Not That Kind of Doctor - Turning Your Dissertation into Manuscripts

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03/13/2023 Added

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Turning Your Dissertation into Manuscripts - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

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[00:00:00.082](soft upbeat music)
[00:00:08.567]Yeah, why everybody's talking.
[00:00:10.734]But let's have the discussion of like, why?
[00:00:13.530]Why is that a movie? Why is that a thing?
[00:00:15.729]But that's actually not the discussion
[00:00:17.490]that we're having today. Not today.
[00:00:20.220]Because I don't think that that would work
[00:00:21.870]with our audience.
[00:00:24.060]But what we are gonna talk about today...
[00:00:25.650]Yeah.
[00:00:26.483]Is what happens when you have defended your dissertation,
[00:00:34.290]you are lucky enough to find a job,
[00:00:38.190]and then you have to think through,
[00:00:41.617]"How do I turn my dissertation into some manuscripts?
[00:00:47.430]How do I do that? What are some strategies around that?"
[00:00:49.980]And so today we're gonna be talking about some strategies
[00:00:56.880]to be doing that, some of them are planning beforehand,
[00:01:01.830]some of them are after the fact.
[00:01:03.660]But we'll be talking all things,
[00:01:06.990]well, not all things, but a--
[00:01:08.369]Some things. Some things.
[00:01:10.770]Some strategies about publishing from your dissertation
[00:01:16.522]today on "Not That Kind of Doctor."
[00:01:19.800]I'm Nick Husbye.
[00:01:20.880]I'm an associate professor of elementary literacy education
[00:01:23.760]here at UNL, and then there's this guy.
[00:01:26.520]I'm Guy Trainin and I'm a professor
[00:01:29.580]at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:01:31.470]And I'm thinking about dissertations lately because a number
[00:01:36.450]of students that have graduated in the past two years
[00:01:39.510]have contacted me and wanted to start talking about,
[00:01:43.237]"I have this dissertation, I now have a job."
[00:01:46.230]And they're in different kinds of jobs.
[00:01:47.602]Some of them are in a job where they are actually
[00:01:52.800]tenure-line professors.
[00:01:54.630]And so they're thinking about, "How do I roll this?"
[00:01:57.420]But some of them are not and they're thinking,
[00:01:59.797]"I want to keep the door open to a university job
[00:02:03.480]even though I'm working somewhere else.
[00:02:05.730]And so I'd like to be able to continue publishing
[00:02:09.720]with an I to create an opportunity to at least
[00:02:12.570]open that door to the next job."
[00:02:13.978]So that got me thinking about how do we help everybody think
[00:02:18.690]about publication, even before you start your dissertation
[00:02:21.092]and definitely when you get to it.
[00:02:23.190]Yeah, and I think the...
[00:02:24.990]Talk to me a little bit about your dissertation.
[00:02:26.550]How did you work to publish from your dissertation
[00:02:31.650]after you graduated?
[00:02:32.880]What was your situation?
[00:02:33.870]So, I'm trying to think back.
[00:02:39.600]Two things happened.
[00:02:40.433]It's only about five years ago, Guy. It's not that long.
[00:02:42.930]Come on.
[00:02:44.340]It's quite a while ago.
[00:02:46.440]And after my dissertation, I had the same reaction,
[00:02:49.748]I think, that many, many people have.
[00:02:52.140]You spent so long with your dissertation
[00:02:54.960]that you need a break, and you need to create a little bit
[00:02:58.620]of distance so you can look at it with eyes that start
[00:03:03.301]thinking more specifically at where does it go?
[00:03:09.000]Who might want to hear about everything that you've done?
[00:03:11.234]Because up to that point,
[00:03:13.110]you are thinking about the wider audience,
[00:03:15.060]but I think you're also thinking about your committee
[00:03:20.520]as your primary audience.
[00:03:22.230]That is, the people you need to make happy,
[00:03:23.970]first and foremost, is your committee.
[00:03:25.620]And that can derail you at least a little bit.
