Hello,

I'm just starting to write a long overdue paper from my thesis. I thought it would be easy - just shorten the chapters... I was wrong. Every word seems so important and I've spent weeks going nowhere. It's really hard to know whether to risk putting everything into one best paper, or to try for a few smaller papers.

Any advice? Be nice to hear success stories, or from anyone else similarly struggling.

I'm in the process of producing more papers from my thesis now. I had one big one during my PhD (+ a short opinion piece, also in a peer-reviewed journal), but now I'm really applying myself. Have you finished your PhD? I got advice in my viva from my examiners on what parts of my thesis would be most suitable for publication. Before then the papers that I submitted during my PhD fell out of my research quite naturally, and didn't require substantial additional work.

For me now - at least in the humanities field - it's not simply a case of lifting things from the thesis and doing a bit more editing. The thesis is just the start, and there's an awful lot more contextualisation required to get it into a journal, both in the introductory literature review part of the paper but also in the main section discussing my findings. I'm also working on a number of papers which draw on findings from multiple chapters of my thesis, again based on my examiners' advice.

I'm trying for at least 3 more papers from my thesis, so that would be 4 proper ones in total. I'm aiming the best ones at the best journals first, being scarily ambitious in some of the journals I'm aiming at, thanks to encouragement from my supervisor. If they ultimately reject it (I'm currently revising for resubmitting to the most esteemed journal) I'll just resubmit elsewhere. But I'm always trying for the best journals possible, and the best fit of paper to journal.

Thank you, that's really encouraging and helpful. It sounds like you wrote or at least planned the papers all at once, whereas I was thinking one at a time. I have passed my viva and the examiners were encouraging but not specific. One offered to be a reviewer, but I don't know how that could actually happen - isn't it random? My supervisor is excellent, so I'll rough draft a few papers and hope it spurs us on. Although hard to hear, the fact that the thesis was only the start does seem true, at least I know now...  Well done on all your success.

Paper production is a slow process, so I've been finding it helpful to work on at least 2 at the same time, with another 2 in the back-burner / thinking stage. Then once the first 2 were submitted I moved onto the next 2, and so on.

Maybe your examiner is offering to read through your paper before you submit it? Peer-reviewed journals do have anonymous reviewers, so your examiner couldn't guarantee to be one of those.

The only down-side I'd say is that supervisors are often very hands-off after a PhD has finished. There's no major compulsion for them to help you any more, and certainly not to spend lots of time advising/reading papers. Mine have been very helpful, but I think I've been very lucky. Generally, though, I'm trying to stand more on my own two feet now. I've been awarded an honorary research fellowship by my department which is giving me continued access to electronic journals. How are you for that? Are you affiiated to a university at all? If not it can be harder to access the resources you need, when converting a thesis into journal papers.

Good luck!

Exactly!  You've hit the nail on the head on all counts. My supervisor means really well, but has other students with theses to work on, and other papers, which to be fair are now more current. I've also moved away geographically which doesn't help.  As for journals - it's a nightmare - I have lost all my electronic access and have to drive to the local university library to download anything. Due to moving, I don't have the contacts to get anything more with the university. I'll try your strategy - 2 on the go, 2 on the back burner...

Thanks again!