dissertation publication

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Publishing Your Dissertation in a Scholarly Journal

So you’ve decided you want to earn a PhD. You have read about the road blocks , you’ve selected your committee, and you’ve started writing your dissertation. But why start thinking about a publication? What does that have to do with earning the ultimate degree?

Writing a dissertation without a publication is like going to the trouble of making a cake but not baking it. No one can taste your cake, no one can benefit from your hard work—of course, no one can criticize your work either. But without a publication, or two or three, the dissertation is not technically a total success. You’d be amazed at how many people don’t get a publication out of their dissertation. Without advanced planning, a publication likely won’t happen, because, once again, there are often unanticipated roadblocks.

1. Publication will be completely driven by you and no one else. A publication will not be on the priority list of your dissertation committee. And you will likely be the only one to understand where to publish.

2. Planning is the most important step and the only way to be successful. If you wait until after you go through the dissertation process, you will be too exhausted to publish, and it won’t happen for a year or two. You must plan.

3. Configure your dissertation for three separate publications. This may be three separate chapters, or it may be three different data sets or arms of your data. Link this to the selection of your committee. In my previous articles, I recommended choosing a committee wisely, with different members being associated with different jobs. Committee members should not have similar areas of expertise. Their “jobs” should not overlap. There should be a content expert or literature review expert, a methods person, a results person and a “whip.” Ideally, the “whip” (think politics, as in majority whip or minority whip in Congress) is your dissertation chair. The jobs of each member should be distinct to avoid having members fighting or making conflicting suggestions. Each article should be aligned with a separate expert. So there can be a Review article, a Methods article, and a Results article.

4. You get to decide who is listed as an author on your articles. You will be first author, and your mentor should be last author (a position of honor). If a committee member does not contribute, they ethically should not be included in the list of authors. Many journals now ask you to list the authors along with their meaningful contributions.

5. Decide ahead of time the journals in which you wish to publish. Full disclosure — I am on the board of the Journal of the American Academy of PAs (JAAPA), and I’m a reviewer for the Journal of Physician Assistant Education (JPAE). I’m going to recommend these PA journals for one of your publications. Here is my pitch (although biased): We are THE scholarly journals for the profession. If your data is completely focused on PA education, then select JPAE. Think about JAAPA for any research on PAs themselves or PA analogues. Select a PA journal for a personal touch and some really important feedback. Your article will be on a stage with your peers. This gives you the home crowd advantage.

6. Lose ownership. Remember how I said your dissertation is like your baby? Well, your baby now has gone through elementary school and the tumultuous teenage years and currently is entering college. Your publication needs you to back off and give it some space. It will leave home for a while (often for the long review process). When it comes back, it might need to do some laundry, but it should essentially not look at all like the baby you once knew. A publication should look like a publication, not a dissertation. It should be neat and mature and all grown up.

7. Try for the highest level journal you can realistically get published in. Here is the main problem: time. You cannot ethically submit the same article to multiple journals. You will need to make sure you have three completely separate articles in order to submit to multiple journals. There are many people who believe you should publish in the most prestigious journal you can make it into. I do not disagree with this philosophy; however, the alternative is that your work might not get read in a higher scholarly journal because PAs and PA educators don’t tend to read these other journals. This is for you to decide. There are websites that can help you determine where to publish. But be careful and check out Beall’s List, a list of potentially predatory “scholarly” open-access publishers.

8. Best of luck — and don’t fail to publish. Don’t bake your cake and not put it in the oven. Remember to reach out to your peers within the profession to aid in your success. Ultimately, your committee will be pleased to add a publication to their CVs. They will remember this as their reward for all the hard work that they (and you) put into your PhD.

A publication is the lasting legacy for all of your tough efforts and sacrifice. It is the “so what” of all you have put into this academic Mt. Everest. Consider the impact that your work will have on the profession. Don’t run the marathon (or climb the mountain) and not cross the finish line!

Jennifer Coombs, PhD, MPAS, PA-C

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• Writing Tips

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your Thesis Published in a Journal

• 7-minute read
• 25th February 2023

Writing your thesis and getting it published are huge accomplishments. However, publishing your thesis in an academic journal is another journey for scholars. Beyond how much hard work, time, and research you invest, having your findings published in a scholarly journal is vital for your reputation as a scholar and also advances research findings within your field.

This guide will walk you through how to make sure your thesis is ready for publication in a journal. We’ll go over how to prepare for pre-publication, how to submit your research, and what to do after acceptance.

Pre-Publication Preparations

Understanding the publishing process.

Ideally, you have already considered what type of publication outlet you want your thesis research to appear in. If not, it’s best to do this so you can tailor your writing and overall presentation to fit that publication outlet’s expectations. When selecting an outlet for your research, consider the following:

●  How well will my research fit the journal?

●  Are the reputation and quality of this journal high?

●  Who is this journal’s readership/audience?

●  How long does it take the journal to respond to a submission?

●  What’s the journal’s rejection rate?

Once you finish writing, revising, editing, and proofreading your work (which can take months or years), expect the publication process to be an additional three months or so.

Revising Your Thesis

Your thesis will need to be thoroughly revised, reworked, reorganized, and edited before a journal will accept it. Journals have specific requirements for all submissions, so read everything on a journal’s submission requirements page before you submit. Make a checklist of all the requirements to be sure you don’t overlook anything. Failing to meet the submission requirements could result in your paper being rejected.

Areas for Improvement

No doubt, the biggest challenge academics face in this journey is reducing the word count of their thesis to meet journal publication requirements. Remember that the average thesis is between 60,000 and 80,000 words, not including footnotes, appendices, and references. On the other hand, the average academic journal article is 4,000 to 7,000 words. Reducing the number of words this much may seem impossible when you are staring at the year or more of research your thesis required, but remember, many have done this before, and many will do it again. You can do it too. Be patient with the process.

Additional areas of improvement include>

·   having to reorganize your thesis to meet the section requirements of the journal you submit to ( abstract, intro , methods, results, and discussion).

·   Possibly changing your reference system to match the journal requirements or reducing the number of references.

·   Reformatting tables and figures.

·   Going through an extensive editing process to make sure everything is in place and ready.

Identifying Potential Publishers

Many options exist for publishing your academic research in a journal. However, along with the many credible and legitimate publishers available online, just as many predatory publishers are out there looking to take advantage of academics. Be sure to always check unfamiliar publishers’ credentials before commencing the process. If in doubt, ask your mentor or peer whether they think the publisher is legitimate, or you can use Think. Check. Submit .

If you need help identifying which journals your research is best suited to, there are many tools to help. Here’s a short list:

○  Elsevier JournalFinder

○  EndNote Matcher

○  Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)

○  Publish & Flourish Open Access

·   The topics the journal publishes and whether your research will be a good fit.

