thesis writing publication

• Privacy Policy

Home » Thesis – Structure, Example and Writing Guide

Thesis – Structure, Example and Writing Guide

Table of contents.

Definition:

Thesis is a scholarly document that presents a student’s original research and findings on a particular topic or question. It is usually written as a requirement for a graduate degree program and is intended to demonstrate the student’s mastery of the subject matter and their ability to conduct independent research.

History of Thesis

The concept of a thesis can be traced back to ancient Greece, where it was used as a way for students to demonstrate their knowledge of a particular subject. However, the modern form of the thesis as a scholarly document used to earn a degree is a relatively recent development.

The origin of the modern thesis can be traced back to medieval universities in Europe. During this time, students were required to present a “disputation” in which they would defend a particular thesis in front of their peers and faculty members. These disputations served as a way to demonstrate the student’s mastery of the subject matter and were often the final requirement for earning a degree.

In the 17th century, the concept of the thesis was formalized further with the creation of the modern research university. Students were now required to complete a research project and present their findings in a written document, which would serve as the basis for their degree.

The modern thesis as we know it today has evolved over time, with different disciplines and institutions adopting their own standards and formats. However, the basic elements of a thesis – original research, a clear research question, a thorough review of the literature, and a well-argued conclusion – remain the same.

Structure of Thesis

The structure of a thesis may vary slightly depending on the specific requirements of the institution, department, or field of study, but generally, it follows a specific format.

Here’s a breakdown of the structure of a thesis:

This is the first page of the thesis that includes the title of the thesis, the name of the author, the name of the institution, the department, the date, and any other relevant information required by the institution.

This is a brief summary of the thesis that provides an overview of the research question, methodology, findings, and conclusions.

This page provides a list of all the chapters and sections in the thesis and their page numbers.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the research question, the context of the research, and the purpose of the study. The introduction should also outline the methodology and the scope of the research.

Literature Review

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the relevant literature on the research topic. It should demonstrate the gap in the existing knowledge and justify the need for the research.

Methodology

This chapter provides a detailed description of the research methods used to gather and analyze data. It should explain the research design, the sampling method, data collection techniques, and data analysis procedures.

This chapter presents the findings of the research. It should include tables, graphs, and charts to illustrate the results.

This chapter interprets the results and relates them to the research question. It should explain the significance of the findings and their implications for the research topic.

This chapter summarizes the key findings and the main conclusions of the research. It should also provide recommendations for future research.

This section provides a list of all the sources cited in the thesis. The citation style may vary depending on the requirements of the institution or the field of study.

This section includes any additional material that supports the research, such as raw data, survey questionnaires, or other relevant documents.

How to write Thesis

Here are some steps to help you write a thesis:

• Choose a Topic: The first step in writing a thesis is to choose a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. You should also consider the scope of the topic and the availability of resources for research.
• Develop a Research Question: Once you have chosen a topic, you need to develop a research question that you will answer in your thesis. The research question should be specific, clear, and feasible.
• Conduct a Literature Review: Before you start your research, you need to conduct a literature review to identify the existing knowledge and gaps in the field. This will help you refine your research question and develop a research methodology.
• Develop a Research Methodology: Once you have refined your research question, you need to develop a research methodology that includes the research design, data collection methods, and data analysis procedures.
• Collect and Analyze Data: After developing your research methodology, you need to collect and analyze data. This may involve conducting surveys, interviews, experiments, or analyzing existing data.
• Write the Thesis: Once you have analyzed the data, you need to write the thesis. The thesis should follow a specific structure that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, and references.
• Edit and Proofread: After completing the thesis, you need to edit and proofread it carefully. You should also have someone else review it to ensure that it is clear, concise, and free of errors.
• Submit the Thesis: Finally, you need to submit the thesis to your academic advisor or committee for review and evaluation.

Example of Thesis

Example of Thesis template for Students:

Title of Thesis

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

Chapter 4: Results

Chapter 5: Discussion

Chapter 6: Conclusion

References:

Appendices:

Note: That’s just a basic template, but it should give you an idea of the structure and content that a typical thesis might include. Be sure to consult with your department or supervisor for any specific formatting requirements they may have. Good luck with your thesis!

Application of Thesis

Thesis is an important academic document that serves several purposes. Here are some of the applications of thesis:

• Academic Requirement: A thesis is a requirement for many academic programs, especially at the graduate level. It is an essential component of the evaluation process and demonstrates the student’s ability to conduct original research and contribute to the knowledge in their field.
• Career Advancement: A thesis can also help in career advancement. Employers often value candidates who have completed a thesis as it demonstrates their research skills, critical thinking abilities, and their dedication to their field of study.
• Publication : A thesis can serve as a basis for future publications in academic journals, books, or conference proceedings. It provides the researcher with an opportunity to present their research to a wider audience and contribute to the body of knowledge in their field.
• Personal Development: Writing a thesis is a challenging task that requires time, dedication, and perseverance. It provides the student with an opportunity to develop critical thinking, research, and writing skills that are essential for their personal and professional development.
• Impact on Society: The findings of a thesis can have an impact on society by addressing important issues, providing insights into complex problems, and contributing to the development of policies and practices.

Purpose of Thesis

The purpose of a thesis is to present original research findings in a clear and organized manner. It is a formal document that demonstrates a student’s ability to conduct independent research and contribute to the knowledge in their field of study. The primary purposes of a thesis are:

• To Contribute to Knowledge: The main purpose of a thesis is to contribute to the knowledge in a particular field of study. By conducting original research and presenting their findings, the student adds new insights and perspectives to the existing body of knowledge.
• To Demonstrate Research Skills: A thesis is an opportunity for the student to demonstrate their research skills. This includes the ability to formulate a research question, design a research methodology, collect and analyze data, and draw conclusions based on their findings.
• To Develop Critical Thinking: Writing a thesis requires critical thinking and analysis. The student must evaluate existing literature and identify gaps in the field, as well as develop and defend their own ideas.
• To Provide Evidence of Competence : A thesis provides evidence of the student’s competence in their field of study. It demonstrates their ability to apply theoretical concepts to real-world problems, and their ability to communicate their ideas effectively.
• To Facilitate Career Advancement : Completing a thesis can help the student advance their career by demonstrating their research skills and dedication to their field of study. It can also provide a basis for future publications, presentations, or research projects.

When to Write Thesis

The timing for writing a thesis depends on the specific requirements of the academic program or institution. In most cases, the opportunity to write a thesis is typically offered at the graduate level, but there may be exceptions.

Generally, students should plan to write their thesis during the final year of their graduate program. This allows sufficient time for conducting research, analyzing data, and writing the thesis. It is important to start planning the thesis early and to identify a research topic and research advisor as soon as possible.

In some cases, students may be able to write a thesis as part of an undergraduate program or as an independent research project outside of an academic program. In such cases, it is important to consult with faculty advisors or mentors to ensure that the research is appropriately designed and executed.

It is important to note that the process of writing a thesis can be time-consuming and requires a significant amount of effort and dedication. It is important to plan accordingly and to allocate sufficient time for conducting research, analyzing data, and writing the thesis.

Characteristics of Thesis

The characteristics of a thesis vary depending on the specific academic program or institution. However, some general characteristics of a thesis include:

• Originality : A thesis should present original research findings or insights. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to conduct independent research and contribute to the knowledge in their field of study.
• Clarity : A thesis should be clear and concise. It should present the research question, methodology, findings, and conclusions in a logical and organized manner. It should also be well-written, with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Research-Based: A thesis should be based on rigorous research, which involves collecting and analyzing data from various sources. The research should be well-designed, with appropriate research methods and techniques.
• Evidence-Based : A thesis should be based on evidence, which means that all claims made in the thesis should be supported by data or literature. The evidence should be properly cited using appropriate citation styles.
• Critical Thinking: A thesis should demonstrate the student’s ability to critically analyze and evaluate information. It should present the student’s own ideas and arguments, and engage with existing literature in the field.
• Academic Style : A thesis should adhere to the conventions of academic writing. It should be well-structured, with clear headings and subheadings, and should use appropriate academic language.

Advantages of Thesis

There are several advantages to writing a thesis, including:

• Development of Research Skills: Writing a thesis requires extensive research and analytical skills. It helps to develop the student’s research skills, including the ability to formulate research questions, design and execute research methodologies, collect and analyze data, and draw conclusions based on their findings.
• Contribution to Knowledge: Writing a thesis provides an opportunity for the student to contribute to the knowledge in their field of study. By conducting original research, they can add new insights and perspectives to the existing body of knowledge.
• Preparation for Future Research: Completing a thesis prepares the student for future research projects. It provides them with the necessary skills to design and execute research methodologies, analyze data, and draw conclusions based on their findings.
• Career Advancement: Writing a thesis can help to advance the student’s career. It demonstrates their research skills and dedication to their field of study, and provides a basis for future publications, presentations, or research projects.
• Personal Growth: Completing a thesis can be a challenging and rewarding experience. It requires dedication, hard work, and perseverance. It can help the student to develop self-confidence, independence, and a sense of accomplishment.

Limitations of Thesis

There are also some limitations to writing a thesis, including:

• Time and Resources: Writing a thesis requires a significant amount of time and resources. It can be a time-consuming and expensive process, as it may involve conducting original research, analyzing data, and producing a lengthy document.
• Narrow Focus: A thesis is typically focused on a specific research question or topic, which may limit the student’s exposure to other areas within their field of study.
• Limited Audience: A thesis is usually only read by a small number of people, such as the student’s thesis advisor and committee members. This limits the potential impact of the research findings.
• Lack of Real-World Application : Some thesis topics may be highly theoretical or academic in nature, which may limit their practical application in the real world.
• Pressure and Stress : Writing a thesis can be a stressful and pressure-filled experience, as it may involve meeting strict deadlines, conducting original research, and producing a high-quality document.
• Potential for Isolation: Writing a thesis can be a solitary experience, as the student may spend a significant amount of time working independently on their research and writing.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Data Collection – Methods Types and Examples

Delimitations in Research – Types, Examples and...

Research Process – Steps, Examples and Tips

Research Design – Types, Methods and Examples

Institutional Review Board – Application Sample...

Evaluating Research – Process, Examples and...

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• 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.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

·   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.

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

3-minute read

How to Insert a Text Box in a Google Doc

Google Docs is a powerful collaborative tool, and mastering its features can significantly enhance your...

