Practical tips for Publishing and Promoting your Thesis

So, you’ve finally reached the end of your PhD journey, and are left with a thesis that presents – in meticulous and carefully crafted detail – your findings. Many PhD students don’t manage to publish their findings during their PhD, but are encouraged to do so after completion of their project. Here are some practical tips to help you get started.

Options for publishing your thesis

Publication can take a few forms, and a couple of them are discussed below. 

• You might decide to divide your thesis into separate parts and consider whether aspects of the work can be used in other manuscripts that you can help author. This is a common path for STEM researchers in particular, and is something that needs to be discussed with your supervisor, who will have a better overview of the work being done within your project group and in the wider field.
• Some theses may be more amenable to being published as a monograph. This constitutes an edited version of your full thesis, and is usually published by university presses and marketed to the public. An added bonus of publication by monograph is that as the author, you may be entitled to royalty payments.

Either form of publication is valuable dissemination of your research, and is worth pursuing after completion of your thesis.

Tips for publishing your thesis

Your first thoughts, as just discussed, should go into whether your work is more suited to be published as journal articles or as a monograph. Your supervisor will be able to help you make this decision.

Depending on what you decide, you will then need to ensure that your thesis is sufficiently protected until you publish. This often takes the form of an embargo, where your work will not be publicly available for a certain amount of time. This then allows for time for you to prepare manuscripts and submit them to journals or publishers. 

We recommend: It is also a good idea to make sure that, if you had industrial involvement in your PhD, you are indeed permitted to publish what you intend to publish. Thus, it is advisable to have your thesis scrutinised by your collaborators before you proceed.

Tips for promoting your published thesis

If you are writing journal articles using your thesis, then promoting these as you prepare them doesn’t differ from the usual means of doing so. These include:

• Conference attendance, ideally with a poster or a talk
• Active engagement with the academic community, be it through social media (such as Twitter or LinkedIn) or internal university bulletins

If you decide to publish your work through a publisher as a monograph, then you may work with your publisher to promote your work, who will guide you about the best possible practices using which to promote your upcoming publication.

We recommend: In either case, if you are promoting your work before publication, be mindful that you don’t disclose any information that could result in your research getting scooped, i.e. someone else taking that information and publishing it before you do.

End note

A crucial element of being a researcher is to disseminate your research. Dissemination is the key to promoting good science and inspiring others with your work. Don’t think of the end of your PhD as being the end of that project. Instead, think about how you can maximise the impact of the years of hard work that led to your completed thesis.

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