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·   The journal’s audience (whom you want to read your research).

·   The types of articles the journal publishes (e.g., reviews, case studies).

·   Your personal requirements (e.g., whether you’re willing to wait a long time to see your research published).

Submitting Your Thesis

Now that you have thoroughly prepared, it’s time to submit your thesis for publication. This can also be a long process, depending on peer review feedback.

Preparing Your Submission

Many publishers require you to write and submit a cover letter along with your research. The cover letter is your sales pitch to the journal’s editor. In the letter, you should not only introduce your work but also emphasize why it’s new, important, and worth the journal’s time to publish. Be sure to check the journal’s website to see whether submission requires you to include specific information in your cover letter, such as a list of reviewers.

Whenever you submit your thesis for publication in a journal article, it should be in its “final form” – that is, completely ready for publication. Do not submit your thesis if it has not been thoroughly edited, formatted, and proofread. Specifically, check that you’ve met all the journal-specific requirements to avoid rejection.

Navigating the Peer Review Process

Once you submit your thesis to the journal, it will undergo the peer review process. This process may vary among journals, but in general, peer reviews all address the same points. Once submitted, your paper will go through the relevant editors and offices at the journal, then one or more scholars will peer-review it. They will submit their reviews to the journal, which will use the information in its final decision (to accept or reject your submission).

While many academics wait for an acceptance letter that says “no revisions necessary,” this verdict does not appear very often. Instead, the publisher will likely give you a list of necessary revisions based on peer review feedback (these revisions could be major, minor, or a combination of the two). The purpose of the feedback is to verify and strengthen your research. When you respond to the feedback, keep these tips in mind:

●  Always be respectful and polite in your responses, even if you disagree.

●  If you do disagree, be prepared to provide supporting evidence.

●  Respond to all the comments, questions, and feedback in a clear and organized manner.

●  Make sure you have sufficient time to make any changes (e.g., whether you will need to conduct additional experiments).

After Publication

Once the journal accepts your article officially, with no further revisions needed, take a moment to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. After all, having your work appear in a distinguished journal is not an easy feat. Once you’ve finished celebrating, it’s time to promote your work. Here’s how you can do that:

●  Connect with other experts online (like their posts, follow them, and comment on their work).

●  Email your academic mentors.

●  Share your article on social media so others in your field may see your work.

●  Add the article to your LinkedIn publications.

●  Respond to any comments with a “Thank you.”

Getting your thesis research published in a journal is a long process that goes from reworking your thesis to promoting your article online. Be sure you take your time in the pre-publication process so you don’t have to make lots of revisions. You can do this by thoroughly revising, editing, formatting, and proofreading your article.

During this process, make sure you and your co-authors (if any) are going over one another’s work and having outsiders read it to make sure no comma is out of place.

What are the benefits of getting your thesis published?

Having your thesis published builds your reputation as a scholar in your field. It also means you are contributing to the body of work in your field by promoting research and communication with other scholars.

How long does it typically take to get a thesis published?

Once you have finished writing, revising, editing, formatting, and proofreading your thesis – processes that can add up to months or years of work – publication can take around three months. The exact length of time will depend on the journal you submit your work to and the peer review feedback timeline.

How can I ensure the quality of my thesis when attempting to get it published?

If you want to make sure your thesis is of the highest quality, consider having professionals proofread it before submission (some journals even require submissions to be professionally proofread). Proofed has helped thousands of researchers proofread their theses. Check out our free trial today.

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Revising Your Dissertation for Publication

While a dissertation’s in-depth research and analysis can provide a strong foundation for a book, the dissertation itself is not a book and will not be published by an academic press without substantial revisions. Some acquisitions editors are interested first books, especially if they bring new perspectives and fresh ideas to a field, while others do not often publish first books. If you are considering submitting your dissertation for publication, we recommend that you contact editors at university presses that publish in your subject area for guidance on revising your work. Many editors prefer to be involved in the early stages of this process so they can advise you on how to structure the book and your arguments to create a publishable book. Editors generally require changes in the length, content, tone, and style of a dissertation in order to produce a book that will appeal to buyers in the academic market. Read more about submitting a proposal in our Scholarly Publishing Guide .

Below are selected resources to help you revise your dissertation for publication as a book or journal article(s).

Advice from publishers

• Harvard University Press
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Rowman & Littlefield
• Taylor & Francis
• University of North Carolina Press
• Yale University Press
• Publisher Policies on using content in both a thesis or dissertation and an article (from MIT Libraries)
• From Dissertation to Book by William Germano (Lauinger Library, 4th Floor, PN162 .G37 2013)
• Revising Your Dissertation, Updated Edition : Advice from Leading Editors (updated edition, 2008) edited by Beth Luey (online; GU NetID and password required)
• From Dissertation to Book , Duke University (February 27, 2018)
• From Dissertation to Book ( full transcript ), Harvard University (December 17, 2010)
• How To Turn Your Dissertation into a Book , Yale University (April 6, 2016)
• From Dissertation to Book by Leonard Cassuto (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30, 2011)
• From Dissertation to Published Book (lanugageandphilosophy.com report on an American Comparative Literature Association workshop)
• Give It a Rest by Laura Portwood-Stacer (Inside Higher Ed, August 6, 2019)
• The Stages of Revising a Dissertation into a Book by Amy Benson Brown (Journal of Scholarly Publishing, vol. 52 no. 2, 2021, p. 127-140) (GU NetID and password required)
• Turning Your Dissertation into a Book (University of Washington)
• Publishing your Dissertation (American Psychological Association)

Managing the Dissertation Writing Process

Materials from workshop.

• Slides:  https://z.umn.edu/dissworkshopslides
• Revision Memo:  https://z.umn.edu/revisionmemo
• Dissertation Analysis handout (PDF)
• "How to Read like a Writer" (PDF) by Mike Bunn (in  Writing spaces : readings on writing Vol 2 )

Finding Dissertations

• Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window Collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, offering millions of works from thousands of universities. Each year hundreds of thousands of works are added. Full-text coverage spans from 1743 to the present, with citation coverage dating back to 1637.
• Google Scholar (Setup connection to get to PDFs) Use Google Scholar to find articles from academic publishers, professional societies, research institutes, and scholarly repositories from colleges and universities. If you are using from off-campus access, change the "Library Settings" to University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Look for the "FindIt@U of M Twin Cities" links in your Google Scholar search results to access full text and PDFs. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
• University Digital Conservancy at the University of Minnesota A digital archive of M.A. and PhD theses at the University of Minnesota. The collection in this institutional repository can also be searched by keyword, date, authors and majors.