2-minute read

How to Cite the CDC in APA

If you’re writing about health issues, you might need to reference the Centers for Disease...

5-minute read

Six Product Description Generator Tools for Your Product Copy

Introduction If you’re involved with ecommerce, you’re likely familiar with the often painstaking process of...

What Is a Content Editor?

Are you interested in learning more about the role of a content editor and the...

4-minute read

The Benefits of Using an Online Proofreading Service

Proofreading is important to ensure your writing is clear and concise for your readers. Whether...

6 Online AI Presentation Maker Tools

Creating presentations can be time-consuming and frustrating. Trying to construct a visually appealing and informative...

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

• Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
• Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
• Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
• Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
• Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
• picture_as_pdf Thesis

• Academic Skills
• Graduate research services

Incorporating publications in your thesis

Publications and your doctorate thesis.

This resource provides a brief introduction to incorporating publications in your thesis. It includes activities to help you apply tips and reflect on your learning, and should take you 15-20 minutes to read and complete. Check out the further resources at the bottom of each section and references on the last page for more information on this topic.

Including papers that you have written for publication as part of your thesis shows your achievements and impact as a researcher.

This page looks at some key considerations for including publications in your thesis and connecting them into a unified narrative.

Approaching a thesis that includes publication

There are several approaches to incorporating publications into your thesis. You might:

• include individual papers that you have already prepared, or start with a broad thesis plan that sets out the individual papers you wish to submit for publication as you work on your research project.
• finalise your publications before or after you’ve written the related thesis chapters.
• be modifying your publications to fit the thesis or adapting your thesis into publications.

No matter what your circumstances, the university offers a wide range of options for putting together a graduate research thesis. Keep in mind:

• The same criteria, including the required volume of work, apply to theses with or without publication, and theses with small or large publication proportions.
• Focus on the thesis as a whole and the integration of any publication to strengthen the thesis, rather than the number or status of your publications.
• Your thesis, first and foremost, should provide a clear and cohesive narrative of your research to your readers.

Challenges of a thesis that includes publication

Although any form of thesis will have its challenges, writing a thesis that includes publication may create extra demands on you.

For example, choosing to get your work published early in your candidature might mean you feel the pressure to write like an expert, even when you don’t yet feel like one.

Also, your papers might speak to different audiences with different purposes at different stages of your research, and follow different journal conventions. This means that, when it comes time to incorporate your publications into a longer piece of work, you will need to align them and make them fit the purpose and audience of your thesis.

To help you start tackling these challenges, it’s useful to know what qualities a doctorate thesis needs to demonstrate and think about how to curate your publications to show these.

Showing doctorate qualities using your publications

High standards apply to the examination of a doctorate thesis. Nygaard and Solli (2021) synthesise these standards into five qualities:

Your thesis writing needs to be of a publishable standard. While this can be evaluated in terms of potential publishability, including published work or papers intended for publication in your thesis can provide clear evidence of this.

• How many publications do you intend to include in your thesis? What are they?
• What are the publication statuses of these papers (intended/under review/published)?
• What journals are your works published in/intended for? Are they peer-reviewed?

While your publications need to speak to the scholarly communities of the journals you submit them to, which may or may not fit neatly in a single discipline, your thesis will need to show that it belongs in the discipline it sits within. Show awareness of the terminology, conventions, key conversations or debates of your field, even when you’re deviating from these.

If your thesis is interdisciplinary, state early in your writing what disciplines it brings together and why; you will also need to deal with the terminology and conventions of these disciplines for readers who may not be familiar with them.

• What discipline(s) does your thesis belong in?
• How do your publications relate to this discipline?
• What disciplinary terminology, conventions, conversations or debates are you drawing on in your thesis?

Your thesis needs to show you’re making a new and significant contribution to your field.

This could be providing a new understanding of or solution to an existing problem, building a new model, framework or methodology for tackling an old issue, or continuing or investigating someone else’s work. Originality involves finding your own angle or position on your research problem, not just reporting new data. This angle or position should be embedded in your whole thesis, including your publications.

• What contribution will your thesis make to your field?
• In what ways will this contribution be new and significant?
• What are the contributions of your publications? How do they align with the overall contribution of the thesis?

While you can draw extensively on your discipline, your examiners will be looking for clear evidence of your ability to think independently and express your own ideas confidently as a researcher and writer.

If your research is part of a bigger team project, or if you intend to include co-authored papers in your thesis, indicate clearly which part of the work you undertook, how your work shaped the bigger project and what you learned from working with others.

• Is your research part of a bigger project involving a team of researchers?
• Are you including co-authored papers in your thesis? If so, do they meet the University’s authorship requirements for inclusion ?
• If you answered ‘yes’ to either of the above questions, what is your part of the work? How has it shaped the bigger work? What have you learned from the collaboration?

Your thesis, whether with or without publication, needs to form a cohesive text from beginning to end. All its elements need to align effectively with one another to make a unified overarching argument.

For example, your conclusion should address at a high level the research problem described in the introduction, whereas the middle chapters should pace the answer to the research question or hypothesis in a way that draws on the foregoing chapters and builds up to the more conceptual discussion at the end.

• Can you identify an overarching argument in your thesis? If so, what is it?
• What are the key messages of your thesis chapters, including publications?
• How do these messages relate to one another and the overarching argument?

For information on how to write a paper for publication and on policy questions about formal requirements for a thesis that includes publications, click on ‘Further resources’.

Writing a paper for publication

Graduate Research Training Policy

Graduate Research Hub: Incorporating publications

Use the side menu to go the next section: Planning your thesis including publications , where we explore thesis and publication mapping tools.

Planning your thesis including publications

Aim to plan your publications as part of initial planning of the whole thesis. This reduces duplication or gaps between the papers, and involves less work than retrofitting publications to your thesis later on. Nevertheless, it’s never too late to recalibrate your plan with emerging publications in mind.

Use planning tools

Planning tools such as a thesis map and publication map  can be used both prospectively and retrospectively. It’s a good idea to go through this process in the thesis planning phase, and review the results regularly throughout your candidature.

This video shows you how to use a thesis mapping template and publication mapping tool to plan your thesis and publications. You can download the  thesis mapping template (DOCX 23.0 KB) and publication mapping template  (DOCX 19.9 KB) that are shown in the video.

Consider how publications relate to the thesis

It's rare to have a linear, one-to-one relationship whereby each publication answers one research question completely. An example of this might be that each publication reports one experiment in a series of experiments that correspond neatly to the list of aims and hypotheses in a thesis. Even if your thesis fits this category, you still need to demonstrate how these aims and hypotheses relate together as part of a whole narrative.

More often, though, your publications will address the overarching research question in a complementary manner, for example by using different methods or focusing on different aspects of the problem. Ask:

• How do the papers complement one another and provide a nuanced answer to the research question?
• If they are in conflict, how could you resolve it or justify a more complex answer?

Sequence publications logically

Incorporate publications in an order that progresses your argument, not necessarily in the order of the writing or publication dates. It is usual to have one publication as one chapter in the thesis.

However, if it makes more sense to combine two shorter papers into one chapter, or to omit part of a publication from a chapter, explain and justify your choice clearly in the introduction to the chapter.

Learn from example theses

As part of your planning, you may find it valuable to look through a few examples of theses that include publications. Use the prompts below to help you reflect on how you could learn from examples.

1. Explore examples of thesis and chapter formats when including publications . Which thesis and chapter format resonates the most with your thesis plan?

2. Have a look at a few theses that include publications in your field or as close to your field as you can find. You can use the example theses on the Graduate Research Hub or find your own examples on Minerva . Ask:

• How many papers for publication are included as part of the thesis?
• What kind of papers are included? Empirical, theoretical, methodological or review?
• What structure does the thesis have? Does it follow an IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) structure, a variation of this or a different structure? Note down its key parts.
• How would you like your thesis to be structured?

Compare you answers to the above questions to your thesis plan or map. Would you like to change anything about it?

Examples of thesis and chapter formats when including publications

Examples of theses with publications

Minerva Access: University of Melbourne’s institutional repository

Publishing from the PhD – make a publication plan

Co-authoring a PhD by publication: Assigning percentages to who did what

Use the side menu to go the next section: Relating publications to thesis sections , where we look at the role of different thesis sections in integrating publications.

Relating publications to thesis sections

Sections of your writing that are exclusive to your thesis, which do not appear in your publications, can help integrate your publications by guiding readers to see links between your thesis and those publications. These links can demonstrate a strong sense of control over the design of your thesis and show examiners that you can connect the parts to the whole seamlessly.

The role of thesis sections in integrating your publications

Gives you the chance to frame, explicitly, the relationship between your publications and the thesis (the examples given below this presentation will indicate some ways to do this).

• Relates directly to your overarching research question
• Is more comprehensive and contains more detail than the background sections of publications
• Can include a paper for publication, which may need modifying so that it addresses your thesis question with an appropriate breadth and depth.

If the methods in your included publications don’t demonstrate the overarching approach of the thesis, or if they have evolved since, consider:

• Writing an overview of the methodology and its development in the introduction or a separate methodology chapter.
• Discussing how the methods reported in the publications link to the overarching methodology in the introduction or reflection sections of the chapters that contain the publications.

A chapter that contains publication typically begins with an added introductory section. In this section, you can:

• List the paper(s) included in the chapter.
• Briefly overview its specific aims or hypotheses in the context of the whole thesis.
• State any changes you’ve made to the original paper (additions, deletions and other modifications) and briefly give reasons for these changes.

If a publication forms sufficient material for a chapter, a basic chapter structure including an introductory section followed by the paper is a great choice. However, if the publication forms only part of the chapter, consider a more complex chapter structure, such as the following:

• Introduction – including specific aims and hypotheses
• Methods not included in the paper
• Results not included in the paper
• Discussion – extension of the paper’s discussion, further method development

While chapters that include publications usually highlight their specific contributions, the overall thesis discussion or conclusion should state the combined significance of all the findings at a more conceptual level.

You can synthesise findings from your papers using visualisation, such as in this example:

Visualising integration of findings across publications using bullet points and arrows (Bjerke, 2017, cited in Nygaard & Solli, 2021, p. 145)

Explore an example

This example raises your awareness of the different roles the thesis introduction plays in connecting publications to the thesis. In the presentation below, you will read three introduction excerpts from a history thesis (adapted from Mody, 2018, pp. 1–19). Answer the question on each slide, then turn the card to read the analysis. Some key language has been bolded to aid you.

