Converting Your Dissertation into a Journal Article - Bitly

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Publishing Your Dissertation as a Journal Article Contribute to your discipline by publishing your dissertation’s findings in an academic journal. Follow the steps below to convert your dissertation into a concise and publishable journal article.

Getting Started Begin early. Start working on your article shortly after your dissertation defense. Publishing will become increasingly unlikely the longer you wait (Rudestam & Newton, 2007).

Consult your advisor. Ask your dissertation advisor how to convert your findings into one or more articles. They may also be interested in publishing the article with you.

Know your audience. Determine who would benefit most from your dissertation findings. Are they?:

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Scholars Practitioners The general public Members of a specific population

Consider how publishing your article can advance your career. Who do you want to read it? Future employers? Colleagues?

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Identifying Potential Journals

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Now that you know your audience, begin thinking about where you want to publish your article. Use the sources below to identify potential journals.

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Your Dissertation References Scan your dissertation’s reference list. Highlight articles that are similar to your dissertation (Rudestam & Newton, 2007; Thomas & Brubaker, 2001).

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Audience Consider your audience. What journals do they read and respect?

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Professional Associations and Societies If your target audience is a specific profession, we recommend visiting professional association and society websites. Typically, professional associations and societies post recommended journals on their websites.

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Google Metrics This free resource is a good springboard for identifying potential journals. Google Metrics lists the top 100 journals by discipline and ranks journals by how frequently their articles are cited. WARNING: Google Metrics rankings are not an exact science. Some resources are double-listed and, therefore, their citations are counted more than once.

Evaluating Journals Next, evaluate your list of potential journals. You need to be highly selective because each journal has unique formatting requirements. This means that you will have to revise your article each time you submit it to a journal. This process is time-consuming, so choose wisely.

Dissertation Policies Some journal editors consider articles based on dissertations to be duplicate publications or selfplagiarism, and they may reject your article on those grounds. Review the author guidelines on the journal’s website for their duplicate publications policy.

Topic Investigate whether your dissertation topic suits the journal’s scope.

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Aims and Scope Read this section of the journal website to understand the topics the journal publishes.

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Recent Articles Browse articles from the last year. Are they similar to your dissertation topic?

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Theme Issues Occasionally, editors call for articles on a specific theme. Check the journal home page for special announcements. If there is a theme, does your dissertation fit?

Likelihood of Acceptance

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Publishing your dissertation as an article is a time-consuming process. Every journal has specific writing, organization, and formatting requirements, so you have to redraft your article each time you submit it to a journal. Plus, most articles are rejected, particularly for prestigious journals. Therefore, save yourself the trouble, and choose a journal that is likely to publish your article. Consider the following criteria:

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Acceptance Rates Sometimes you can find acceptance rates on journal and publisher websites. You can also search “journal acceptance rates” in SuperSearch to find empirical studies.

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Citations Journal prestige is largely measured by citations. More citations equal more prestige. Citations are represented impact factors, which are metrics that reflect the average number of citations within the last year for recent articles. Impact factors can be found on journal websites and in Google Metrics. While impact factors reign supreme, new metrics have emerged recently, such as downloads, views, and social media mentions. Authors can also download Publish or Perish (https://harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish) to evaluate their own impact.

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Years of Publication More established journals (older than 10 years) may be less likely to accept your article. Find years of publication by visiting journal websites and viewing the archives section.

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Your Publishing History Be realistic. How does your publishing history compare to the journal’s recent authors? Determine how you compare by viewing author profiles. First, search the author’s name in Google Scholar. Most established authors have a Google Scholar user profile. Search their name in quotes (“Last name, First name”). Open their profile to view their publications, and select the “Cited By” link to see who cited them. Second, search for author profiles on Academia.edu and Research Gate, which are research social networking sites.

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Specialized, Technical, and Practitioner-Focused You are more likely to get published in specialized, technical, and practitioner-focused journals because the audience is smaller. Therefore, the author pool is smaller, and there is less competition. For the same reason, these journals will also have smaller impact factors.

Peer Review Process Check the author guide to find out if the review process is double-blind, where the authors do not know who they are reviewing. Double-blind reviews are typically more objective.

Open Access Publishing Some journals offer open access publishing options, which make your article accessible to the largest audience possible. Readers can view your article for free on the web, without a subscription to the journal. In contrast, traditional publishing requires readers to have a subscription or to be affiliated with a library that has a subscription to view your article. You may violate copyright if you share the full text of your article. View the author guide for more information.

Predatory Journal Fees Some legitimate journals charge fees for open access publishing. However, many predatory journals have emerged that charge exorbitant publishing fees. No worries. Librarians to the rescue. Jeffrey Beall, an academic librarian, created a list of suspicious journals and publishers to avoid, which you can browse on beallslist.weebly.com.

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Beallslist.weebly.com is not comprehensive, so you may need to also visit thinkchecksubmit.org to determine if your journal is predatory. Learn more about predatory journals (Kolata, 2017, 2013).