Sample of project management tools

Tool considerations:

• Devices -- “apps” vs. Laptop 
• Collaboration
• Fewer features vs. lots of features
• Learning curve
• Security/privacy 

More Options

• Open Project:  https://www.openproject.org/
• Redbooth:  https://redbooth.com/
• Notion:  https://www.notion.so/
• Freedcamp:  https://freedcamp.com/
• Smartsheet:  https://www.smartsheet.com/
• Click up:  https://clickup.com/
• Kanboard:  https://kanboard.org/

Student Writing Support from the Center for Writing

Student Writing Support (SWS) offers collaborative one-to-one writing consultations to help student writers develop confidence and effective writing strategies. SWS offers three kinds of consultations:

• walk-in consultations in 15  Nicholson Hall
• appointments in  Zoom
• appointments in  SWS.online

Our writing consultants will listen to your goals and concerns, read and respond to your written work, pose questions that help you clarify and articulate your ideas, and affirm the experiences and abilities you bring to your writing. We value your life experiences and languages, and we seek to provide a supportive space for you to share and develop your voice.

Sample of online books

• Restarting stalled research by Paul C. Rosenblatt ISBN: 9781483393551 Publication Date: 2016 Written for researchers and graduate students writing dissertations, this unique book offers detailed advice and perspective on many issues that can stall a research project and reveals what can be done to successfully resume it. Using a direct yet conversational style, author Paul C. Rosenblatt draws on his decades of experience to cover many diverse topics. The text guides readers through challenges such as clarifying the end goal of a project; resolving common and not-so-common writing problems; dealing with rejection and revision decisions; handling difficulties involving dissertation advisers and committee members; coping with issues of researcher motivation or self-esteem; and much more.

Get materials we don't own or from our print collection (Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery)

• InterLibrary Loan & Digital Delivery Interlibrary Loan (ILL) & Digital Delivery offers access to materials needed for courses and research, including materials not currently available within the University of Minnesota Libraries, AND digital copies of articles and book chapters from our print and microform collections. Free for currently-affiliated University students, faculty, and staff.

Citation managers

What is a citation manager.

A citation manager is a software tool used to create personalized databases of citation information and notes. They allow you to:

• import and organize citation information from article indexes and other sources,
• export your citations into Word documents or other types of publications,
• format citations for your papers and bibliographies using APA and many other styles, and
• include your own notes.

Choosing a citation manager

• Guide to Citation Managers at UMN
• Wikipedia's comparison of reference management software

Browse scholarly journals available from the UMN Libraries on your tablet device, iPhone, or via the web using BrowZine .

• Read journal articles on your preferred device. 
• Create personal libraries of your favorite journals. 
• Set up alerts for new issues of journals.

For a quick overview, see this one-minute video about BrowZine. For more information, see  the full BrowZine guide.

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THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

• Academic Policies & Procedures

Dissertation Publication

Doctoral dissertations document the discoveries, findings and insights gained through University-supported research. The University requires — and takes responsibility for ensuring — that dissertations produced in fulfillment of degree requirements will be part of the publicly available scholarly record.

TGS deposits dissertations into the ProQuest Database and the  institutional repository  of Northwestern University. 

Copyright Policy

Except under unusual special circumstances, student authors own copyright for their dissertations and the University’s right to publish is non-exclusive. This means that the author, as the copyright owner, is free to also publish the work. Authors may make arrangements with other entities (such as scholarly societies and commercial publishers) for publication of the dissertation as a whole or in part, as well as for publication of other works derived from, or building on, the dissertation work. However, authors may not grant any other entity exclusive publication rights to the dissertation itself.

Northwestern University may use its copy or copies and make the content available to others without restriction. The University Library’s  scholarly research services  has resources to help scholars understand publishing options and author’s rights.

Copyright policy can be found at NU’s  Innovation and New Ventures Office  web page.

Delay of Publication (Embargo)

Students may elect to delay publication of the dissertation by submitting a request providing a rationale for the embargo and selecting an embargo length when depositing the dissertation via ProQuest. Students will have the option to select a publishing option that pertains to the  ProQuest database  and separately to the  institutional repository . An embargo has the effect of restricting online access to the dissertation through the ProQuest database and through the institutional repository for the period of the embargo. Metadata (author, title, abstract, keywords and subjects) about the embargoed dissertation will be available through ProQuest and the library catalog. Users of those systems are able to search for and see the metadata, but not the actual text or other content of the dissertation.  The University’s expectation is that dissertations approved by TGS will be released for use through the ProQuest database and through the institutional repository without delay. The University is proud of the accomplishments of its PhD graduates and wants their research to be available to the world as soon as possible. Consult TGS's policy on dissertations as well as the Institutional Repository Publishing Frequently Asked Questions for Dissertation Authors  for more information.

Dissertation Assistance

TGS recognizes that scholarly writing is a process that benefits from conversations and consultations with others. As such, TGS supports Northwestern services such as The Graduate Writing Place, graduate writing workshops, and dissertation boot camps, which offer appropriate levels of writing assistance, provided by facilitators/consultants who are trained to help you avoid any academic integrity violations. Beyond such services, all graduate student writers should consult with their advisors about appropriate forms of assistance before assistance is rendered. Regardless of the type of assistance you receive with your writing, it is appropriate to acknowledge this support. The policy on Dissertation Assistance can be found in the  Policy section .

Research Data Archiving

Researchers and institutions have a shared responsibility to ensure long-term research data preservation. The University Libraries offers data repository and management services to help students archive research data and analysis code for others to find and use. For a list of all services available, please take a look here .  

Arch  is a digital repository service for research materials. Students can use this service to deposit any supplemental files created for the dissertation research to be made available to the public, including data, analysis code, figures, presentations, and media. In addition to Arch, Northwestern researchers have access to Dryad, a data repository for preserving and sharing research data. Northwestern’s institutional membership allows researchers to archive and share any size data file at no additional cost.  

Research Guides

Submit and publish your thesis.

• The Graduate Thesis: What is it?
• Thesis Defences
• Deadlines and Fees
• Formatting in MS Word
• Formatting in LaTeX
• Making Thesis Accessible
• Thesis Embargo
• Review and Release
• Your Rights as an Author
• Re-using Third Party Materials
• Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
• Turning Thesis into an Article
• Turning Thesis into a Book
• Other Venues of Publication

Publishing from your thesis before or after graduation

"Will repository submission affect my publishing plans?"

... this is a common question for someone looking to publish from their thesis before or after graduation.

Most journals welcome submissions based on a thesis or dissertation. Some may have additional requirements, such as to:

• Let them know about the university’s requirement to make your thesis publicly available
• Submit a manuscript that is substantially different than the thesis content
• Embargo the thesis until after publication, etc.