*If content below does not display, please refresh your browser window

Use the side menu to go the next section: Establishing a cohesive narrative , where we look at how to approach the narrative for a thesis that includes publications.

Establishing a cohesive narrative

The narrative of a thesis refers to the broad enquiry that develops through and connects the more data-focused parts of the thesis, which can include publications.

The narrative typically includes the thesis introduction and thesis discussion/conclusion, as well as the text that introduces and reflects on the data chapters.

Establishing an effective narrative can help you:

• Transition between ideas smoothly
• Create a unified whole for your thesis
• Emphasise aspects of a publication to both differentiate and connect it to the thesis
• Resolve gaps, repetitions or tensions between publications or other thesis components
• Address issues that publications don’t accommodate but which are key to thesis examination, such as a detailed exploration of ethical challenges or your journey of learning and development as a researcher
• Develop new publication ideas, which may emerge from a comprehensive view of the whole thesis.

Engaging in crafting the narrative throughout your candidature can strengthen both your work and your researcher identity.

Overarching argument

Use the table of contents to place your publications in the thesis and gauge whether you can see a clear argument across all thesis components. The following example demonstrates how publications sit alongside chapters written for the thesis as equal components making up a whole.

While acknowledgement of a publication should be made, it’s important to integrate it into the thesis and avoid over-emphasising the role of publications to the extent that they may undermine any non-publication material.

Examine example narratives

Work through the following examples of thesis narratives and complete the associated activities to find out more about the features of an effective narrative. Some critical language has been bolded to help with your observations.

Reflect on the role of your publications, whether completed or intended, throughout the planning and writing of your thesis. This helps you to approach both your publications and your thesis proactively, and build strong research outputs and skills as a researcher-writer.

For more information and support in your writing, Explore: Academic Skills Graduate Research services

The “exegesis” in PhD by publication

Arundel, J. (2015). The spatio-temporal distribution of honey bees and floral resources in Australia [PhD thesis, University of Melbourne]. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/59612

Bibb, J. (2016). Musical recovery: The role of group singing in regaining healthy relationships with music to promote mental health recovery [PhD thesis, University of Melbourne]. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/124271

Mody, F. (2018). Doctors down under: European medical migrants in Victoria (Australia), 1930-60 [PhD thesis, University of Melbourne]. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/221550

Nygaard, L., & Solli, K. (2021). Strategies for writing a thesis by publication in the social sciences and humanities . Routledge.

Writing & Stylistics Guides

• General Writing & Stylistics Guides
• Arts & Humanities
• Creative Writing & Journalism
• Social Sciences
• Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering
• Writing in Business

Literature Reviews

Writing your thesis.

• Publishing Books & Articles
• MLA Stylistics
• Chicago Stylistics
• APA Stylistics
• Harvard Stylistics

Need Help? Ask a Librarian!

You can always  e-mail your librarian for help with your questions, book an online consultation  with a research specialist, or chat with us in real-time!

• << Previous: Writing in Business
• Next: Publishing Books & Articles >>
• Last Updated: Apr 15, 2024 2:39 AM
• URL: https://guides.nyu.edu/WritingGuides

• Technical Support
• Find My Rep

You are here

How to Write a Master's Thesis

• Yvonne N. Bui - San Francisco State University, USA
• Description

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

For assistance with your order: Please email us at [email protected] or connect with your SAGE representative.

SAGE 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 www.sagepub.com

“Yvonne Bui’s How to Write a Master’s Thesis should be mandatory for all thesis track master’s students.  It steers students away from the shortcuts students may be tempted to use that would be costly in the long run. The step by step intentional approach is what I like best about this book.”

“This is the best textbook about writing an M.A. thesis available in the market.” 

“This is the type of textbook that students keep and refer to after the class.”

Excellent book. Thorough, yet concise, information for students writing their Master's Thesis who may not have had a strong background in research.

Clear, Concise, easy for students to access and understand. Contains all the elements for a successful thesis.

I loved the ease of this book. It was clear without extra nonsense that would just confuse the students.

Clear, concise, easily accessible. Students find it of great value.

NEW TO THIS EDITION:             

• Concrete instruction and guides for conceptualizing the literature review help students navigate through the most challenging topics.        
• Step-by-step instructions and more screenshots give students the guidance they need to write the foundational chapter, along with the latest online resources and general library information.          
• Additional coverage of single case designs and mixed methods help students gain a more comprehensive understanding of research methods.           
• Expanded explanation of unintentional plagiarism within the ethics chapter shows students the path to successful and professional writing.       
• Detailed information on conference presentation as a way to disseminate research , in addition to getting published, help students understand all of the tools needed to write a master’s thesis.    

KEY FEATURES:  

• An advanced chapter organizer provides an up-front checklist of what to expect in the chapter and serves as a project planner, so that students can immediately prepare and work alongside the chapter as they begin to develop their thesis.
• Full guidance on conducting successful literature reviews includes up-to-date information on electronic databases and Internet tools complete with numerous figures and captured screen shots from relevant web sites, electronic databases, and SPSS software, all integrated with the text.
• Excerpts from research articles and samples from exemplary students' master's theses relate specifically to the content of each chapter and provide the reader with a real-world context.
• Detailed explanations of the various components of the master's thesis and concrete strategies on how to conduct a literature review help students write each chapter of the master's thesis, and apply the American Psychological Association (APA) editorial style.
• A comprehensive Resources section features "Try It!" boxes which lead students through a sample problem or writing exercise based on a piece of the thesis to reinforce prior course learning and the writing objectives at hand. Reflection/discussion questions in the same section are designed to help students work through the thesis process.

Sample Materials & Chapters

1: Overview of the Master's Degree and Thesis

3: Using the Literature to Research Your Problem

For instructors

Select a purchasing option, related products.

Review of Strategies for Writing a Thesis by Publication in the Social Sciences and Humanities . By Lynn P. Nygaard and Kristin Solli (2021)

Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 178 pp., ISBN: 978-0-367-20469-3. NZ$44.99 (softcover) or $38.99 (eBook)

• Book Review
• Published: 08 April 2022
• Volume 57 , pages 611–614, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Katrina McChesney   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3991-6265 1  

300 Accesses

13 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

There is much variation in the terminology used for such theses internationally. This review uses “by publication” for consistency with the book being reviewed; however, it should be noted that many NZ universities use the PhD with publication model, which typically has a lower expectation for the publication component of the thesis (fewer publications and/or ‘publications’ may not have actually been published yet).

Frick, L. (2019). PhD by publication—Panacea or paralysis? Africa Education Review, 16 (5), 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2017.1340802

Article   Google Scholar  

Huang, Y. (2021). Doctoral writing for publication. Higher Education Research & Development, 40 (4), 753–766. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1789073

Kirkpatrick, K. J. (2019). Online doctoral students writing for scholarly publication. Computers and Composition, 52 , 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.01.012

Mason, S., & Merga, M. (2018). A current view of the thesis by publication in the humanities and social sciences. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 13 , 139–154. https://doi.org/10.28945/3983

Nygaard, L. P., & Solli, K. (2021). Strategies for writing a thesis by publication in the social sciences and humanities . Routledge.

Skov, S. (2021). PhD by publication or monograph thesis? Supervisors and candidates negotiating the purpose of the thesis when choosing between formats. In C. Badenhorst, B. Amell, & J. Burford (Eds.), Re-imagining doctoral writing (pp. 71–86). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1343.2.03

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Thomson, P., & Kamler, B. (2013). Writing for peer-reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published . Routledge.

Google Scholar  

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Waikato, Tauranga, New Zealand

Katrina McChesney

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katrina McChesney .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

McChesney, K. Review of Strategies for Writing a Thesis by Publication in the Social Sciences and Humanities . By Lynn P. Nygaard and Kristin Solli (2021). NZ J Educ Stud 57 , 611–614 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-022-00248-1

Download citation

Received : 07 March 2022

Accepted : 27 March 2022

Published : 08 April 2022

Issue Date : December 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-022-00248-1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Publication Process

How to Write a Journal Article from a Thesis

• 3 minute read
• 209.4K views

Table of Contents

You are almost done with your PhD thesis and want to convert it into a journal article. Or, you’re initiating a career as a journal writer and intend to use your thesis as a starting point for an article. Whatever your situation, turning a thesis into a journal article is a logical step and a process that eventually every researcher completes. But…how to start?

The first thing to know about converting a thesis into a journal article is how different they are:

Thesis Characteristics:

• Meets academic requirements
• Reviewed by select committee members
• Contains chapters
• Lengthy, no word limits
• Table of contents
• Lengthy research of literature
• IRB approval described in detail
• Description and copies of tools used
• All findings presented
• Verb tenses may vary

Journal Article Characteristics:

• Meets journalistic standards
• Reviewed by a panel of “blind” reviewers
• Word limits
• Manuscript format
• Succinct research of literature
• IRB described in 1 to 3 sentences
• Essential and succinct tool information
• Selected findings presented
• Verb tenses are fairly consistent

Converting your thesis to a journal article may be complex, but it’s not impossible.

A thesis is a document of academic nature, so it’s more detailed in content. A journal article, however, is shorter, highlighting key points in a more succinct format. Adapting a thesis for conversion into a journal article is a time-consuming and intricate process that can take you away from other important work. In that case, Elsevier’s Language Editing services may help you focus on important matters and provide a high-quality text for submission in no time at all.

