Publishing doctoral work

All doctoral students are encouraged to publish their work, and should expect guidance and support from their supervisors in doing so. Publishing is an important part of academic work, and publications provide opportunities for feedback on and development of work from wider communities.

Publications may also demonstrate that the work included in a thesis meets the requirements of a thesis (section 5.1). However, to avoid any doubt, there is no requirement to publish work in order to pass a doctoral examination; and furthermore, having doctoral work published does not oblige examiners to judge the work of constituting an original or sufficiently scholarly contribution.

Developing academic writing

It is important for doctoral students and supervisors to be clear about their expectations around publishing work. Such discussions could include what work to publish; when to publish it; whether it would be best presented as a conference presentation, journal article, book chapter, etc; where to publish it; and how to respond to feedback provided on drafts, for example through peer review.

Students and supervisors are encouraged to think about developing their experience with publishing their work across the whole of the doctorate. It may be helpful to plan this in terms of increasingly specialised audiences, or of moving discussions from relatively closed and supportive audiences (such as departmental work-in-progress seminars) to more open or critical fora (such as specialist conferences or peer reviewed international journals). A possible trajectory for development could involve, for example, contributing to the Institute’s annual poster conference or doctoral summer conference, taking part in the three-minute thesis competition, writing for blogs or magazines, presenting at external conferences, and finally producing work for journals or books.

Students and supervisors may also find it useful to review the support, guidance and materials available from the IOE’s Academic Writing Centre.

Joint authorship

Doctoral work may be published jointly with supervisors – but this is not required in all cases, and it is vital that students and supervisors discuss their expectations around this early in the supervisory process. This is particularly important where different disciplines are involved, since expectations about authorship can vary considerably.

Students and supervisors should be aware of UCL’s policy on publication and authorship. However, this does not mandate any particular model of authorship, instead drawing attention to issues that teams should consider.

More specific guidance is provided by specific scholarly societies or professional bodies, and students and supervisors are advised to consider any such guidelines that might apply to their work. There is variation between these, although there are many points of consistency – for example, that authorship (including the order of authorship) should not be claimed on basis of seniority or status.

For example, BERA’s ethical guidelines include the following:

The authorship of publications is considered to comprise a list of everyone who has made a substantive and identifiable contribution to their generation. Examples of substantive contributions include: contributing generative ideas, conceptual schema or analytic categories; writing first drafts or substantial portions; significant rewriting or editing; contributing significantly to relevant literature reviewing; and contributing to data collection, to its analysis and to judgements and interpretations made in relation to it.

Academic status or other indicator of seniority must not determine first authorship; rather the order of authorship should reflect the relative leadership and contributions made by the researchers concerned.

The implication of this is that supervisors who had been active during the period of work covered by the publication would normally, but not always, be included as co-authors.

Similarly, the British Sociological Association’s guidelines state that “Students should normally be the first author on any multi-authored article based on their thesis or dissertation” and that honorary authorship is not acceptable, specifying that:

Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial direct academic contribution (i.e. intellectual responsibility and substantive work) to at least two of the four main components of a typical scientific project or paper:

a) Conception or design.

b) Data collection and processing.

c) Analysis and interpretation of the data.

d) Writing substantial sections of the paper (e.g. synthesising findings in the literature review or the findings/results section).

Everyone who is listed as an author should have critically reviewed successive drafts of the paper and should approve the final version.

Everyone who is listed as author should be able to defend the paper as a whole (although not necessarily all the technical details).

The implication of this is that supervisors would not automatically be included as authors on papers for which they had not made substantive and direct contributions.

The British Psychological Society’s Statement of Policy on Authorship and Publication Credit includes this summary:

Authorship refers to not only the writing up of the work but also scientific contributions (origination and formulation of the research idea and hypotheses, design of the research, designing and conducting major analysis, and interpreting findings). Contributions (such as designing or building research apparatus, recruiting research participants, data collation and entry, and other administrative duties) should not necessarily be considered to constitute authorship, but should merit formal acknowledgement if the nature and extent of the contribution is insufficient to warrant authorship.

This differentiation between authorship and acknowledgement may be helpful in giving options for recognising the contributions of different individuals appropriately. The BPS guidance is that “The authorship of publications arising from doctoral work should, therefore, normally be joint (with the student listed first). The supervisory input provided must, however, justify the inclusion of the supervisor(s) as co-author(s).”