Your steps will depend on the following scenarios:

Scenario 1 - you ARE NOT planning on publishing your thesis before or after graduation

In this case:

• You can submit your thesis without an embargo
• Your thesis will become publicly available in TSpace  and Library and Archives Canada after your convocation and will be widely indexed via search engines and indexes
• Use the TSpace-generated permanent URL to share and cite your thesis - see example of such citation below

Tajdaran, K. (2015). Enhancement of Peripheral Nerve Regeneration with Controlled Release of Glial Cell Line-derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) (Master’s Thesis, University of Toronto). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1807/74747

Scenario 2 - You ARE planning on publishing your thesis AFTER graduation

Most journals are interested in “original, previously unpublished” research. Some journals consider theses as a form of “prior publications”, others do not, and the majority does not have a clear definition. It will be best to check journal policy before you submit your thesis.

Nature Research will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.

►►►How to check journal policies:

• MIT Libraries' list of policy excerpts from major publishers
• Journal’s website - usually under Information for Authors or Copyright / Permissions or Editorial Policy; or in the publication agreement if available online
• If such information cannot be located online, contact the editors directly
• If the journal requires that you place an embargo on your thesis until after publication, see the SGS instructions on how to request an embargo on your thesis .

Scenario 3 - You ARE planning on publishing (or have already published) from your thesis BEFORE graduation

You may want or be expected to publish parts of your thesis before your thesis is submitted, such as with an integrated/publication-based/sandwich thesis. The most important thing to keep in mind here is copyright. You own copyright of your written materials, and a publisher may require copyright transfer of your manuscript.

You need to ensure you retain certain rights or obtain permission in order to satisfy the university’s requirement of making your thesis openly accessible via TSpace, ProQuest and Library and Archives Canada (LAC). For more details on these repositories, see the  Review and Release  section of this guide.

Check whether the journal requires prior notification about U of T’s open access requirement for theses. Some journals want to be notified of this mandate whether or not they restrict the re-use of articles in theses.

Check whether the publisher requires copyright transfer . This should be stated on their website, in the publication agreement, or you can inquire directly with the journal.

If the publisher does not require copyright transfer , i.e. author retains copyright, then you can reuse your article/chapter in your thesis; no permission needed.

If the publisher requires copyright transfer , follow these steps:

Check if the publisher has special provisions for reusing your published work in your thesis. They may permit the inclusion of a non-final version, such as your submitted or accepted manuscript. See more below on understanding different article versions for sharing .

►►►How to check journal policies:  See MIT Libraries' list of policy excerpts from major publishers or the journal/publisher website.

For example, Taylor and Francis policy allows to:

Include your article Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM) or Accepted Manuscript(AM) , depending on the embargo period in your thesis or dissertation. The Version of Record cannot be used. https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/copyright-and-you/

Check if the article is distributed under a Creative Commons license. This may allow re-use.

►►►How to check journal's CC license:  See the journal/publisher website or contact the journal directly.

If the publisher requires copyright transfer, has no special provisions and does not publish under a CC license, you will need to contact them to request permission to include your article in your thesis. You can:

• Negotiate making the article available as part of the thesis in TSpace, ProQuest, and LAC Theses Portal; 
• Request an embargo [link to Lisa’ section on embargo] if the publisher only permits open sharing after some time post-publication;
• If permission is denied you may include in place of the chapter an abstract and a link to the article on the journal website.

If you have specific questions about your situation, publisher policy or author rights, contact the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office at [email protected] for a consultation (best before you publish!)

Understanding different versions of a published article

A publisher may distinguish between the versions of an article that you may be allowed to include in your thesis:

• Submitted manuscript / pre-print - version you initially send in (often permitted)
• Accepted manuscript / post-print - version after peer review but before copyediting, layout editing, formatting, etc. (sometimes permitted; publisher may require an embargo/access restriction for a period of time)
• Version of record / final publisher’s PDF - version that appears in the journal (many publishers do not permit sharing this version)

►►►How to check article versions permitted for sharing:

• MIT Libraries’s list of policy excerpts from major publishers
• Sherpa/RoMEO database of publisher policies
• Journal’s website - usually under Information for Authors or Copyright/Permissions or Editorial Policy; or in the publication agreement if available online
• << Previous: Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
• Next: Turning Thesis into an Article >>
• Last Updated: Sep 15, 2023 3:23 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/thesis

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Graduate Students' Guide to Library Resources and Services

• Literature Reviews
• Search Tools & Strategies
• Document Requests (Interlibrary Loan)
• E-books (guide redirect)
• Theses and Dissertations
• Current Awareness Tools (Staying up-to-date)
• Citation Management Software (guide redirect) This link opens in a new window
• Open Access Publishing Opportunities (guide redirect) This link opens in a new window
• Presentation Tools and Resources
• Avoiding Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
• Teaching Support

ETD Help -- UC Graduate School

The Graduate School ETD Informaton Web site provides an ETD submission time line, submission requirements and an FAQ page that addresses a wide range of formatting, PDF creation and publishing questions.

ETD Help Desk

Dissertations and theses resources.

At UC Libraries

• Center for Research Libraries (non-US dissertations) Use ILLiad to request. Some dissertations are available online.
• Inter-Library Loan Service (ILLiad) If the dissertation is not available or digitized, use the Thesis/Dissertation form in ILLiad to request through interlibrary loan.

On the Public Web

• British Library EThOS - Search and order these online "Search over 480,000 doctoral theses. Download instantly for your research, or order a scanned copy quickly and easily."
• DART - Europe E-theses Portal Open access portal to theses from 400+ European universities.
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Patterns of dissertation dissemination: publication-based outcomes of doctoral theses in the social sciences

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• Published: 29 February 2024

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• Anastasiya-Mariya Asanov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3080-4213 1 ,
• Igor Asanov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8091-4130 1 ,
• Guido Buenstorf   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2957-5532 1 ,
• Valon Kadriu   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0006-1101-5349 1 &
• Pia Schoch   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0006-9471-4590 1  

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Dissemination of knowledge through the publication of findings is a cornerstone of the academic research system. Doctoral dissertations document the findings made by early-stage researchers during their doctoral studies. However, prior research suggests that dissertations may not be effective in disseminating these findings to the broader community of researchers. We study how knowledge documented in doctoral dissertations is disseminated. Specifically, we investigate which dissertation characteristics and institutional factors are related to the number of journal publications based on these dissertations and the number of citations that these publications receive. Our analysis uses a random sample of doctoral dissertations from German universities in economics, political science, and sociology. We find that “cumulative” dissertations—dissertations consisting of a number of separate articles—are turned into three times more publications which receive three times more citations than monographic dissertations. We also find explorative evidence that dissertations written in English and empirical dissertations have higher publication-based outcomes. We conclude that a policy allowing doctoral candidates to write their dissertations in a cumulative format provides them with an opportunity to share the results of their research through publications in peer-reviewed journals.