If you are going to convert a thesis into a journal article, with or without professional help, here is a list of some of the steps you will likely have to go through:

1. Identify the best journal for your work

• Ensure that your article is within the journal’s aim and scope. How to find the right journal? Find out more .
• Check the journal’s recommended structure and reference style

2. Shorten the length of your thesis

• Treat your thesis as a separate work
• Paraphrase but do not distort meaning
• Select and repurpose parts of your thesis

3. Reformat the introduction as an abstract

• Shorten the introduction to 100-150 words, but maintain key topics to hold the reader’s attention.
• Use the introduction and discussion as basis for the abstract

4. Modify the introduction

• If your thesis has more than one research question or hypothesis, which are not all relevant for your paper, consider combining your research questions or focusing on just one for the article
• Use previously published papers (at least three) from the target journal as examples

5. Tighten the methods section

• Keep the discussion about your research approach short

6. Report main findings in the results

• Expose your main findings in the results section in concise statements

7. Discussion must be clear and concise

• Begin by providing an interpretation of your results: “What is it that we have learned from your research?”
• Situate the findings to the literature
• Discuss how your findings expand known or previous perspectives
• Briefly present ways in which future studies can build upon your work and address limitations in your study

8. Limit the number of references

• To choose the most relevant and recent
• To format them correctly
• Consider using a reference manager system (e.g. Mendeley ) to make your life easier

If you are not a proficient English speaker, the task of converting a thesis into a journal article might make it even more difficult. At Elsevier’s Language Editing services we ensure that your manuscript is written in correct scientific English before submission. Our professional proofers and editors check your manuscript in detail, taking your text as our own and with the guarantee of maximum text quality.

Language editing services by Elsevier Author Services:

• Research Process

How to Choose a Journal to Submit an Article

• Publication Recognition

How to Submit a Paper for Publication in a Journal

You may also like.

Publishing Biomedical Research: What Rules Should You Follow?

Writing an Effective Cover Letter for Manuscript Resubmission

Journal Acceptance Rates: Everything You Need to Know

Research Data Storage and Retention

How to Find and Select Reviewers for Journal Articles

How to Request the Addition of an Extra Author Before Publication

Paper Rejection: Common Reasons

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

• MyAucklandUni
• Student Services Online
• Class search
• Student email
• Change my password
• MyCDES+ (job board)
• Course outlines
• Learning essentials
• Libraries and Learning Services
• Forms, policies and guidelines
• New students
• Enrol in courses
• Campus card
• Postgraduate students
• Summer school
• AskAuckland
• Student Hubs
• Student IT Hub
• Student Health and Counselling
• Harassment, bullying, sexual assault and other violence
• Complaints and incidents
• Career Development and Employability Services (CDES)
• Ratonga Hauātanga Tauira | Student Disability Services (SDS)
• Rainbow support
• Covid-19 information for our community
• Emergency information
• Report concerns, incidents and hazards
• Health and safety topics
• Staff email
• Staff intranet
• ResearchHub
• PeopleSoft HR
• Forms register
• Careers at the University
• Education Office
• Early childhood centres
• University Calendar
• Opportunities
• Update your details
• Make a donation
• Publications
• Photo galleries
• Video and audio
• Career services
• Virtual Book Club
• Library services
• Alumni benefits
• Office contact details
• Alumni and friends on social media
• No events scheduled for today You have no more events scheduled for today
• Next event:
• Show {0} earlier events Show {0} earlier event
• Event_Time Event_Name Event_Description
• My Library Account
• Change Password
• Edit Profile
• My GPA Grade Point Average About your GPA GPA not available Why can't I see my GPA?
• My Progress
• Points Required Completed points My Progress Progress not available All done!
• Student hubs
• Health and counselling
• All support
• Health, safety and well-being

Breadcrumbs List.

• Ngā tauira | Students
• Academic information
• Postgraduate student information
• Doctoral candidates
• Thesis and examination
• You are currently on: Writing and publishing

Writing and publishing

Explore writing and publishing resources, learn about open access publishing, find out how to raise your research profile and more.

Resources and guidelines

Writing and managing your thesis Find out how to manage your time, get your thesis written, struture and organise your thesis, look at existing theses from a variety of disciplines, and learn about thesis with publication.

Thesis writing Explore what makes a good thesis, how to overcome writer’s block, how to draft and edit your thesis, and more.

Open Access Open access is making published research legally and freely available on the internet. Learn how and why to make your research available. Explore the support and funding options available to you at the University.

Discovery Profiles Raise your profile as a researcher and subject matter expert by keeping your information up-to-date in Discovery Profiles.

Researcher profiles and IDs Creating and maintaining professional online profiles can enhance your visibility, credibility, and networking opportunities. Find out how to showcase your research achievements, connect with peers, and discover potential collaborators and funding opportunities.

Third Party Editing and Proofreading of Theses and Dissertations Guidelines Find out what is acceptable when you have your theses or dissertations scrutinised by third parties, including professional editors.

Word Thesis Formatting Explore the tools needed to format a thesis or dissertation, including thesis templates, use of styles, updating tables and graphics, and more.

Literature review: Organising and writing Discover strategies for writing your literature review and synthesising the literature into your thesis.

Preparing for your examination Planning to submit your thesis within the next 6 months? Learn more about what you need to prepare for thesis submission and your final oral examination.

Publishing your research Learn about how to select a journal and the journal publishing/peer review process.

Other useful workshops:

• Pathways to Open Access @ UoA
• Raising your research profile
• Presenting Research with Academic Posters
• Presenting Research at Seminars, Events and Conferences
• Abstract Writing

Related links

• Doctoral examination process

9 Effective Tips for Publishing Thesis As a Book

While they may look alike, a thesis is not a book! The process of publishing thesis as a book is different right from its conception to completion. Created with an intent to target a specific audience, a thesis differs from a book in multiple aspects. Although your thesis topic would surely be relevant to your field of study, it perhaps, can be of interest to a wider audience. In such a case, your thesis can be turned into a book .

In this article, we will shed some light on the possible ways of publishing your thesis as a book .

Table of Contents

What is the Difference Between a Thesis and a Book?

Researchers spend years working on their thesis. A thesis focuses on the research conducted, and is thus published as journal articles . However, in some cases, it may also be published as a book for a wider readership. While both thesis and book writing require effort, time, and are equally longer versions of documents, they are different in several ways.

• A thesis always begins with a question or hypothesis. On the other hand, a book begins with a series of reflections to grab the reader’s attention. To a certain extent, it could be said that while the thesis starts with a question, the book starts with an answer.
• Another major difference between the two is their audience. The content of a thesis, as well as its format and language is aimed at the academic community. However, since the book is written with an intent to reach out to wider audience, the language and format is simpler for easy comprehension by non-academic readers as well.
• Furthermore, thesis is about documenting or reporting your research activities during doctorate; whereas, a book can be considered as a narrative medium to capture the reader’s attention toward your research and its impact on the society.

How to Turn a Thesis into a Book?

The structure of your thesis will not necessarily be similar to the structure of your book. This is primarily because the readership is different and the approach depends on both the audience as well as the purpose of your book. If the book is intended as a primary reference for a course, take the course syllabus into account to establish the topics to be covered. Perhaps your thesis already covers most of the topics, but you will have to fill in the gaps with existing literature.

Additionally, it may be so that you want your book to be a complementary reference not only for one course, but for several courses with different focuses; in this case, you must consider different interests of your audience.

The layout of most thesis involve cross-references, footnotes, and an extensive final bibliography. While publishing your thesis as a book , eliminate excessive academic jargon and reduce the bibliography to reference books for an ordinary reader.

Key Factors to Consider While Publishing Your Thesis as a Book

• Purpose of the book and the problems it intends to solve
• A proposed title
• The need for your proposed book
• Existing and potential competition
• Index of contents
• Overview of the book
• Summary of each book chapter
• Timeline for completing the book
• Brief description of the audience and the courses it would cover

With all of this in mind, here are 9 steps to successfully turn your thesis into a book .

9 Steps to Successfully Publish Your Thesis as a Book!

1. Establish Your Target Audience

Based on the topic of your thesis, determine the areas that may potentially rise interest in your book’s audience. Once you establish your target audience, figure out the nature of book they would like to read.

2. Determine the Objective of Your Book

Reflect on the scope of your book and the impact it would have on your target audience. Perhaps it can be used as a textbook or supplementary for one or more courses. Visualize what the reach of your book may be; if it is a book with an identified local market, an interest that arose in your educational institution, which can be traced to other similar institutions, or if it can have a national or even international reach.

3. Identify Your Competition

Find out which books are already on the market, what topics they cover, what problems do they solve, etc. Furthermore, ask yourself what would be the advantage of your book over those that already exist.

4. Define the Structure of Your Book

If the book is written as part of a curriculum, use that program to define its structure. If it covers several programs, make a list of topics to focus on individually and sequence them in an order based on educational criteria or interest for the potential reader.

5. Identify Potential Publishers

Search for publishers in your country or on the web and the kind of books they publish to see if there is a growing interest in the book you are planning to develop. Furthermore, you can also look at self-publishing or publishing-on-demand options if you already have a captive audience interested in your work.

6. Plan a Schedule

Based on the structure of your book, schedule your progress and create a work plan. Consider that many topics are already written in your thesis, you will only have to rewrite them and not have to do the research from scratch. Plan your day in such a way that you get enough time to fill in technical or generic gaps if they exist.

7. Follow a Writing Style

The writing style depends on the type of book and your target audience. While academic writing style is preferred in thesis writing, books can be written in simpler ways for easy comprehension. If you have already spoken to an interested publisher, they can help in determining the writing style to follow. If you’re self-publishing, refer to some competitor books to determine the most popular style of writing and follow it.

8. Incorporate Visual Aids

Depending on the subject of your book, there may be various types of visual and graphic aids to accentuate your writing, which may prove lucrative. Give due credit to images, diagrams, graphical representations, etc. to avoid copyright infringement. Furthermore, ensure that the presentation style of visual aids is same throughout the book.

9. Review Your Draft

Your supervisor and the advisory council review and refine you thesis draft. However, a book must be proofread , preferably by someone with a constructive view. You can also use professional editing services or just go ahead with an excellent grammar checking tool to avoid the hassle.

Do you plan on publishing your thesis as a book ? Have you published one before? Share your experience in the comments!

good article

Hello. Nice to read your paper. However, I fell on your article while browsing the net for the exact opposite reason and I think you can equally give me some insights. I am interested, as I earlier said, on how to transform my book into a thesis instead, and how I can defend it at an academic level. I am writing a research work on financial digital options trading and have done a lot of back testing with technical analysis that I explain, to rake thousands of dollars from the financial markets. I find the technical analysis very peculiar and would like to defend this piece of work as a thesis instead. Is it possible? Please you can reply me through e:mail thanks

Rate this article Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Enago Academy's Most Popular Articles

• AI in Academia
• Trending Now

Simplifying the Literature Review Journey — A comparative analysis of 6 AI summarization tools

Imagine having to skim through and read mountains of research papers and books, only to…

• Reporting Research

Research Recommendations – Guiding policy-makers for evidence-based decision making

Research recommendations play a crucial role in guiding scholars and researchers toward fruitful avenues of…

• Promoting Research

Concept Papers in Research: Deciphering the blueprint of brilliance

Concept papers hold significant importance as a precursor to a full-fledged research proposal in academia…

8 Effective Strategies to Write Argumentative Essays

In a bustling university town, there lived a student named Alex. Popular for creativity and…

• Diversity and Inclusion
• Language & Grammar

Language as a Bridge, Not a Barrier: ESL researchers’ path to successful research and publishing

The landscape of academic research has witnessed a remarkable shift in recent years with the…

Facing Difficulty Writing an Academic Essay? — Here is your one-stop solution!

