(PhD Report) Is this a minor correction, major, or revise and resubmit?
I really need the help of fellow redditors. My university does not have a classical viva, but instead they send it to an external and internal reviewers. One of them said "it is an extraordinary and brilliant work" but the other put a huge effort to find mistakes and sentence by sentence asked me to clarify lot of things. At the end she recommends four points, but I do not know if it falls within a minor correction, major or revise and resubmit. My thesis advisor doesn't help much on this, but told me I can do it within a month. Not sure though.
Recommendations:
Show a well focused research question and find a focus for work.
Cut [it] by at least a third to prevent unwanted repetitions. (She asks me to cut 150 pages!)
Find the right links between the theoretical study material and empirical study material and between the historical information.
Go over the text again and root out all of the mistakes and the incorrect wording.
It sort of sounds like major corrections but perhaps not revise and resubmit. If your advisor thinks it can be done in a month, then perhaps it is just a case of a big final edit. It reads as though all of the material is in there but perhaps obscured by too much material and detail.
Some people love reading rich, highly textured and detailed texts, others prefer leaner, sparser material that shows the 'bones' in a more logical manner.
She does not mention it. Just she told there are repetition and to avoid it one third (at least!) must be cut. I mean, there may be repetitions but I am no fool to repeat same things for 150 pages.
This is a highly political decision. I guess who the reviewer is and she is like the lawyer of an ethnic group which my thesis focuses and you need to be really strong to criticise something about that group. She is an extremely political person and does not like the general ideas, though she can't oppose most of the material as they all have proper footnotes.
I would cut something to show willing, but if it's genuinely not repeated then don't cut those bits and explain why you have chosen to do this in your report back. Does your amended thesis go back to her or the internal? In my case, only my internal checked my corrections that were given by my external, so there were a couple of corrections I didn't do and I gave justifications for this and my internal didn't query it and it was fine.
I would cut something to show willing, but if it's genuinely not repeated then don't cut those bits and explain why you have chosen to do this in your report back. Does your amended thesis go back to her or the internal? In my case, only my internal checked my corrections that were given by my external, so there were a couple of corrections I didn't do and I gave justifications for this and my internal didn't query it and it was fine.
Regretfully it will go to both examiners again, eventhough one of them marked thesis as "distinction". I am also not told whether if the criticising is the external or internal reviewer.
Does the PhD committee has authority to let the student pass even after the corrections one referee insists on cutting 1/3, or is the PhD committee only passes the information and asks the student to make all the changes?
At my uni, the external and internal send official lists of corrections and then if minor corrections the internal looks at the corrections and accepts/rejects and if major corrections then the external does this. In either case, they then email the exam board to confirm once they are satisfied with the corrections.
When they are not satisfied with the corrections, they can then ask for more corrections (there are several cases on this forum where this has gone on for years), or they can fail the thesis in extreme cases.
It really all depends on the examiner unfortunately. If they are reasonable or don't really care either way, they will probably accept your justifications if they are valid, but if they are unreasonable then it's likely to be their way or the high way. The exam board cannot pass your thesis without their approval.
To cut one third of a thesis though, for no particular reason other than it's 'repetitive', seems a bit much to me, especially as one person's repetitive is another person's keeping everything flowing in a long document.
In either case, they then email the exam board to confirm once they are satisfied with the corrections.
When they are not satisfied with the corrections, they can then ask for more corrections (there are several cases on this forum where this has gone on for years), or they can fail the thesis in extreme cases.
It really all depends on the examiner unfortunately. If they are reasonable or don't really care either way, they will probably accept your justifications if they are valid, but if they are unreasonable then it's likely to be their way or the high way. The exam board cannot pass your thesis without their approval.
To cut one third of a thesis though, for no particular reason other than it's 'repetitive', seems a bit much to me, especially as one person's repetitive is another person's keeping everything flowing in a long document.
Thanks for the information, really appreciate it. I asked my supervisor to speak with someone from Committee and tell me clearly if what they (or reviewer) asks for.
You totally got my point, she only gave two example of "repetition", but they are only one sentences. For two sentences cutting 150 pages seems really too much. I am willing to cut it, but if I cut somewhere it will totally disintegrate; at least in my mind. That would cause a huge mess to make corrections since the flow of the thesis will be completely gone.
She made a similar comment in the survey chapter, by telling survey is very interesting and necessary but it is "full of contradictions". She, however, managed to only point one sentence as a contradiction.
From what I got is she was really willing to fail it, but couldn't do that as thesis has some quality, so she is trying her best to fail. My supervisor told that to me as well.
I would like to update about recent developments since some fellow with a similar situation may face with in the future (hope not):
Supervisor and head of the department also got pretty angry about the comments of the external. She accused me for having political agenda and some other personal attacks. Supervisor wrote a letter to the phd committee about this and mentioned there will be some changes in the thesis accordingly with what external commented, but asked for a different reviewer to read the thesis.
Has anyone in this forum faced with a similar situation - change of the external?