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Introduction

Doctoral candidates contribute in many ways to the productivity of their universities—for example, as research and teaching assistants (Kifor et al., 2023 ; Larivière, 2012 ; Rodríguez-Montoya et al., 2023 ). However, their primary task and the key prerequisite for being awarded a doctoral degree is to make a research contribution to the respective discipline, which is documented in the doctoral dissertation. Moreover, dissertations turn into published papers serving dissemination of the acquired and documented knowledge. Yet, not many factors are known that determine the success of knowledge dissemination from dissertations (Mayir et al., 2017 ; Paglis et al., 2006 ; Rojko et al., 2020 ).

Depending on the country and discipline, it takes about 3 to 6 years for a doctoral candidate to fulfil all requirements for the doctoral degree, including submitting a comprehensive dissertation of 100 to 400 pages and to graduate (Günauer et al., 2013 ; Siegfried & Stock, 2001 ). Prior evidence indicates that dissertations contain high-quality research. For example, one review (McLeod & Weisz, 2004 ) shows that the methodology in experiments from dissertations was stronger, while the mean effect size reported in dissertations was smaller than in the published articles in the same field, suggesting the dissertations were less susceptible to overestimating the effect size than the published articles. Despite this, compared to journal publications, the citation rate of dissertations in the scientific literature has declined over time (Larivière et al., 2008 ). Less than 12% of the dissertations produced by UK doctoral candidates have at least one citation on platforms like Scopus, Microsoft Academic, or Google Books (Kousha & Thelwall, 2020 ).

Even though dissertations themselves are not cited much in the academic literature, one might expect that the research and data that dissertations are based on contribute to publications in peer-reviewed journals. However, research shows that only about 25–29% of dissertations in psychology, counseling, and social work (Evans et al., 2018 ; Maynard et al., 2014 ; Osborn et al., 2023 ) ended up with at least one article derived from them published in a peer-reviewed journal. Similarly, only around 40% of electronic theses and dissertations in engineering produced at a South African university received at least one citation, and only 16.8% of them were converted into research outputs such as books, journal articles, or conference proceedings (Bangani, 2018 ). Studies of medical theses dissemination show similarly low publication rates of 17% in France (Salmi et al., 2001 ), 17.6% in Peru (Arriola-Quiroz et al., 2010 ), and 23.8% in Finland (Nieminen et al., 2007 ). Finally, 53.2% of dissertations in Turkish language education are turned into journal publications (Karagöz & Şeref, 2021 ).These prior findings indicate that substantial resources are dedicated to producing high-quality research that is documented in doctoral dissertations but often not disseminated to the broader community of researchers. Yet, little is known about how universities can enhance dissertation-based research dissemination. Several studies have explored individual factors associated with the research productivity of doctoral candidates. Paglis et al. ( 2006 ) found no significant association between advisor mentoring and research productivity, which was defined as the total number of conference papers, journal publications, book chapters, and grant proposals accepted. Rojko et al. ( 2020 ) did not find a significant difference in the average publication performance of doctoral candidates before and after the implementation of the Bologna reform in Slovenia.

Other research has explored differences in the extent of doctoral dissertation dissemination. For example, making doctoral dissertations available through open-access repositories at universities resulted in higher citation counts (Ferreras-Fernández et al., 2013 ). Mayir et al. ( 2017 ) did not reveal an association between the publication rate and citation counts of dissertations in surgery and the type of study on which a dissertation was based (e.g., randomized study, case study, cross-sectional study). Closest to our study, Smaldone et al. ( 2019 ) compared the number of peer-reviewed publications based on dissertations from the Columbia University School of Nursing that were written in a monographic or an article-based (i.e., “cumulative”) format. The study found that article-based dissertations were associated with larger numbers of publications in peer-reviewed journals. Similarly, a survey of Australian students and alumni (Thomas et al., 2016 ) from instructional technology programs found that those who chose an article-based dissertation format reported receiving more citations on their dissertations.

In this study, using a random sample of German dissertations, we investigate dissertation characteristics and institutional factors that may be related to higher research output. We quantify research output as the number of papers based on the dissertation that are published in peer-reviewed journals and the number of citations from these papers.

We aim to answer the following four questions: First, do rates of publications based on dissertations and their citations differ between economics, sociology, and political science; second, do monographic and “cumulative” (article-based) dissertations differ in publication and citation rates; third, do dissertations from universities with and without an established graduate school or graduate academy differ in publication and citation rates; and fourth, do dissertations from universities that were successful in the German excellence initiative differ in publication and citation rates.

Materials and methods

Pre-analysis plan.

Prior to conducting the empirical analysis underlying the present paper, we specified in a pre-analysis plan the process of sampling, data collection, a set of outcomes and explanatory variables, a set of control variables, a set of hypotheses, and the empirical strategy. We store the pre-analysis plan and a replication package at Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U7M2A .

We selected a sample of 1500 doctoral dissertations from 2004 to 2006 and 1500 doctoral dissertations from 2012 to 2014, drawn randomly from the German National Library’s database of all dissertations published in Germany during those years. We determined the desired sample size and sampling strategy based on statistical power calculations before data collection to have a representative sample of dissertations for the sampling frame years. We focused on dissertations classified under the fields of Economy (“Wirtschaft”), Politics (“Politik”), and Social Sciences (“Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie”). To ensure accuracy, our team manually classified the dissertations in the sample, particularly distinguishing between those in economics and those in management sciences, which are both classified as “Wirtschaft” in the database. After this classification process, we were left with a total of 1840 dissertations from 73 German universities. Given 1840 dissertations (observations) across 73 universities (clusters) with observed intra-university (-cluster) correlation (ICC) of 0.04 for the main outcomes, assuming a conventional significance level of 5% and 80% of statistical power, the minimum detectable effect (MDE) size is 0.19 of a standard deviation. Thus, we have sufficient statistical power even to detect a correlation of about 0.1 ( r ), which can be considered a small effect size given empirically observed effect sizes in observational research in economics (Ioannidis et al., 2017 ).