Role of an Abstract in Research Paper With Examples

How Can You Create a Well Planned Research Paper Outline

What Is a Preprint? 5 Step Guide to Successfully Publish Yours!

Sign-up to read more

Subscribe for free to get unrestricted access to all our resources on research writing and academic publishing including:

• 2000+ blog articles
• 50+ Webinars
• 10+ Expert podcasts
• 50+ Infographics
• 10+ Checklists
• Research Guides

We hate spam too. We promise to protect your privacy and never spam you.

Thesis by Publication

Share this article

This post is partially based on guidelines from the University of Western Australia, see: http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/2930217/ThesisByPapers_160916.pdf

While there’s no worldwide agreement on PhD or Master’s thesis format, increasing pressure to publish is resulting in a move in Australia towards submitting theses as a series of papers (otherwise known as a thesis by publication). Although there is substantial variation in how a thesis by publication should be formatted (you should check your university’s current policy), here we summarise a typical approach, along with some potential benefits of and considerations when choosing this method of completing your PhD thesis .

How should I format my thesis?

Some universities in Australia have specific guidelines that stipulate that a thesis by publication needs to contain a set amount of published work. However, typically, students have the freedom to format their thesis in whatever way is most appropriate for their project and discipline. This may be as a traditional monograph, a series of papers suitable for publication (either a research article in a scholarly journal, which is typical for those in STEM research, or a conference paper or book chapter, which might be more relevant for those in HASS disciplines) or a combination of more traditional research chapters and papers. You should discuss with your supervisors early in your candidature what the most appropriate model is for presenting your PhD thesis, and how many publications are typically expected in your discipline.

Advantages of a thesis by publication

There are a number of advantages to writing your thesis as a series of papers. First, submitting your thesis as a series of already published work usually reduces the time required at the end of your candidature to compile your thesis. A thesis that consists of a series of publications may require some minor formatting changes for consistency, but otherwise you can typically present the papers as they were published. The thesis by publication will also require a substantial literature review in the introduction and a discussion chapter at the end to link the separate papers into a cohesive narrative and to place the papers in the context of the established body of knowledge. Of course, the ease with which this can be done depends on the nature of the papers to be linked; however, for the most part, the hard work has already been done (although this is not to diminish the extra work publishing requires!).

Second, submitting your thesis as a series of papers is efficient if the ultimate goal is to publish. Rather than writing the thesis and then revising this work and separately writing papers for publication, the papers are written and then reproduced in your thesis. 

A third advantage is the increased mentoring and advice received through the peer-review process, which is excellent for your development as a researcher. Preparing manuscripts for publication generally requires substantial feedback from supervisors, and the peer-review process, while arduous at the time, is a great opportunity to hone your research and writing skills, and will greatly improve the quality of each subsequent paper. A thesis by publication also has the benefit of providing direct evidence to examiners that your work is of publishable standard, which is one of the thesis examination criteria.

Finally, publishing work prior to submitting your thesis offers advantages to career progression. It provides the means to create a track record of publications during candidature, which is often required for competitive post-doctoral applications.

Is a thesis by publication right for me?

While there are numerous advantages to producing a thesis as a series of papers, some factors need to be considered. First, not all projects divide well into publishable papers. Research consisting of one main study and an extended data collection period, for example, may be better suited to a more traditionally formatted thesis. Another consideration is that examiners may not be familiar with the thesis by publication format. This may be particularly true in the HASS disciplines. In this case, make sure to determine what the rules of your university are and, if permitted by your university, indicate this in your thesis introduction.

Possibly the main consideration though is that the peer-review process is time-consuming (see a Nature feature article about this topic last year (2016), Does it take too long to publish research? ), and it may be difficult to get all papers published prior to thesis submission. Although not all papers need to be published, most theses by publication should contain at least one published paper. Hence, the time-consuming process of waiting for feedback on submitted papers and the time taken to undertake sometimes major revisions is a sacrifice. In addition, despite one’s best efforts, journals may not publish a paper even though the research presented is high quality. For example, in the sciences, null results can be difficult to publish (although hopefully the tide will begin to change on this, which would save researchers some serious time; see Why it's time to publish research “failures” ). While previously, it was expected that a thesis by publication could only include published papers, many universities have updated their policies to reflect a more flexible format. Most theses by publication can now consist of work that is published, submitted for publication or in preparation for submission. So, in this case, papers that are difficult to publish can still be incorporated into a thesis and presented as manuscripts.

Ultimately, in the words of Professor David Pannell at UWA (see Prose, psychopaths and persistence: Personal perspectives on publishing) , publishing in peer-reviewed journals requires, ‘fortitude, resilience and persistence’. Of course, it is the very nature of withstanding these knockbacks and the time-consuming revisions that are involved in the process of producing a thesis by publication that can both prepare you for future post-doctoral positions, and result in an outstanding thesis.

Capstone Editing

Recent articles.

• New ways to pick our expert brains
• 2023 Winner of the Capstone Editing Laptop Grant for Postgrad Coursework Students
• Winner of the 2023 Early Career Academic Research Grant for Women
• How to Use Conditional Sentences Correctly

Subscribe to our Blog

To receive informative articles and tailored advice for academics and students, as well as updates about our exciting grant and scholarship opportunities, please subscribe to our blog.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

The Purdue On-Campus Writing Lab and Purdue Online Writing Lab assist clients in their development as writers—no matter what their skill level—with on-campus consultations, online participation, and community engagement. The Purdue Writing Lab serves the Purdue, West Lafayette, campus and coordinates with local literacy initiatives. The Purdue OWL offers global support through online reference materials and services.

A Message From the Assistant Director of Content Development 

The Purdue OWL® is committed to supporting  students, instructors, and writers by offering a wide range of resources that are developed and revised with them in mind. To do this, the OWL team is always exploring possibilties for a better design, allowing accessibility and user experience to guide our process. As the OWL undergoes some changes, we welcome your feedback and suggestions by email at any time.

Please don't hesitate to contact us via our contact page  if you have any questions or comments.

All the best,

Social Media

Facebook twitter.

Graduate Research Hub

• Preparing my thesis

Incorporating your published work in your thesis

A streamlined procedure has been approved for obtaining co-author authorisation.  You now only need to provide a Declaration for publication incorporated in a thesis form for the inclusion of in progress or published material in the thesis, that is completed by your Principal Supervisor and the Coordinating Author.

Accepted statuses for publications

• Unpublished material not submitted for publication
• Submitted for publication to [publication name] on [date]
• In revision following peer review by [publication name]
• Accepted for publication by [publication name] on [date]
• Published by [publication name] on [date]

You may include in progress or published material written during your enrolment upon approval from your advisory committee, as part of your thesis, by having either:

• “included publications", in which your publications are included as components that are distinct from the rest of the thesis, in the format described below; or
• “included material” that is drawn from your publications and combined with text that is otherwise written specifically for the thesis.

In this page we refer to both these kinds of inclusion of published work as “incorporated publications”; the first format, where the publications are included as distinct components, is also known as “thesis with publications”.

The  Graduate Research Training Policy (section 4.65) outlines what can be included in the thesis. Your thesis must include a literature review that clearly details the research questions and a general discussion that integrates the work and places the publications into the context of the research question.

You may have to supplement the incorporated publications with additional methods sections as they are often abbreviated in published articles. You are also encouraged to include any data and discussion that was omitted from the article as an addendum in the thesis. Where a publication is included as a distinct component, you are also encouraged to include a critical reflection on the work, which could, for example, acknowledge or address limitations or impacts of the work that have appeared since publication.

When submitting your thesis, you will be required to confirm that:

(a) the work in the incorporated publications is your own, and (b) that any co-authors give permission for the article to be included in the thesis.

To do this, you must complete the  Declaration for publication incorporated in a thesis form.  You will need to submit a completed form for each in progress or published work included in your thesis.

Your principal supervisor must sign the Declaration form for each publication.  Where there is more than one author of a publication, at least one co-author by agreement amongst the authors, should be nominated as the coordinating author (also known as corresponding author), as defined in the University’s Authorship Policy . The coordinating author is responsible for communication between the publishers and managing communication between the co-authors. The coordinating author must maintain records of any authorship agreement.  The coordinating author must also sign the Declaration form.

You must upload all completed Declaration forms as a single combined file to the Thesis Examination System when submitting your thesis for examination.  The signed forms should not be included in the thesis itself. Plan well ahead to obtain the required signatures to avoid delays to your examination.

Don’t forget to include your ORCID when submitting your work to publishers, conference organisers, etc.  This will help you to distinguish your research activities and outputs, and make sure you get credit for your work throughout your career.

The Preface

As detailed in the  Preparation of Graduate Research Theses rules , your preface should outline:

• the publication status of any incorporated publications
• your contribution to any incorporated publications
• any work carried out in collaboration with others
• editorial assistance received
• parts of the work completed outside of your candidature.

There is no prescribed format for a preface; you may wish to include a written description or a table outlining the tasks performed by others and the proportion of the contribution as a percentage.

Usually this means you will have written the initial draft and you performed any subsequent editing in response to co-authors' and editors' reviews.

As specified in the Graduate Research Training Policy , your principal supervisor and coordinating author must declare that:

(a) you are the primary author of the included material, and

(b) you contributed more than 50% of the work towards the publication.

No. You need to have contributed more than 50 per cent for it to be included. You could, however, include this paper as an appendix.

Yes. It is understood that portions of the thesis that have been published or accepted for publication will have been through an editorial process. Such editorial changes should be explicitly acknowledged.

Refer to the Authorship page for information about the requirements and responsible practice.