[00:03:28.080]And so once you're done with that,
[00:03:29.880]you start thinking about where is it going?
[00:03:33.360]So it took me a few months to do that.
[00:03:36.570]I did have a lot of support for my advisor,
[00:03:39.810]in helping me think, he was a journal editor at the time
[00:03:43.800]exactly in the area that I wrote.
[00:03:45.720]It doesn't always play out that way,
[00:03:47.370]but in my case, it worked really well.
[00:03:49.560]And so he's encouraged me and he's also taught me
[00:03:53.190]to encourage all of our students to publish.
[00:03:55.607]You've done the work, you've broken new ground,
[00:03:59.340]and you've not changed the whole world,
[00:04:01.440]but you changed a corner of the world, and you need to tell
[00:04:04.980]everybody about what you've done.
[00:04:06.810]And this is the work that needs to see the light of day.
[00:04:10.950]And he encouraged me.
[00:04:12.480]We thought together about what out of the bigger piece
[00:04:17.520]that is often a dissertation would be appropriate.
[00:04:20.790]But I will be honest also, he's guided me all along
[00:04:23.790]to try to create a piece that is very close
[00:04:26.700]to a publishable article and less this
[00:04:31.020]what sometimes happens with very extensive manuscripts.
[00:04:33.990]So for example, the demands on a literature review for me,
[00:04:38.460]were to create something that shows that I'm capable
[00:04:41.610]and that I know everything that I need to know.
[00:04:43.650]But it was not a 60-page literature review.
[00:04:46.890]It was considerably more condensed.
[00:04:48.510]It was still much longer that you include in an article.
[00:04:51.390]But I was much closer than any other dissertations of people
[00:04:55.530]that went through the program with me.
[00:04:57.690]So that's something that I always think about when I guide
[00:05:00.570]other people into how do you want to think about
[00:05:04.530]your dissertation, and helping them contain it and think...
[00:05:09.060]And I think that's the most important thing.
[00:05:11.280]That is, start thinking about what might it look like
[00:05:14.880]and where might it go even before you get
[00:05:19.860]into the thick of the dissertation.
[00:05:21.750]Well, and that's probably like strategy number one,
[00:05:24.390]is, I think, planning for what that dissertation
[00:05:27.990]could look like.
[00:05:29.760]And we tend to think about those as series of connected
[00:05:37.140]articles that create kind of the dissertation itself.
[00:05:41.970]Right? Yeah.
[00:05:42.803]But there's a couple of things that you have touched upon
[00:05:45.540]that I think we really need to highlight,
[00:05:48.870]is that, one, it requires a lot of planning.
[00:05:52.680]So when you're thinking about
[00:05:54.330]a multiple-article dissertation,
[00:05:56.940]your are juggling really two things at once.
[00:06:00.479]This idea of what does my institution,
[00:06:03.900]what does my committee need in order to graduate me
[00:06:08.760]from the program?
[00:06:09.660]But then also, what are the demands of the larger field?
[00:06:15.480]Right? And the idea of an a multiple-article dissertation
[00:06:22.140]is only specific to particular fields, right?
[00:06:25.365]So like if you're in other fields,
[00:06:27.210]there is more of an impetus to publish a book.
[00:06:32.070]And that looks differently.
[00:06:34.833]A dissertation to book flip, as we like to call them,
[00:06:39.780]looks differently from a multiple-article piece.
[00:06:46.050]Right?
[00:06:47.310]So thinking about, in the end, once you've done
[00:06:51.840]all of that work on your dissertation, what bodes best
[00:06:56.310]for you in terms of the field that you're in?
[00:06:59.979]And then thinking about what is it that...
[00:07:06.960]What are the expectations from your institution
[00:07:10.350]and where else could those things go?
[00:07:12.120]So like it was really interesting to me to do
[00:07:15.960]some of the reading in research for this particular show,
[00:07:19.740]because there are institutions who are actually allowing
[00:07:23.400]instead of submitting a dissertation, you submit
[00:07:26.910]three accepted articles or four accepted articles
[00:07:30.990]that are going to be published in a journal
[00:07:33.780]as your dissertation, which I find just fascinating.