Outcome variables

We were interested in two primary outcomes—the number of publications based on the doctoral dissertation and the total number of citations from these publications. Relevant publications were identified as follows. Initially, our team of research assistants, under the supervision of the research team, exhaustively searched for one peer-reviewed publication of each author in various sources (the author’s personal website, the author’s university page, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and WISO) and recorded the author identifiers. To ensure the correct person was found, we verified that the author’s publication lists contained the dissertation as well. Author identifiers were then matched with the Scopus database, and the list of publications was cross-referenced with the dissertation itself to identify which publications were based on the dissertation. The identification of dissertation-based publications was conducted manually by research assistants based on a formalized algorithm created by us, which entailed comparing titles, abstracts, and, if necessary, the introductions of the dissertation and each publication. Research assistants were encouraged to leave comments regarding uncertainties, which were then resolved by a member of the research team. To additionally ensure accuracy, the research assistants’ work was systematically and independently double-checked at random by senior researchers, i.e., a random sample of 30% dissertations was extracted to check for potential mistakes. In both instances—resolving an uncertainty and double-checking a random sample of dissertations—the senior researchers followed the same formalized protocol: check whether the title, abstract, and if necessary, introduction match. To determine whether the paper and a dissertation match, the algorithm required to compare the topic and the object of the study, the study sample, the method and the location of the study. When there was a significant overlap in these categories between the paper and a dissertation/dissertation chapter, the paper was classified as a match. After independent double-checking, the rate of agreement between research assistants’ and senior researchers’ classification was 94%.

Most of the publications from Scopus matched to the dissertations were classified as journal articles. We base our analysis on these observations. However, some of the Scopus items classified as conference proceedings, reviews, book chapters, notes, etc., were (later) also transformed into journal articles. Therefore, two senior researchers independently re-classified these cases manually (agreement between researchers in this classification was more than 95%). We performed a robustness check based on the dataset including these cases (Online Appendix S12 ).

Explanatory variables

We pre-specified four explanatory variables:

Cumulative dissertation

A “cumulative” doctoral dissertation is a dissertation written in a specific format. In addition to introductory and concluding chapters, it includes three or more chapters written in the format of journal articles. Writing cumulative dissertations is a recent and still relatively uncommon practice at German universities. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, only 13% of doctoral candidates in 2021 pursued a cumulative dissertation, with the remaining doctoral candidates opting for the traditional monographic dissertation format. For doctoral candidates in law, economics, and social science, the share of cumulative dissertations in 2021 was 18% (Bildung & Kultur, 2021 ). Cumulative dissertations have been suggested to address the low rates of dissertation citations observed in the past (Francis et al., 2009 ; Larivière et al., 2008 ). We accordingly hypothesize that cumulative dissertations have a higher number of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.1).

Graduate academy

Graduate academies are specialized institutions within universities that offer comprehensive support and guidance to doctoral candidates from all academic disciplines. The first graduate academies in Germany were established in 2000 and have since become an integral part of most German universities (Bundesbericht Wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs, 2017 ). In addition to offering general support and advice, graduate academies typically provide additional quality assurance measures and offer specialized training and mentorship programs for doctoral candidates. These programs are designed to enhance the academic and professional skills of doctoral candidates and to help them succeed in their respective fields.

We hypothesize that dissertations written at universities with established graduate academies have higher numbers of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.2.a).

Graduate school

The traditional format of doctoral education at German universities relied on on-the-job training under the supervision of an individual doctoral advisor. The adoption of the graduate school model in Germany originated from the establishment of the first Research Training Groups (“Graduiertenkollegs” in German), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the mid-1980s.

In Research Training Groups, a team of professors and post-doctoral researchers jointly provide guidance and supervision to a number of doctoral candidates, all working on dissertations within the group’s common thematic focus. In addition to on-the-job learning opportunities, research training groups offer specialized training programs to enhance doctoral candidates’ academic and professional skills. Research Training Groups emphasize the training of early-career researchers subsequently embarking on academic careers (DFG, 2010 ). In the 2000s, they provided the template for graduate schools funded by the German Excellence Initiative.

We classify both the Research Training Groups funded directly by the German Research Foundation and the graduate schools funded by the Excellence Initiative as graduate schools. We hypothesize that dissertations written at universities with a graduate school in the respective discipline have a higher number of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.2.b).

Excellence university

The Excellence Initiative is a large-scale funding program that was jointly established by Germany’s federal government and the individual federal Länder in 2006. Its objective was to promote the best German universities to top positions in international university rankings and increase collaboration between German universities and the non-university research sector. The Excellence Initiative encompassed three funding lines: graduate schools, clusters of excellence funding thematically focused research centers connecting universities and research institutes or businesses, as well as university-wide development strategies (“future concepts”). Success in the Excellence Initiative entailed substantial resource and reputation effects on the respective universities. In particular, winning universities in the funding line for development strategies were often considered “excellence universities” (Buenstorf & Koenig, 2020 ; Möller et al., 2016 ).

There is mixed evidence of the changes in universities that received Excellence Initiative funding. Some evidence shows a decrease in the number of citations per researcher at universities funded in the first round of the Excellence Initiative compared to universities that did not receive funding (Menter et al., 2018 ). Other evidence points out that universities funded for their development strategy attracted students with higher GPAs—the effect remained for three years after the funding was awarded—and that students perceived these universities as having higher quality (Fischer & Kampkötter, 2017 ). Based on these findings, we hypothesize that dissertations written at excellence universities have a higher number of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.3).

Control variables

We collected control variables available from the dissertations, the German National Library portal, and the university websites for each dissertation in the sample. We used the post-double-selection Lasso procedure (Belloni et al., 2014 ) to select relevant control variables from the set of available control variables. This machine learning procedure relies on a two-step method to identify control variables for inclusion: (1) fitting a lasso regression to predict the outcome variable and (2) fitting a lasso regression to predict the explanatory variables of interest. The union of the variables selected by the procedure is included in the regression. The post-double-selection Lasso procedure reduces the risk of omitted variable bias, while at the same time avoiding overfitting in the presence of many potential control variables (Belloni et al., 2014 ). It is popular in many social sciences (Kreif & DiazOrdaz, 2019 ) and in medical research (Dukes & Vansteelandt, 2020 ), but has not yet been widely adopted in the scientometric literature despite the abovementioned advantages. The full list of control variables is available in Table S1 in the Online Appendix.

We pre-specified that a set of available control variables used in the post-double-selection Lasso procedure will consist of variables with less than 20% missing values. Most variables like language, university and field were retrieved from the German National Library portal and have no missing values. Some explained and controlled variables that could only be obtained from the dissertation text have missing values as 23 dissertations could not be obtained. The analysis included these variables due to a very low missingness rate.