Format of the thesis

When including complete publications, you should use the author accepted manuscripts of articles that have been accepted or published. This is the final draft as accepted by the publishers, including any changes based on referees’ suggestions before it has undergone copy-editing, typesetting and proofing. If you are certain you will not breach your agreement with your publisher, you may include the published version in your thesis.

If you are using your author accepted manuscript, while some journals request that the version you send them includes any figures or tables at the end of the submitted document, when you reproduce the article in your thesis you should place them where they logically flow within the text. It is also recommended that you use similar formatting (e.g. line spacing, font type and size) as the rest of the thesis.

You can view suggested formats for arranging the chapters of a thesis that includes publications as distinct components here . See also example theses in the University of Melbourne repository.

In most cases it is preferred that you include a separate literature survey.  Even with the literature reviews included in your publications you may find you still need to add further supplementary material if the publications do not directly address all the research questions you are trying to answer in your thesis.  Your supervisors and advisory committee are best able to advise you whether the literature reviews included in your incorporated publications will meet disciplinary expectations and satisfy your examiners that you: - Have clearly detailed your research question/s and how they integrate with the current literature - Have demonstrated sufficient familiarity with, and understanding and critical appraisal of the relevant literature.

No. The policy allows the thesis to be submitted with publications, it is not a thesis by publication. You must include a literature review that clearly details the research question, and a concluding general discussion that integrates the work and places it into the context of the research questions. You should also introduce each publication that is included as a distinct component, explaining its role in the work, and, where appropriate, provide a critical reflection on its contribution.

Yes, but you must cite it correctly and indicate in the preface the source of the information (eg. that the text on page(s) xx is from [name of publication], or that chapter yy is adapted from [name of publication]. In each case you should give its publication status and your contribution to the publication). It will assist your examiners if, at the start of each chapter that includes work drawn from a publication, there is a footnote explaining where the work came from and how it has been used in the chapter. You may wish to include the entire publication as an appendix so that your examiners can see where the material came from.

• Theses which include publications in a “thesis with publications” style can typically be slightly shorter; for example the typical PhD length is 80,000 words, but a PhD including publications as distinct components has a typical length of 50,000-80,000 words).
• While the writing style may be more concise, there is no difference in the expected volume and requirements of work presented in theses with publications. The examination criteria remain the same whether or not publications are incorporated. Your examiners are asked to consider your thesis on its merits as an independent piece of research. Refer to the information available for examiners .
• Maximum limits apply to all theses.

If you are including the list of references as part of the publication they do not need to be repeated in the overall reference list/bibliography for the thesis.

Incorporated publications can be referenced via a footnote, but if references to them are included in the bibliography an examiner may be unsure as to whether the work was completed as part of the research.

No, but you may do so if you think that it will assist readers of your thesis.

It is up to you whether you update the publication style or not. Whatever you chose, you should acknowledge your choice in the Preface, stating the differences between the publication and thesis, due to the requirements of different publishers.

Yes. Revised and resubmitted theses are examined in their entirety and the inclusion of a new incorporated publication may strengthen your response to examiners.

In most cases you should include the latest version, up to the author accepted version and update the publication status in the preface. If your examiners request changes which conflict with the editorial or peer review advice you have since received from your publisher, you may choose to address this elsewhere in your thesis, or in your written response to the examiners’ reports.

Publication suitability

A work is suitable for inclusion if the research was conducted and the publication was in progress or published during your enrolment in your current degree. This includes:

You may need to supplement this with analysis of literature published between writing the article and submitting your thesis.

All methods need to be covered to a high degree of detail in your thesis.

• literature reviews where you are the primary author .
• systematic reviews of a research question as a results chapter.
• a protocol paper involving novel method development.
• material exploring key methodological issues .

No. Only work completed during your candidature can be included in the thesis. You can cite your earlier work just like you would any work that is relevant to your research. The work should be listed in the preface of your thesis.

Yes. You will need to clearly acknowledge in the preface that its status is ‘in progress’ or, that the paper has been published but not peer reviewed.

Completing the forms

Yes. You may wish to include the entire publication as an appendix so that your examiner can see where the information came from.

Yes. All sections of the form must be completed for any multi-authored material. The coordinating author is required to reassure that all co-authors have had an opportunity to agree to the inclusion of the material in the thesis and to the contribution declared on the form. The authorship agreement template is available here.

No. You can use the figure in your thesis without completing the form but you should acknowledge the origin of the figure in the preface and appropriately cite the publication in your thesis.

No. You should provide this evidence to your advisory committee when you are discussing the proposed format for your thesis. Your principal supervisor must sign the  Declaration for publication incorporated in a thesis form which confirms their agreement to the inclusion of any publication/s.  The coordinating author will need to sign the form for any multi-authored material.

You can use Adobe Acrobat's 'Combine Files' tool which will allow you to combine files of different filetypes into a PDF. Alternatively, you can open a PDF copy of a file and then use the 'Organise Pages' tool which will allow you to drag additional pages where you can then save it as a single file.

iThenticate report

You should run your whole thesis through iThenticate, including the chapters comprised wholly or partly of your published work.  You can then exclude the specific matching publication source/s that correspond to the publications you have included in your thesis in a “thesis with publications” style. This means that the thesis chapter or publication is reviewed against the other literature in the repository, but not matched to itself. You should only exclude matching sources that are articles which you have appropriately included.  You should outline and explain any filters and exclusions you applied in iThenticate in an accompanying declaration which you can also upload to TES.

You should not exclude publications from which you have included material (but not the complete publication), as the iThenticate report will then show where the material is present in the thesis, allowing your supervisors and Chair of Examiners to verify that it has been included appropriately.

Further information on the use of iThenticate can be found here: https://gateway.research.unimelb.edu.au/funding-contracts-and-ethics/ethics-and-integrity/research-integrity/ithenticate-text-matching-tool

The examination

The criteria for examination remain the same whether or not publications are incorporated. See the Graduate Research Training Policy for more information. You can also view the information for examiners here: https://gradresearch.unimelb.edu.au/staff#examiner-information .

If the publication status of your article changes between submission for examination and submission of your final thesis, it is appropriate to include the most recent version (up to the author-accepted version). You should also update the preface to reflect the new status. If you are submitting a list of corrections for approval and/or resubmitting for re-examination you should also note this in your index of changes.

Examples of theses with publications

The following are theses available openly or with University of Melbourne log-in through the University of Melbourne repository that include publications as distinct components in a “thesis with publications” style.

Al Zein, Eza (2019). Taskscape: Caring for Migrant Materials . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/235841

Arundel, Jonathan Paul (2015) The spatio-temporal distribution of honey bees and floral resources in Australia . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/59612

Bamford, Nicholas James (2016) Relationships between diet, obesity and insulin dysregulation in horses and ponies. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/148423

Bibb, Jennifer Louise (2016) Musical recovery: the role of group singing in regaining healthy relationships with music to promote mental health recovery. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/124271

Burfurd, Ingrid Ellen (2018) Beliefs and learning in the laboratory: essays in experimental economics . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/219180

Fan, Yi (2019) Quantification of mandibular morphological changes in 3D . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/225588

Kriesner, Peter (2017) Wolbachia fitness benefits and symbiont interactions in Drosophila . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/207959

Mody, Fallon (2019) Doctors down under: European medical migrants in Victoria (Australia), 1930-60 .   http://hdl.handle.net/11343/221550

Nencini, Sara (2018) Tackling bone pain at the source: identifying and exploring new therapeutic targets . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/216858

Pan, Xuan (2018) Graphene quantum dot based electronic devices . http://hdl.handle.net/11343/222013

Seibt, Susanne (2018) In-situ investigations of molecular self-assembly using microfluidics. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/214671

Smith, Merryn (2018) Non-structural carbohydrate storage and use in eucalypt trees of south-east Australia. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/221163

Uddin, Shihab (2019) Functional aspects of root and leaf development in dryland crop water use under elevated CO2 .   http://hdl.handle.net/11343/219849

Vahedi, Andisheh (2018) The work-family interface and child mental health: longitudinal associations via family functioning across childhood. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/217236

Al Zein, Eza (2019) Taskscape: Caring for Migrant Materials .  http://hdl.handle.net/11343/235841

Schlichthorst, Marisa (2020)   Engaging men in conversations about masculinity and suicide – An evaluation of the Man Up social media campaign .   http://hdl.handle.net/11343/265962

• Resources for candidates
• Orientation and induction
• Mapping my degree
• Principles for infrastructure support
• Peer activities
• Change my commencement date
• Meeting expectations
• Working with my supervisors
• Responsible Research & Research Integrity
• Guidelines for external supervisors
• Pre-confirmation
• Confirmation
• At risk of unsatisfactory progress
• Unsatisfactory progress
• Add or drop coursework subjects
• Apply for leave
• Return from leave
• Apply for Study Away
• Return from Study Away
• Change my study rate
• Check my candidature status
• Change my current supervisors
• Request an evidence of enrolment or evidence of qualification statement
• Change my project details
• Change department
• Transfer to another graduate research degree
• Late submission
• Withdraw from my research degree
• Check the status of a request
• Re-enrolment
• Advice on requesting changes
• Extension of candidature
• Lapse candidature
• How to cancel a form in my.unimelb
• Resolving issues
• Taking leave
• About Study Away
• Finishing on time
• Accepting an offer for a joint PhD online
• Tenured Study Spaces (TSS) Usage Guidelines
• Tenured Study Spaces Procedures
• Research skills
• Academic writing and communication skills
• Building professional and academic networks
• Research internships
• Commercialising my research
• Supplementary PhD Programs
• Writing my thesis
• Examples of thesis and chapter formats when including publications
• Thesis with creative works
• Research Integrity in my Thesis
• Graduate researchers and digital assistance tools
• TES Statuses
• Submitting my thesis
• Depositing multiple components for your final thesis record
• The Chancellor's Prize
• TES Graduate Researcher FAQs
• Career planning
• Publishing my research
• Getting support
• Key graduate research contacts
• Melbourne Research Experience Survey
• Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT)
• Current Students

Get science-backed answers as you write with Paperpal's Research feature

How to Write a Successful Book Chapter for an Academic Publication?

If you are an academic or a researcher working towards a PhD degree or engaged in various tasks in a university or academic institution the idea of writing a book chapter would have definitely crossed your mind. Receiving an invitation to write an academic book chapter is indeed a great honor, and going onto write it is a milestone that every writer aims to achieve in their career. Writing a successful academic book chapter requires careful planning and execution by the author. In this article we will look at how to write an academic book chapter along with a few key steps that must be followed during the writing process.  

