Hello all!

I have a question about the amount of material you can use from your thesis chapters to produce publications. I've chosen to not publish my thesis through the university, only making it available as an ethesis for students/staff at the university. This decision was made with my supervisors as it would allow for me to publish from my thesis as opposed to having to deal with copyright woes if I just published the thing as a book.

I'm not sure how much direct material redrafted I can use for my journal articles though, and for those who have already published from their theses, I would love to get any input or advice as to how much should be completely rewritten or new material, and how much can be from the thesis. I have hard data from completing interviews as this is a sociology PhD and can probably produce 2-3 articles per chapter, with 1 article already published from my first data chapter (but this was published prior to the PhD examination, so I reincorporated that article into the chapter/rewrote the chapter).

Is there a standard rule for how much you use? Or, can anyone direct me to some good blogs/links that would be of help?

I don't think there is a limit of what you publish. It's your thesis after all. You could publish the whole document as a book. I was told that publishing an academic books counts more that publishing papers in the UK - at least in the humanities.

My supervisor told me the other day that it's fine for me reuse material from my thesis in publications and vice versa as long as I'm first author on the paper so it's clear it;s my work. I have three chapters and I am planning to have 3-4 papers in total. Basically, my whole thesis will be published as papers.

I think the reality is that it needs to be substantially rewritten to avoid plagiarism though.

I guess it depends upon the quality and quantity of data produced during your PhD, whether included in the thesis or not. The experimental rig I was using seemed to literally print the original data itself (commented upon by my predecessors), so I think my experience at least once the PhD was finished was very atypical of that faced by PhD and post-doc researchers.

2 papers were published during my PhD and one immediately after, where I was a contributing author (I'm strangely listed as first author on two, though it was largely someone else who wrote the papers), with the data from one of these also appearing in my thesis. This fits in with the expectation of a PhD student, with the publication of two or three papers either during or after their PhD along with a couple of conference proceedings being typical. More often or not, this ends up commonly being one paper (less commonly two) plus a conference proceeding and a couple of posters.

The time pressures during a PhD mean that there isn't the scope to write large numbers of papers for journals. Some people wait until after the PhD to publish a paper or two when there is more time to review the data and the pressure to finish is gone.

The large amount of data generated in my case meant once the PhD was finished and I had time to review the data, I managed 6 journal papers as first / corresponding author with a further short communication unpublished (but downloadable). One paper used a substantial study not included in the final thesis due to time constraints. In addition, a book chapter resulted from the thesis and related data.

It looks better on your CV or resume if you can print to as high an impact journal as possible preferably as a first and / or corresponding author. This improves your profile at least in applying for academic and University-based research posts.

Also remember to compress from thesis to key literature, data and discussion only for journal.

Ian