Empirical strategy

We use the following main regression to estimate the relationship between publication-based outcomes and the format of the dissertation (cumulative or monographic), as well as the presence of graduate academies, graduate schools, or excellence funding:

where \(Y_{ij}\) is the publication-based measure for dissertation i in university j ; \(CD_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i at university j is in a cumulative format; \(GS_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i comes from a university j with an established graduate school in economics/sociology/political science; \(GA_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i comes from a university j with an established graduate academy; \(EU_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i comes from an excellence university j ; \(Controls_{ij}\) is a vector of control variables selected through the post double-selection Lasso procedure (Belloni et al., 2014 ). We cluster at the university level. \(f\) stands for a general functional form in regression analysis. We mainly use negative binomial regression as the number of papers and citations (publication-based measures) is prone to have a skewed distribution and to be overdispersed. We also estimate the Poisson regression model following Azoulay et al. ( 2019 ) and a simple linear regression as robustness checks. We performed control variables selection based on the post-double Lasso procedure for each hypothesis tested to see the sensitivity of the results with respect to the second stage of the procedure. In addition, we estimated negative binomial regressions including (i) the full set of institutional variables collected, (ii) the full set of individual author-dissertation variables collected, and (iii) the union of them as additional robustness checks. All estimations were done with R software version 4.0.3. except we had to use STATA for the robustness check regressions with full sets of controls (to ensure model convergence with many controls).

Additional outcome variables

While we hypothesize that cumulative dissertations convert into more journal publications that receive more citations, monographic dissertations may get more citations themselves. We test this conjecture and supplement the main pre-specified analysis using the methodology developed by Donner to estimate the number of citations the dissertations received (Donner, 2021 ). We followed the algorithm he described and searched for citations to the dissertations in Google Books (using Webometric Analyst) and Scopus and combined the results (Table S4 in the Online Appendix).

Specifically, we used a snapshot of the Scopus data from April 2022. In the first step, we restricted the cited reference data to the publication years of our dissertation sample ± 1 year. In the second step, we looked for exact matches with our dissertation sample regarding the author’s surname and initials and the dissertation publication year being around ± 1 year. Lastly, we compared the dissertation title to the Scopus cited item title and cited source title after standardizing them to the length of the shorter title. We calculated the similarity using the Optimal String Alignment (OSA) method and divided the result by the length of the standardized dissertation title, which led to outcomes between 0 and 1 (with 0 being an exact match and 1 being no match). If the outcome was between 0.00 and 0.25, we deemed the citation valid. After manually checking some dissertations at random, we observed that some authors were occasionally stored in the reference data with their full first name instead of their initials, so we also considered those cases.

Furthermore, we considered names containing German Umlaute (ä, ö, ü) by turning those into a, o, u, and ae, oe, ue. As we focus on the dissertations, we do not include the non-dissertation cited source titles containing words like “Journal”, and “Conference”. Following Donner’s ( 2021 ) approach, we applied the same approach to find indexed Scopus source publications matching with our dissertation sample. Lastly, to make sure that we do not have false-positive matches, we sampled 100 citations from the 2376 citations found and manually checked in the actual publications if the references list contains matched dissertations. We did not find any mismatch.

After obtaining the dissertation citations from Google Books and Scopus, we searched for the overlap between both sources. We found 18 citations present in both citations retrieved from the Google Books database and the Scopus database and removed them from the Google Books citations. We then combined the citations from both sources as described in (Donner, 2021 ).

We provided the analysis on combined Scopus and Google Books citations in line with the pre-specified empirical strategy above, being interested in whether monographic dissertations receive more citations. Finally, we manually collected Google Scholar citations, which have been used before to estimate the scholarly impact of dissertations (Kousha & Thelwall, 2020 ), and applied the above empirical strategy to assess if the results also hold for Google Scholar citations.

Our data shows that 26% of the dissertations in economics, 11% in sociology, and 7% in political sciences end up with at least one publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Additionally, the average number of papers based on the dissertations is 0.52 for economics, 0.18 for sociology, and 0.1 for political science. The corresponding citation counts of papers resulting from these dissertations are 14.63, 8.74, and 1.28, respectively (Table  1 ). We also observe that variance exceeds the mean on both primary outcomes—overdispersion for the number of papers and citations from these papers—suggesting that the negative binomial is the preferred specification.

Interestingly, we observe a considerable increase in the number of publications for dissertations in economics during the years 2012–2014, as shown in Fig.  1 .

Share of cumulative dissertations and average number of publications based on the dissertations per field over time

Results based on tests of the pre-specified hypotheses

Results based on tests of the pre-specified hypotheses with and without control variables selected by the double-lasso selection algorithm (Belloni et al., 2014 ) can be found in Table  2 . We find that cumulative dissertations are associated with a significantly higher number of journal articles than monographic dissertations ( p value < 0.00001). Furthermore, the total citation count of papers based on cumulative dissertations is also significantly higher than for monographic dissertations ( p value = 0.06).

On average, cumulative dissertations turn into three times as many publications as monographic dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{CD} = 1.13;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 3.1\) ), even if we account for a large set of controls algorithmically selected by double lasso. Moreover, the average total citation count of the papers from the cumulative dissertations is more than three times as high as for monographic dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{CD} = 1.11;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 3.03\) ). In addition, we observed a notable increase in the share of cumulative dissertations in economics during the second period, followed by a higher number of publications, as shown in Fig.  1 .

Our analysis indicates that dissertations from universities with established graduate academies are initially associated with a higher number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. This association becomes insignificant with the inclusion of algorithmically selected control variables and we do not observe any significant difference in citation counts with or without control variables. We also investigated whether the presence of graduate schools in the respective discipline or recognition as an excellence university was related to the publication-based outcomes. However, we did not find statistically significant difference at any conventional level of significance in the number of publications or citation counts between dissertations from universities with or without graduate schools and universities with or without excellence status.

Out of all journal publications for which the year of publication is known, 62.2% were published in the years after the dissertation defense, and 37.8% were published in or before the year of the defense. We re-ran Model 2 from Table  1 separately for publications from the years before and after the defense (Table S2 in the Online Appendix). The significantly positive relationship between cumulative dissertations and the number of publications holds for publications both before and after the defense.

One might expect that, while cumulative dissertations are turned into more journal publications that receive more citations, monographic dissertations receive more citations themselves. We scrutinize this conjecture using the same empirical strategy as before on the following two outcome variables: (a) dissertation citations in Google Books and Scopus constructed following (Donner, 2021 ) and (b) Google Scholar citations.

We find a significantly negative relationship between cumulative dissertations and the number of dissertation citations. On average, a cumulative dissertation receives 36% fewer citations in Google Books and Scopus (Table  3 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{CD} = - 0.45;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 0.64\) ). In other words, monographic dissertations receive only 1.5 times more citations in Google Books and Scopus than cumulative ones. We also find a significantly negative relationship between cumulative dissertations and Google Scholar citations. The average number of Google Scholar citations is 63% lower for cumulative dissertations than for monographic dissertations (Table  3 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{CD} = - 0.99;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 0.37\) ), which implies less than a threefold increase in Google Scholar citations for monographic dissertations compared to cumulative ones. Finally, we do not see a stable association between dissertations from excellence universities and the number of dissertation citations.

We assess our results using Poisson and linear regressions as robustness checks. All results hold with these alternative specifications, both for primary outcomes (Tables S4 and S5 in the Online Appendix) and dissertation citations (Tables S6 and S7 in the Online Appendix).