Table of Contents

• What is an academic book chapter? 

Information collection

Finalizing chapter structure, attractive chapter title, a strong introduction, detailing out the chapter, summarizing the chapter, what is an academic book chapter.

An academic book chapter is a distinct section of a book having its own title or a chapter number. A book consists of several chapters, each of which focuses on a particular topic or sub-argument that is linked to the overall theme of the book. In other words, each chapter should have a sound argument that is consistent with the central theme or argument of the book. Each chapter should therefore be an inter-connected part to the rest of the chapters and to the overall book. 

It is important to understand that an academic book chapter is very different from a thesis chapter. While a book chapter has as its audience anyone who may be interested in the particular topic, the audience for a thesis chapter is primarily the thesis examiner. For the same reason, a thesis examiner will closely read the entire chapter and thesis, but this may not be the case for a book chapter. As mentioned earlier, a book chapter deals with a specific topic with an important idea or argument related to the central theme of the book and hence it is a separate division of a book. On the other hand, a thesis chapter does not stand separately but will have multiple arguments and relies on the other chapters to make it a complete whole. The length of each academic book chapter normally varies and there is no standard rule as to the length of chapters. However, on a general note, chapter length usually varies from 3500 to 5000 words.  

Key steps to follow when writing an academic book chapter

Integrating the following steps as you plan to write an academic book chapter can help you achieve excellent results.  

It is important that sufficient research is carried out and the author has a thorough understanding of the available literature in the field. Collecting relevant information and being up to date with all aspects on the topic that you are going to write about is one of first steps in writing an academic book chapter. Presenting information in a visually attractive manner and using various tools like mind maps can help in structuring the key arguments better.  

An academic book chapter also requires a good outline. For example, you must have a title, a well worded introduction, informative paras that make up the main body, a chapter summary and a neat transition to the succeeding chapter. Try to make the outline clear and concise, organize your ideas effectively and ensure there is a logical flow.  

This is a critical element and goes a long way in getting people to read your chapter or even pick up the book. Strive to make the title or heading of your chapter interesting and impactful, potential readers should be attracted to the title by itself, going on to pick up the book just by the vigor of the title itself.  

Having a well written introduction can be invaluable in ensuring that audiences will be compelled to read further. Engaging your reader with an anecdote or a dialogue or through a fictional account or plot can be useful devices to anchor the introduction on.  

Ideally as you elaborate on your chapter with the key points as you begin, it is a good idea to provide evidence for your statements and arguments. Try to highlight these in about 4 to 5 paragraphs linking it to the chapter details. 

A concise summary is a must as you come to the end of your chapter. Remember, here you are reflecting on the main content of the chapter and helping the reader to take away some key aspects of the arguments that you have presented in the chapter.  

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 21+ years of STM experience and insights from millions of research articles to provide in-depth academic writing, language editing, and submission readiness support to help you write better, faster.  

Get accurate academic translations, rewriting support, grammar checks, vocabulary suggestions, and generative AI assistance that delivers human precision at machine speed. Try for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime starting at US$19 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed.  

Experience the future of academic writing – Sign up to Paperpal and start writing for free!  

Related Reads:

Measuring academic success: definition & strategies for excellence.

• Publish or Perish – Understanding the Importance of Scholarly Publications in Academia
• What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)
• Paperpal’s New AI Research Finder Empowers Authors to Research, Write, Cite, All in One Place

Academic Editing: How to Self-Edit Academic Text With Paperpal 

How paperpal is enhancing academic productivity and accelerating research in china, you may also like, how paperpal’s research feature helps you develop and..., what are scholarly sources and where can you..., how to write a hypothesis types and examples , why traditional editorial process needs an upgrade, paperpal’s new ai research finder empowers authors to..., ai + human expertise – a paradigm shift..., how to use paperpal to generate emails &..., is it ethical to use ai-generated abstracts without..., how to avoid plagiarism when using generative ai....

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Published: 08 May 2024

Accurate structure prediction of biomolecular interactions with AlphaFold 3

• Josh Abramson   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0000-3496-6952 1   na1 ,
• Jonas Adler   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9928-3407 1   na1 ,
• Jack Dunger 1   na1 ,
• Richard Evans   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4675-8469 1   na1 ,
• Tim Green   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3227-1505 1   na1 ,
• Alexander Pritzel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4233-9040 1   na1 ,
• Olaf Ronneberger   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4266-1515 1   na1 ,
• Lindsay Willmore   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4314-0778 1   na1 ,
• Andrew J. Ballard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4956-5304 1 ,
• Joshua Bambrick   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0003-3908-0722 2 ,
• Sebastian W. Bodenstein 1 ,
• David A. Evans 1 ,
• Chia-Chun Hung   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5264-9165 2 ,
• Michael O’Neill 1 ,
• David Reiman   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1605-7197 1 ,
• Kathryn Tunyasuvunakool   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8594-1074 1 ,
• Zachary Wu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2429-9812 1 ,
• Akvilė Žemgulytė 1 ,
• Eirini Arvaniti 3 ,
• Charles Beattie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1840-054X 3 ,
• Ottavia Bertolli   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8578-3216 3 ,
• Alex Bridgland 3 ,
• Alexey Cherepanov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5227-0622 4 ,
• Miles Congreve 4 ,
• Alexander I. Cowen-Rivers 3 ,
• Andrew Cowie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4491-1434 3 ,
• Michael Figurnov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1386-8741 3 ,
• Fabian B. Fuchs 3 ,
• Hannah Gladman 3 ,
• Rishub Jain 3 ,
• Yousuf A. Khan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0201-2796 3 ,
• Caroline M. R. Low 4 ,
• Kuba Perlin 3 ,
• Anna Potapenko 3 ,
• Pascal Savy 4 ,
• Sukhdeep Singh 3 ,
• Adrian Stecula   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6914-6743 4 ,
• Ashok Thillaisundaram 3 ,
• Catherine Tong   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7570-4801 4 ,
• Sergei Yakneen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7827-9839 4 ,
• Ellen D. Zhong   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6345-1907 3 ,
• Michal Zielinski 3 ,
• Augustin Žídek   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0748-9684 3 ,
• Victor Bapst 1   na2 ,
• Pushmeet Kohli   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7466-7997 1   na2 ,
• Max Jaderberg   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9033-2695 2   na2 ,
• Demis Hassabis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2812-9917 1 , 2   na2 &
• John M. Jumper   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6169-6580 1   na2  

Nature ( 2024 ) Cite this article

139k Accesses

1 Citations

1092 Altmetric

Metrics details

We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

• Drug discovery
• Machine learning
• Protein structure predictions
• Structural biology

The introduction of AlphaFold 2 1 has spurred a revolution in modelling the structure of proteins and their interactions, enabling a huge range of applications in protein modelling and design 2–6 . In this paper, we describe our AlphaFold 3 model with a substantially updated diffusion-based architecture, which is capable of joint structure prediction of complexes including proteins, nucleic acids, small molecules, ions, and modified residues. The new AlphaFold model demonstrates significantly improved accuracy over many previous specialised tools: far greater accuracy on protein-ligand interactions than state of the art docking tools, much higher accuracy on protein-nucleic acid interactions than nucleic-acid-specific predictors, and significantly higher antibody-antigen prediction accuracy than AlphaFold-Multimer v2.3 7,8 . Together these results show that high accuracy modelling across biomolecular space is possible within a single unified deep learning framework.

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Similar content being viewed by others

Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold

Maximum diffusion reinforcement learning

De novo generation of multi-target compounds using deep generative chemistry

Author information.

These authors contributed equally: Josh Abramson, Jonas Adler, Jack Dunger, Richard Evans, Tim Green, Alexander Pritzel, Olaf Ronneberger, Lindsay Willmore

These authors jointly supervised this work: Victor Bapst, Pushmeet Kohli, Max Jaderberg, Demis Hassabis, John M. Jumper

Authors and Affiliations

Core Contributor, Google DeepMind, London, UK

Josh Abramson, Jonas Adler, Jack Dunger, Richard Evans, Tim Green, Alexander Pritzel, Olaf Ronneberger, Lindsay Willmore, Andrew J. Ballard, Sebastian W. Bodenstein, David A. Evans, Michael O’Neill, David Reiman, Kathryn Tunyasuvunakool, Zachary Wu, Akvilė Žemgulytė, Victor Bapst, Pushmeet Kohli, Demis Hassabis & John M. Jumper

Core Contributor, Isomorphic Labs, London, UK

Joshua Bambrick, Chia-Chun Hung, Max Jaderberg & Demis Hassabis

Google DeepMind, London, UK

Eirini Arvaniti, Charles Beattie, Ottavia Bertolli, Alex Bridgland, Alexander I. Cowen-Rivers, Andrew Cowie, Michael Figurnov, Fabian B. Fuchs, Hannah Gladman, Rishub Jain, Yousuf A. Khan, Kuba Perlin, Anna Potapenko, Sukhdeep Singh, Ashok Thillaisundaram, Ellen D. Zhong, Michal Zielinski & Augustin Žídek

Isomorphic Labs, London, UK

Alexey Cherepanov, Miles Congreve, Caroline M. R. Low, Pascal Savy, Adrian Stecula, Catherine Tong & Sergei Yakneen

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Max Jaderberg , Demis Hassabis or John M. Jumper .

Supplementary information

Supplementary information.

This Supplementary Information file contains the following 9 sections: (1) Notation; (2) Data pipeline; (3) Model architecture; (4) Auxiliary heads; (5) Training and inference; (6) Evaluation; (7) Differences to AlphaFold2 and AlphaFold-Multimer; (8) Supplemental Results; and (9) Appendix: CCD Code and PDB ID tables.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Abramson, J., Adler, J., Dunger, J. et al. Accurate structure prediction of biomolecular interactions with AlphaFold 3. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07487-w

Download citation

Received : 19 December 2023

Accepted : 29 April 2024

Published : 08 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07487-w

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Major alphafold upgrade offers boost for drug discovery.

• Ewen Callaway

Nature (2024)

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines . If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Translational Research newsletter — top stories in biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• What Is Cinema?
• Newsletters

R.O. Kwon Is Writing Into Desire

By Keziah Weir

All featured products are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Vanity Fair may earn an affiliate commission.

