often affectionately termed Providence's Little Italy, it poignantly represents the Italian immigrant experience in North America. 

Over the years, families have established their livelihoods within this locale, contributing to the city's economic landscape and perpetuating their customs through culinary delicacies, melodic expressions and traditional festivities.

More: Push carts and grocery peddlers: A look at RI's Federal Hill markets a century ago

However, the recent commercialization of Federal Hill's history as a so-called "underworld" undermines its true legacy and identity. A local tour company has introduced a tour named "Crime and Cuisine," offering visitors the opportunity to explore the Mafia underworld and encounter "corrupted politicians." 

This marketing narrative reduces the vibrant and multifaceted history of Federal Hill to tired and damaging stereotypes. While portraying the neighborhood as a den of crime may attract visitors, it diminishes the real essence of Federal Hill's contribution to Rhode Island and beyond.

It's important to note that Federal Hill's story is not one of criminality and corruption but of immigration, resilience and cultural flourishing. 

For over a century (since 1886), the people of Federal Hill, primarily Italian immigrants and their descendants, have worked tirelessly to build a community that values hard work, integrity and family. Their resilience in the face of challenges is truly inspiring. They have maintained their culinary traditions, blending them with the local food culture, to create something unique to Rhode Island. 

The neighborhood has given rise to small businesses, supported artists, and become a symbol of the American immigrant dream. These businesses have not only enriched the cultural landscape but also significantly contributed to the local economy.

Portraying the legacy of Federal Hill as a Mafia spectacle is not just inaccurate; it is harmful. It perpetuates negative stereotypes that many Italian Americans have spent decades fighting against and reinforces the false notion that crime is inherent to Italian culture, which is both insensitive and offensive. 

This narrative, designed for entertainment and profit, strips away the dignity and pride that Federal Hill's residents feel about their heritage.

There is much more to Federal Hill than this narrow portrayal. Visitors deserve to experience the actual Federal Hill: a neighborhood built by immigrants, enriched by their hard work, and sustained by their love for their heritage and their new home in America. This authentic story of triumph, rather than tragedy, deserves to be told.

By depicting the neighborhood as an “underworld colony,” the “Crime and Cuisine” tour does a disservice to the many men and women who have contributed to the cultural fabric of Rhode Island. It disregards the significant and positive impact that Federal Hill has had on the state’s history, economy and community. More significantly, it perpetuates a narrative that has been used to dehumanize and marginalize Italian Americans for generations.

Federal Hill does not require a sensationalized rebranding but rather a celebration of its true history. Envision a tour highlighting the authentic culinary traditions brought over by Italian immigrants, the stories of resilience and perseverance, and the deep ties that Federal Hill residents have to their cultural roots. Imagine a narrative that uplifts, educates and honors the contributions of Italian Americans to Rhode Island and beyond. 

More: Highly Recommended: Step back in time at Scialo Bros. Bakery on Federal Hill

This is not just a dream but a vision that we can work towards, a narrative that we can shape and change for the better. It is crucial to resist the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes and insist on a truthful portrayal of Federal Hill. We owe it to the legacy of those who came before us, the current residents, and the generations yet to come. Federal Hill is not an underworld colony. 

It is a thriving community built on the values of family, culture, and hard work. Let's tell that story — the real story — and let's do it with determination and commitment.

By reclaiming Federal Hill's narrative, we preserve its integrity and honor the people who made it the proud and vibrant neighborhood it is today.

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Montana asbestos clinic seeks to reverse court finding that it submitted hundreds of false claims

FILE - Dr. Lee Morissette shows an image of lungs damaged by asbestos exposure, April 4, 2024, at the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — An attorney for a health clinic in a Montana town polluted with deadly asbestos asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to reverse a lower court determination that it submitted hundreds of false claims on behalf of patients.

That judgment came last year in a jury trial following a lawsuit against the clinic from Texas-based BNSF Railway, which separately has been found liable over contamination in Libby, Montana, that’s sickened or killed thousands of people. Asbestos-tainted vermiculite was mined from a nearby mountain and shipped through the 3,000-person town by rail over decades.

After BNSF questioned the validity of more than 2,000 cases of asbestos-related diseases found by the clinic, a jury last year said 337 of those cases were based on false claims, making patients eligible for Medicare and other benefits they shouldn’t have received.

The judge overseeing the case ordered the clinic to pay almost $6 million in penalties and fees. However, even if the lower court ruling is affirmed, the clinic won’t have to pay that money, under a separate settlement it reached in bankruptcy court with BNSF and the federal government, court documents show.

Clinic attorney Tim Bechtold told the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that Libby’s Center for Asbestos Related Disease acted in compliance with federal law.

A provision in the 2009 Affordable Care Act sponsored by former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said asbestos-related disease could be determined for Libby-area residents even without a clinical diagnosis, assuming other evidence of disease such as an X-ray interpretation from an outside party, Bechtold said.

Bechtold also wrote in court filings that the judge overseeing the lawsuit gave the seven-person jury erroneous instructions, essentially predetermining the verdict.

BNSF urged the judges to affirm last year’s ruling.

Railroad Attorney Dale Schowengerdt argued that an outside X-ray reader can identify abnormalities in a patient’s lungs, but can’t diagnose them as asbestos-related disease.

“The abnormality could be asbestos-related disease, but it could also be a broken rib, emphysema, past thoracic surgery, autoimmune disease,” Schowengerdt said.

Asbestos-related diseases can range from a thickening of a person’s lung cavity that can hamper breathing to deadly cancer. Exposure to even a minuscule amount of asbestos can cause lung problems, according to scientists. Symptoms can take decades to develop.

The Libby area was declared a Superfund site two decades ago following media reports that mine workers and their families were getting sick and dying due to hazardous asbestos dust from vermiculite that was mined by W.R. Grace & Co.

Federal prosecutors previously declined to intervene in the false claims case, and there have been no criminal charges brought against the clinic.

Clinic representatives argued during last year’s trial that they were acting in good faith and following the guidance of federal officials who said an X-ray reading alone was sufficient diagnosis of asbestos disease.

But Judge Dana Christensen issued a scathing judgment following the trial and ordered the clinic to pay $5.8 million in penalties and damages. He said clinic staff demonstrated “a reckless disregard for proper medical procedure and the legal requirements of government programs.”

Christensen said he was concerned in particular that the clinic’s former doctor diagnosed himself with asbestos-related disease and that a nurse signed off for benefits for her own mother.

The clinic filed for bankruptcy after the judgment, but that case was later dismissed at the request of government attorneys. They said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was the main funding source for the clinic, meaning any costs associated with the bankruptcy or the false claims judgment would have come at taxpayers’ expense.

The clinic has certified more than 3,400 people with asbestos-related disease and received more than $20 million in federal funding, according to court documents.

There has been no attempt to revoke those services following the false claims ruling, according to testimony on Wednesday, and the jury in last year’s trial did not specify which patient’s cases were problematic.

BNSF is itself a defendant in hundreds of asbestos-related lawsuits. In April, a federal jury said the railway contributed to the deaths of two people who were exposed to asbestos in Libby decades ago. The jury awarded $4 million each in compensatory damages to the estates of the plaintiffs , who died in 2020.