Manuscript seminar: Structuring doctoral thesis (18.1.)

The second manuscript seminar was held on “structuring doctoral thesis” on 18th of Jan. 2010. Different approaches for structuring doctoral thesis, such as allocating chapters, role of cases in structuring, and monograph dissertation versus article-based dissertation, have been discussed.

Some Ideas.

1. Introduction talk on the book “Authoring a Ph.D (by Patrick Dunleavy)”

* check Tero Heikkinen’s slides in “INTRA”

* remember that this book is about guidance. How to structure the thesis can depend on topics, approaches and so on.

2. Some rules for article-based dissertation

• Original articles should be attached: layout design for articles according to the book layout can be fine, but no changes for words allowed (if typos are corrected, should be mentioned.)
• Typically 6 articles (minimum 5), should include 3 strong ones that the author has siginificant contribution in (if an article was co-authored, roles of the author and co-authors should be discussed.)
• Some merits of article-based dissertation: attached articles are conference papers and journal papers that have been already peer-reviewed and published, which means that they already contain proved research contribution.
• Pre-examination time has nothing to do with types of dissertation, either article-based or monograph.

3. Example of authoring manuscript: 4 rounds of writing

• Producing rough mass of text: to see what the author has got.  Print the body of text. The text will start to speak to the author. Then discuss with supervisors on the text (structure, argumentation, titles…)
• Revision: “Monster Round”. This text will be the dissertation. One should be very carful with structuring, argumentation & make sure the text delivers what the author promised in the beginning.
• Finalizing: exact words for research questions, exact results, exact references, headlines, titles of chapters….
• Language -proof

4. What helps for having an image of structure of thesis

• Have a (broad) main research question  from the beginning & several sub-questions
• Writing a literature review part is important because it’s the step for positioning one’s work and choosing contribution area and audience.
• Important to write papers (even with preliminary findings) from the early phase of research: they are foundations for building monograph.