“I’m so obsessed with every word, every comma of a novel, that it was initially hard for me to contemplate letting go,” R.O. Kwon says of the screen adaptation of her best-selling 2018 debut novel, The Incendiaries. “My first reaction for half a day was like, ‘Well, guess I’m just going to learn how to make TV shows.’” But publishing has brimmed with lessons in surrender for the writer. “I was just like, ‘Well, no, I've read exactly one script in my life. I’m not versed in this.’” She relinquished control to two filmmakers whose work she admires. A collaboration between screenwriter Lisa Randolph ( Jessica Jones , Prodigal Son ) and director Kogonada ( Columbus, Pachinko ) is now underway.

She’s found other outlets for her comma tinkering. In 2014, Kwon started writing Exhibit (Riverhead) , and over the intervening decade has polished it so it glitters like a garnet in firelight. “I want the prose to get to a place where I can pick it up at random, read two sentences and not want to change anything about those sentences.” In the novel, a Korean American photographer named Jin finds herself creatively blocked at the same time her husband’s longing to become a father diverges painfully from her own desire to remain childless. An injured ballerina named Lidija, whom she meets at a party, unleashes both an artistic and a sensual awakening.

Kwon, who lives in San Francisco (“the long-term plan is to be here until climate change chases us out”), says that Exhibit bloomed from her longtime appreciation of photography and its “complicated and fraught relationship to reality, and to hanging on to a little bit of time, a little bit of the past” along with a more recently discovered love of dance. While watching a San Francisco Ballet performance of Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy, “I had this full body experience while watching, where I thought the dancers’ bodies—like, the cells —were directly talking to my body.” Kwon took introductory photography and ballet classes in an attempt to capture the bodily sensation of creating both art forms.

Earlier this year, Kwon wrote an essay about why she hopes her parents won’t read the book, given its frank depictions of lust and queerness—subjects into which Kwon took an exploratory dip with the best-selling 2021 story anthology Kink, which she co-edited with Garth Greenwell. It comprises fiction that explores desire from such authors as Alexander Chee, Melissa Febos, Roxane Gay, and Chris Kraus. Kwon’s own story, “Safeword,” was first published by Playboy and centers on a man navigating his girlfriend’s newly disclosed submissive sexual desires with a joint visit to a dominatrix.

“One of the strongest antidotes to the deepest kinds of loneliness, the worst shame I have felt, has been the fellowship I have found in literature and other people’s art,” Kwon says. “That's a guiding principle for me in my work. I so badly want to meet other people’s loneliness and other people’s solitude and other people’s shame.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: Where did the book start for you?

R.O. Kwon: One of the first sparks for the book was that I was interested in what, as a woman, I feel allowed and encouraged to want, and what I feel pressured to hide my desire for. I wanted to have women on the page who want a great deal, to see what happens if they're given a space to run after what they desire. Ambition continues to feel like a really fraught thing for, I think especially, my woman artist friends and woman writer friends to even say out loud. Saying the words, "I am an ambitious woman" still feels really dangerous.

Jin, like the narrators in The Incendiaries and in your short story “Safe Word,” was raised Christian and lost their faith, which I know is something that you experienced too. But both of those narrators were white men. Of course, I understand that Jin is fictional, and that you are not Jin, but I am curious about the difference between writing a narrator who feels biographically, on paper, different or more similar to you.

With The Incendiaries, it wasn't as though I walked in telling myself, I'm going to write a book from the point of view of a white man. It was actually initially told from Phoebe, the Korean woman’s point of view, and that ended up changing. I believe very strongly in following the book's desires and needs, and not imposing what I think the book should be.

But with this book, I wanted very much to write from a Korean woman's point of view, and to not let the book morph again, in that way, if at all possible. In retrospect, I thought that maybe part of why that happened with The Incendiaries, it could have been some part of me was trying to protect myself a little. A lot of people seem to assume that Phoebe was a stand-in character for me, which was definitely a little wild because I was like, I haven't bombed an abortion clinic! That was definitely the most common question: How autobiographical was this book? And my goodness, well, I haven't done that.

By Erin Vanderhoof

By Bess Levin

By Savannah Walsh

I wanted to let myself be much more unprotected in this book. Sex is at the center of this book. And being Korean, ex-Catholic, and ex-Christian, part of the journey of this book has involved some of the most overwhelming anxiety and panic that I've ever experienced in my life.

I'm sorry!

Part of me would just be watching myself and being like, you did this to yourself. Why? No one made you do this. No one made you write this very queer, kinky novel.

It's still true that every cell in my body seems to feel convinced that…honestly, a message I keep hearing is: You're going to be killed. It wasn't that long ago that a Korean woman could be divorced for talking too much. You could be divorced for—this one kills me, I flew into a day’s outrage about this—you could be divorced for moving during sex. And at the time, being divorced was a death sentence. I'm just not that far removed from when that was true. And my body's fully aware that giving any hint to the world that I've ever had sex is such a rule-breaking thing. I'm pretty sure I haven't even told my grandmother I’m queer. I just let her live her life in peace. She almost certainly thinks being queer is an illness. It's just not that uncommon. It's not just my grandmother's generation, at all.

Part of the deep anxiety about this has also come from the ways in which I write about sexuality and kink, especially Jin's sexuality, is that it can be misinterpreted as aligning exactly with some of the most harmful stereotypes about people who look like me. That we’re submissive, hypersexual, compliant, that we’re up for being mistreated. But I do believe that turning away from naming what I feel compelled to name, that itself brings its own harm.

I think a lot about something that my friend Garth Greenwell said. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like, "I'm not writing for people who think I'm disgusting. I'm writing for people who already think I'm beautiful." Jin clearly has very conflicted feelings about her desires, and is working through those conflicted feelings. I hoped that this book would at least in part turn into or turn toward a celebration of our bodies, and a celebration of bodies who are told that we don't get to want what we want.

In talking about her lack of a desire to have a child, Jin says that she can't argue the urge into being, which felt like such a parallel to the surety or lack thereof about faith in God.

That was one obsession of the book, these different ways—with faith, with wanting children or not, with sexual desire, with appetites in general, including for food—that our bodies are so powerful. I haven't been able to—and I've tried—I can't argue myself into believing in a Christian God. Again, I can't argue myself into or out of sexual desire. I am fascinated by the ways in which I haven't been able to ever reason or argue myself out of who I seem to be and what I want and what I believe.

I have friends and loved ones who so desperately want kids. And I know how absolutely, with all my being, I've never had that desire. With Jin and her husband, she, even more adamantly than I do, doesn't want kids. I always said if my partner woke up one day realizing he definitely wants kids, then I've told him, we will work with that and figure something out. But for Jin, it's further along on the spectrum than I am. She's just like, "I can't imagine this." And so there's the profound heartbreak of what do you then do when your life becomes incompatible with someone you love very much?

There’s another love story of sorts—the ghost of a kisaeng starts speaking to Jin.

The kisaeng story, the bare bones of the double suicide, with someone who was going to marry her, that's very loosely based on a family story. It has been fascinating to me, in part, because some of the family stories I've heard most often, and I really haven't heard that many family stories, have to do with people blowing up their lives for love. This became especially personal to me when the conflict that Jin has with her parents, where they didn't want to, where they say, "If you don't have a marriage in the church then we won't come." My parents said that to me. I took a less hard-line position. I’m so not Christian. That said, I thought, if this matters so much to y’all, then all right, whatever. We can have a priest involved.

The kisaeng who plays this large role in my own family's mythology, her name hasn't survived. I plunged into research, which itself started feeling really restrictive, because I just became increasingly obsessed with needing the historical details to be exactly right. And at one point, what became very liberating was I read about Korean men in Korea looking through Korean history and anointing people of the past as queer ancestors, because of all the ways in which queer people are erased from history. That really liberated me. I was like, You know what? We're talking about a ghost, channeled through a shaman, and she can fly. I can make some things up.

One of my biggest pleasures in a book is finding a character from another one of the author’s books—and I got that in The Exhibit, with a visit from the world of The Incendiaries.

There's a part of me that almost believes that an ideal version of a book pre-exists me. And I feel less that I'm making anything up with fiction, and that I’m more working my way toward a book that's already there. Honestly, that feels more reassuring than...

That you're liberating a form rather than having to find it yourself.

That way it’s not the wide open vista of infinite choice, but instead working my way toward liberating, like a sculpture out of a rock. The world of The Incendiaries feels to me as though it almost exists. When I feel extra down about the world, I sometimes turn to quantum physics for consolation, the articles and books that are for lay people. I love reading that there are infinite versions of the world, and in ways that almost exceed language. In The Incendiaries, a world where those abortion clinics were bombed, that version of the world, it seems to exist to me. It still felt so vibrant, that it felt natural for the world of Exhibit to also belong there.

I'm most likely working toward either a trilogy or triptych, or a quartet, of books where they're very loosely connected. But where what happens in the past, in these past books, continues to exist in future books. I think Jin's photos—I mean, who knows, it's early days—I think Jin's photos will show up in the next book.

It sounds like you're already working on that third book.

I'm having more trouble really pulling myself into fiction than I've ever had. It's been really disorienting. It just remains such a central terror, that terror Jin feels in Exhibit , her fear that the photos have left. Because it does happen sometimes. Every now and then, there are artists who just don't ever write again, don't make their art again. I’m so afraid that the words have left. But I'm trying to be patient, and I've been storing up, and I've been collecting accounts of writers who fall into years of quiet, because I know my mind and body are at their best when I’m writing fiction every day. And currently I’m not able to, but I'm trying.

Below, Kwon shares some of the creative inspirations behind Exhibit.

More great stories from vanity fair.

Cover Star Chris Hemsworth on Fear, Love, and Escaping Hollywood

Everything to Know About the Worm That Allegedly Crawled Inside RFK Jr.’s Brain and Died

See Every Look From the 2024 Met Gala Red Carpet

Meet the Mastermind Behind New York’s Celebrity Playground of Choice

The Vatican’s Secret Role in the Science of IVF

Griffin Dunne on the Tragic Death That Reshaped His Family

Visit the VF Shop and Get Our Brand-New Tote (and Much More)

Keziah Weir

Senior editor, royal watch.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Kase Wickman

By Eve Batey

By Paul Chi