In addition to estimating the regressions with covariates selected by the post-double Lasso selection procedure, we also estimate regressions with all institutional (Kifor et al., 2023 ; Rojko et al., 2020 ) and/or individual author-dissertation factors (Larivière, 2012 ; Mayir et al., 2017 ; Maynard et al., 2014 ; Paglis et al., 2006 ) as robustness checks (Tables S8 , S9 , S10 and S11 in the Online Appendix, columns 1–3). The results remain robust to the inclusion of these control variables. They are also robust to the inclusion of covariates selected at the second stage of the post-double Lasso algorithm for each pre-specified explanatory variable, except for the association between graduate academy and the number of papers (Tables S8 , S9 , S10 and S11 in the Online Appendix, columns 4–7). Thus, we consider the association between the number of papers and the presence of a graduate academy non-robust.

In summary, our findings suggest that cumulative dissertations are turned into more publications in peer-reviewed journals and receive more citations to these peer-reviewed publications. In contrast, monographic dissertations receive more citations as separate works.

Explorative results

We also exploratively examine the variables selected as control variables by the double-lasso procedure. Of the dissertations in our sample, 33.4% were written in English, with the rest being written in German (except for four dissertations in French, two in Italian, and two in Spanish). With 45.1%, the share of dissertations in English is highest in economics, while in sociology and political science, the shares were 18% and 16.6%, respectively.

Our findings indicate that dissertations written in English have significantly higher publication-based outcomes. On average, English dissertations turn into almost twice as many published papers as other dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{English} = 0.94;e^{{\beta_{English} }} = 2.56\) ). In addition, the average citation count for papers based on English dissertations is more than three times as high as that for dissertations in German and other languages (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{English} = 1.07;e^{{\beta_{English} }} = 2.92\) ). These results are consistent with other research comparing publication and citation levels of dissertations written in English versus the local language (Nieminen et al., 2007 ; Donner, 2021 ).

Empirical dissertations comprise 34.6% of our sample, with economics having the highest share at 48%, followed by sociology at 21.2%, and political science at 6.4%. We defined a dissertation as empirical if it contained hypothesis-testing statistical procedures, including moments of statistical distribution (mean, median, variance, etc.), regression coefficients, standard errors, p values, t values, or z values. Empirical dissertations had 50% more publications than other dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{Empirical} = 0.45;e^{{\beta_{Empirical} }} = 1.57\) ) and more than three times as many citations to these papers (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{Empirical} = 1.21;e^{{\beta_{Empirical} }} = 3.35\) ). Furthermore, our analysis shows an upward trend in the share of dissertations written in English and in the share of empirical dissertations (see Fig.  2 ).

Share of dissertations in English and share of empirical dissertations per field over time

The algorithm also selected control variables denoting online dissertations, the number of pages, and the field of the dissertation as control variables, but these variables are not consistently associated with significantly different publication-based outcomes in our analysis. Finally, we inspected control variables that were not selected by the algorithm but that we included in additional robustness estimations (with the full set of institutional variables collected, the full set of individual author-dissertation variables collected, and the union of them). We do not observe any associations between these additional control variables and publication-based outcomes that are robust across model specifications. Notably, we do not observe gender differences in publication-based outcomes of dissertations across model specifications.

In this study, we investigated how publication-based outcomes of social science dissertations in Germany are associated with dissertation characteristics and institutional factors. Consistent with our hypothesis specified in a pre-analysis plan, we observe that cumulative dissertations lead to a higher number of publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as a higher number of citations from these publications. We also find that the share of cumulative dissertations increased over time in economics. Our analysis does not suggest that the citation advantage enjoyed by publications based on cumulative dissertations is offset by a lower number of citations to the dissertations themselves. While we found that monographic dissertations receive more citations than cumulative ones, their implied advantage in direct citations is smaller than their disadvantage in publication-based citations. We thus conclude from our analysis that results of social science dissertation research documented in cumulative dissertations tend to be disseminated more extensively than results documented in monographic dissertations.

As dissertations are not randomly allocated into cumulative and monographic formats, the patterns we observe in our data cannot be interpreted as causal effects. Indeed, our analysis suggests that publication and citation outcomes for dissertations are affected by dissertation characteristics and institutional factors and that controlling for these variables helps explain some of the differences in outcomes. Regarding institutional factors, we do not see any robust significant difference in publication-based outcomes of dissertations from universities with or without graduate academies, graduate schools in the respective discipline and recognition as “excellence universities”.

Going beyond the hypothesized associations that were specified in our pre-analysis plan, we explored how differences in control variables selected by the double-lasso procedure (Belloni et al., 2014 ) are related to publication and citation outcomes. These exploratory analyses indicate, first, that dissertations written in English are associated with significantly more publications in peer-reviewed journals and higher citation counts compared to those written in German or other languages. Second, empirical dissertations in our sample also had higher publication-based outcomes compared to other types of dissertations. Overall, shares of dissertations in English and empirical dissertations seem to be increasing over time. In a nutshell, it appears that dissertations written in English or empirical dissertations increase in number and tend to particularly contribute to the dissemination of knowledge produced by doctoral students in German universities.

Various factors, however, like author characteristics and institutional conditions can affect the choice of dissertation language and topic. Moreover, we did not hypothesize in the pre-analysis plan if dissertations written in English or empirical dissertations are associated with higher publication-based outcomes, barely allowing us to post-hoc speculate about the cause of the higher publication-based outcomes of the dissertations with these characteristics. Thus, we interpret these findings as indicative and encourage further empirical work to probe into their robustness in other settings.

It is hard to distinguish the causal effect of the dissertation features and institutional factors on the publication-based outcomes as this study is based on observational data. More research can be done in the future to identify causal effects and extrapolate the results for other countries. Additionally, automatic, or alternative formal matching algorithms between publications and dissertations could be used to cover more research fields, languages or countries (e.g. Donner, 2022 ; Echeverria et al., 2015 ; Heinisch & Buenstorf, 2018 ). However, based on the results of the study, we can conclude that a policy that allows doctoral students to write cumulative dissertations permits them to strengthen their research output counted as papers published or cited.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank for excellent research assistance Denise Bornewasser, Maria Paz Catalan Palma, Besmir Daci, Lea Hartwig, Alana Hindiyeh, Irila Kola, Christina Lerke, James Macumber, Dariia Melnyk, Veronica Vela, Jana Zaremba. Special thanks to Johannes Koenig for finding efficient ways to work with Scopus data and to Maria Mavlikeeva.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. All authors gratefully acknowledge funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant number 16PH20011 (PI: GB) and via the German Competence Network for Bibliometrics under Grant number 16WIK2101A. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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