Bringing the doctoral thesis by published papers to the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A quantitative easing? A small study of doctoral thesis submission rules and practice in two disciplines in the UK (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pre-print, 2019
This paper reflects on alternatives to the traditional form of doctoral thesis which are emerging to reflect a new approach to the valuation and designation of scientific outputs. We examine the changes and consider some implications. We suggest that the adoption of co-citation as underpinning principle for the measurement of knowledge structures has led to re-designation of the value of knowledge and knowledge producers in increasingly quantitative terms. We use notions of 'institution' and 'logic' to better understand such a change and its implications. Under a new logic that is gradually embedding itself across the higher education sector, the 'constitutive rules' concerned with the value of research now prioritize quantification, and tangibility of output, and quality is increasingly equated with citation. Whilst the scientific disciplines have traditionally been closer to this model, albeit with significant national variations, subjects within the Social Sciences and Humanities are now being affected. We present evidence from a small study of the UK higher education sector of university regulation of doctoral degree submission format in two disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences (History and Sociology). Our evidence shows the recent and gradual adoption of a practice, previously more common in scientific disciplines, that allows the doctoral thesis to be constituted by a series of publishable papers, known by a variety of names, the most common being 'Thesis by Published Papers', 'Journal Format Thesis', 'Alternative Format Thesis', and 'Integrated Thesis'. As the thesis of the Social Sciences and Humanities-itself an important institution in the academic field-begins to reflect a greater emphasis upon quantity of knowledge outputs, a tension emerges with the most central of all scientific institutions, the peer-reviewed journal paper.
2019
This paper reflects on alternatives to the traditional form of doctoral thesis which are emerging to reflect a new approach to the valuation and designation of scientific outputs. We examine the changes and consider some implications. We suggest that the adoption of co-citation as underpinning principle for the measurement of knowledge structures has led to re-designation of the value of knowledge and knowledge producers in increasingly quantitative terms. We use notions of ‘institution’ and ‘logic’ to better understand such a change and its implications. Under a new logic that is gradually embedding itself across the higher education sector, the ‘constitutive rules’ concerned with the value of research now prioritize quantification, and tangibility of output, and quality is increasingly equated with citation. Whilst the scientific disciplines have traditionally been closer to this model, albeit with significant national variations, subjects within the Social Sciences and Humanities...
The politics of citation: An analysis of doctoral theses across the disciplines
2013
Citation is used as a measure to rank academics and institutions on the assumption that the more one is cited, the greater the impact of one’s research. For this reason, citations in high impact journals that appear on highly regarded scientific indices are favoured as sites for publishing one’s work. There can be no doubt that citation in the academy is a politicized practice. In acquiring advanced academic literacy, students have to master the art of positioning themselves in relation to the work of others, so that they develop their own ‘scholarly identity’. Drawing on insights from sociology of knowledge, information science, and critical discourse analysis, in this paper, we examine the reference lists of ten doctoral theses, from three disciplines – Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Literature, and Sociology – in a leading South African university. Four parameters: (1) authorship (2) type of source (3) place of publication and (4) date of publication are used as means ...
Quantitative Science Studies, 2020
A research doctorate normally culminates in publishing a dissertation reporting a substantial body of novel work. In the absence of a suitable citation index, this article explores the relative merits of alternative methods for the large-scale assessment of dissertation impact, using 150,740 UK doctoral dissertations from 2009-2018. Systematic methods for this were designed for Google Books, Scopus, Microsoft Academic, and Mendeley. Less than 1 in 8 UK doctoral dissertations had at least one Scopus (12%), Microsoft Academic (11%) or Google Books citation (9%), or at least one Mendeley reader (5%). These percentages varied substantially by subject area and publication year. Google Books citations were more common in the Arts and Humanities (18%), whereas Scopus and Microsoft Academic citations were more numerous in Engineering (24%). In the Social Sciences, Google Books (13%) and Scopus (12%) citations were important and in Medical Sciences, Scopus and Microsoft Academic citations to dissertations were rare (6%). Few dissertations had Mendeley readers (from 3% in Science to 8% in the Social Sciences) and further analysis suggests that Google Scholar finds more citations but does not report information about all dissertations within a repository and is not a practical tool for large-scale impact assessment.
Rethinking doctoral publication practices: writing from and beyond the thesis
Studies in Higher Education, 2008
This article addresses the importance of giving greater pedagogical attention to writing for publication in higher education. It recognizes that, while doctoral research is a major source of new knowledge production in universities, most doctoral students do not receive adequate mentoring or structural support to publish from their research, with poor results. Data from a case study of graduates in science and education are examined to show how the different disciplinary and pedagogic practices of each discourse community impact on student publication. It is argued that co-authorship with supervisors is a significant pedagogic practice that can enhance the robustness and know-how of emergent scholars as well as their publication output. There is a need, however, to rethink co-authorship more explicitly as a pedagogic practice, and create more deliberate structures in subject disciplines to scaffold doctoral publication-as it is these structures that influence whether graduates publish as informed professionals in their chosen fields of practice.
Publishing Research Quarterly, 2018
In academia, humanists, social scientists, and those in the various sciences, write books that assume major cultural capital for promotion, tenure, and for dissemination of scholarship. For the beginning academic, doctoral education is the acculturative process by which nascent scholars achieve competence in their respective disciplines. The capstone research experience culminates in the doctoral dissertation in the humanities and social sciences, often, and with substantial revision, the first book in professorial life. This study attempts to frame the production, illustrative bibliographic characteristics, and major publishers of revised dissertations published by university and scholarly trade presses. This study is grounded in data provided by YPB's Gobi database and further articulated by utilization of the Library of Congress Classification system, and further frames the degree of interdisciplinarity, pricing, geographical concentrations, and other aspects of these books and investigates the similarities and dissimilarities between university press and scholarly trade presses. Illustrative examples display trends and provides suggestions for future analysis and research.
Knowledge Producing of the Doctoral Thesis: Between Scientific Utility and Social Usage
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014
This contribution focuses on the logics of the reflexive momentum which leads the doctoral students to self-insight through a constant back and forth reflection between knowledge production, its utility and its usage. To what extent do scientific utility and social usage condition knowledge production? The study of knowledge production contexts is illustrated here by three distinct cases referring to the circumstances motivating the doctoral students' registration, their route all along their thesis and the use they wish to make, and/or make, of it, once their research work is achieved, thus giving a biographical dimension to the mode of knowledge reproduction .
This study had two purposes: to examine the expertise of doctoral students in their use of the scholarly literature and to investigate the use of citation analysis as a tool for collection development. Analysis of 1,842 coded citations gleaned from 30 education dissertations awarded in 2000 from 3 institutions in the United States revealed that journal articles, at 45%, were cited most frequently, followed by monographs (33.9%) and "other" (18.3%), with magazines and Web sites contributing less than 2% each of the total material types cited. The study examined 858 journal and magazine citations, which were found in 239 unique titles. A relatively small number of journals contained a high percentage of the references found in the dissertations analyzed. Based on a design by D. Kohl and L. Wilson (1986), dissertation citations were also scored for scholarliness, currency, and appropriateness of format, and scores on the three criteria were averaged to arrive at a quality rating. Results of interinstitutional comparisons revealed a significant amount of variation and were considered in conjunction with institutional characteristics and published criteria for quality bibliographies. The data suggest that the assumption of doctoral student expertise in their use of the scholarly literature may be overstated and should be examined in relation to their preparation for professional status. For purposes of developing a library's research collection, a core list of titles, generated on the basis of multiple, rather than single, institutional analysis is indicated. (Contains 8 figures, 11 tables, and 28 references.)