Discoverability Make sure that readers can easily discover the journal’s articles. Visit the journal’s website to find out if it is indexed in major databases (e.g. EBSCO, Elsevier, etc.) Also, search the first 4 words of recent article titles in Google to see how discoverable they are. Are they in the first few results?

Formatting Guidelines Visit the journal’s website and browse their submission guidelines, which are typically found in an author guide. The submission guidelines typically detail formatting requirements, such as:

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Article length Tables Figures Citation style

Review Time Browse the author guidelines from the journal’s website to determine how long editors take to review your article submission. Make sure the time frame is compatible with your schedule.

Contacting the Editor We strongly recommend that you contact the editor before you begin writing your article.

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Avoid self-plagiarism. Be transparent. Publishing an article based on your dissertation may be considered a prior publication or self-plagiarism by the editor. Therefore, APA (2010) recommends that you consult with the editor regarding, “what constitutes prior publication,” (p. 13). Ask the editor if they accept articles based on unpublished dissertations. Be transparent. Explain that your article is based on an unpublished dissertation. Offer to provide your dissertation’s full text, so the editor can read it (Majumder, 2016). By being transparent, you can avoid any accusations of self-plagiarism.

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Communicate effectively. Develop a good working relationship with your editor by following the recommendations in Writing Your Article in 12 Weeks (see further reading section).

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Ask remaining questions. Make a list of questions that could not be answered by the journal’s website, and ask the editor before drafting your article submission.

Writing Articles Manage your project. Use the same strategies that helped you complete your dissertation. Identify key milestones, develop a timeline, and create to do lists.

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Draft your article. Journal articles are shorter and have a much narrower scope than dissertations, so you will need to rewrite your findings extensively.

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Use the journal’s most recent articles as models for your article. Analyze your exemplary article for patterns in organization, tone, and format. Focus on dissertation findings that will interest readers and journal editors the most. Select five key points from your dissertation to write about (Rocco & Hatcher, 2011). Outline your article following the exemplary article you chose. Write for a broad audience, instead of writing for your committee (Rocco & Hatcher, 2011). Remove jargon commonly used in dissertations (Rudestam & Newton, 2007). Follow the journal’s formatting requirements explicitly.

Avoid self-plagiarism.

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Rewrite rather than copy sections from your dissertation (Rocco & Hatcher, 2011). Use qualifiers: “Large portions of this article were drawn from [your dissertation citation].” Mark tables and figures from your dissertation as reprinted or adapted (APA, 2010, p. 14). Cite original sources underneath reprinted/adapted tables and figures (APA, 2010, p. 14).

Submitting Articles Send your article to one journal at a time. Only submit your article to one journal at a time because many journals have policies that prohibit concurrent or duplicate submissions (Rudestam & Newton, 2007).

Brace yourself for editors’ responses. Typically, journal editors respond to article submissions in four ways (Cone & Foster, 2006): 1.

Rejection (Most Common)

2. Acceptance with revisions 3. Revise and resubmit The editors are unsure. The paper will need to be revised, resubmitted, and reviewed again. 4. Acceptance without revisions

Take reviewer feedback in stride. Anticipate that reviewers will provide more critical than positive feedback (Cone & Foster, 2006). While feedback from reviewers may seem critical, you can use their comments to improve your article (Cone & Foster, 2006).

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If you are asked to make revisions and resubmit the paper, do so in a timely manner. Journal editors appreciate quick turnaround times, and this may increase your chances of getting published. If your article is rejected, don’t despair. This is the most common response. You may submit your article to several journals before it is accepted. Use feedback from the rejection letter to improve your chances for acceptance when revising and submitting your article to your backup journals.

Become a reviewer to learn more. The best way to learn what journal editors will accept and reject is to become a reviewer for a journal (Rocco & Hatcher, 2011). This will make you an expert at formatting your articles, so they meet editors’ expectations. Check the journal’s website for opportunities to become a reviewer.

Further Reading American Psychological Association. (2006). Converting your dissertation into a journal article . Retrieved from http://supp.apa.org/style/pubman-ch08.pdf Azar, B. (2006). Publishing your dissertation. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2006/03/ dissertation.aspx Belcher, W. L. (2009). Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: A guide to academic publishing success . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Cone, J. D., & Foster, S. L. (2006). Dissertations and theses from start to finish: Psychology and related fields (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Elsevier. (n.d.). Understanding the publishing process: How to publish in scholarly journals . Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/?a=91173 Kolata, G. (2013, April 7). Scientific articles accepted (personal checks too). The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudoacademia.html Kolata, G. (2017, October 30). Many academics are eager to publish in worthless journals. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/science/predatory-journals-academics.html Majumder, K. (2016, August 17). The basics of converting your PhD thesis into journal articles [Blog post]. Retrieved from: http://www.editage.com/insights/the-basics-of-converting-your-phd-thesis-into-journalarticles Rocco, T. S., & Hatcher, T. G. (2011). The handbook of scholarly writing and publishing . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Rudestam, K. E., & Newton, R. R. (2007) Surviving your dissertation: A comprehensive guide to content and process. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Thomas, R. M., & Brubaker, D. L. (2001) Avoiding thesis and dissertation pitfalls: 61 cases of problems and solutions. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.