How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

From thesis to publication
How to write a thesis
Other topics in scientific communication

People sometimes speak of “publishing a thesis.” However, theses themselves are rarely, if ever, publishable. One reason is that theses commonly are intended partly to show that the graduate student has amassed considerable knowledge, so they tend to contain much material that helps demonstrate scholarship but would not interest readers. Extracting one or more publications from a thesis generally entails considerable trimming and condensation. More specifically, writing one or more scientific papers based on a thesis requires determining what in a thesis is new and of interest to others and then presenting it in the appropriate format and at an appropriate level of detail. In fields in which books present new scholarship, converting a dissertation to a book (Germano 2013) often includes decreasing the manuscript to a marketable length, dividing it into more chapters, using fewer quotations and examples, and otherwise making the manuscript more readable, cohesive, and engaging.

When you finish your thesis, promptly prepare and submit any manuscripts based on it, if you have not yet done so. Do so even if you are tired of your thesis topic—and tired from writing and defending the thesis. The longer you wait, the harder it is to return to your thesis and prepare a suitable manuscript based on it. And importantly, having one or more thesis-based writings published or in press can help catapult you into the next stage of your career.