[00:07:39.330]It is fascinating.
[00:07:40.770]I've always been a little bit careful about that
[00:07:43.950]because I've had multiple students along the years
[00:07:50.850]that have said, "I want this to be published,"
[00:07:54.720]which is a great goal.
[00:07:56.940]And I've always to weigh, and I've advised always,
[00:07:59.797]"Don't promise because you don't know that you can deliver,
[00:08:03.810]because acceptance to journals is not totally up to you,
[00:08:07.410]whereas completing a dissertation is completely on you."
[00:08:09.840]That is, if you show up and if you do the work,
[00:08:13.110]it'll be fine.
[00:08:14.100]But publication has a cycle and has times,
[00:08:18.420]and some journals, and we've talked about this
[00:08:20.850]in other shows about publications,
[00:08:22.890]but some journals will give you an answer in a few weeks
[00:08:25.770]and some journals can take up to two years.
[00:08:28.890]And so if you sent to the wrong journal,
[00:08:31.680]now you can't graduate because you promised you would have
[00:08:34.260]three articles out.
[00:08:35.460]You can't graduate until that last journal accepts it.
[00:08:38.940]And that creates a certain level of friction.
[00:08:42.240]But I do like that as an idea of have things
[00:08:45.750]that will support you.
[00:08:47.430]Because what it does do is it help bridge the time
[00:08:51.540]between you as a graduate student
[00:08:54.390]and maybe publishing one or two,
[00:08:56.790]and then you as a starting assistant professor
[00:09:00.600]or a new researcher, or whatever your next job,
[00:09:02.420]or even a postdoc, you've got already things in the work
[00:09:06.810]that can help you bridge that transition.
[00:09:10.487]Because the transition from graduate students
[00:09:12.570]to whatever comes next is not easy.
[00:09:15.210]You're in a new place likely, you're doing new things
[00:09:17.970]with new people.
[00:09:19.140]You gotta find, and we talked about this
[00:09:21.630]when we talked about new jobs, you gotta find
[00:09:23.910]where the grocery store is and everything else.
[00:09:26.580]So you gotta have some things that are close to being done
[00:09:30.960]so your first year or year and a half do not look like
[00:09:34.620]you're not working.
[00:09:37.020]And publishing and making sure that you're reaching
[00:09:39.990]whatever the criteria is for a successful year.
[00:09:42.320]Well, and I think that highlights the function of...
[00:09:45.300]Like, the very real function of a dissertation
[00:09:48.990]in the practice of an academic life,
[00:09:53.190]is it does buy you that time.
[00:09:55.560]Yeah. Right?
[00:09:56.940]It allows you to have a little less of a transition.
[00:10:03.240]I didn't say that right.
[00:10:04.140]It allows you to have a little less stress
[00:10:06.240]in that transition from grad student
[00:10:10.410]to actual like assistant professor.
[00:10:13.620]And it's not, "Oh my gosh, I have to get involved
[00:10:15.390]in all these projects," which is actually
[00:10:16.800]the problem I fell into, where I think I said to you,
[00:10:22.950]I don't know if we got that on tape,
[00:10:24.510]but writing for my dissertation or pulling stuff
[00:10:28.710]out of my dissertation was not something I did well.
[00:10:31.500]And to go back to that, I actually did do it okay.
[00:10:36.240]Yeah. Surprisingly.
[00:10:37.830]Like looking back at my CV and like, "Oh wait, that came...
[00:10:40.620]Oh, and that and that and that."
[00:10:42.638]But the problem I ran into was, as an assistant professor,
[00:10:47.790]when you join an institution,
[00:10:50.160]you're kind of seen as this person who has time
[00:10:54.780]and resources and energy, right, to get stuff done.
[00:10:58.617]And so I got pulled onto a variety of different projects
[00:11:02.070]that kind of pulled me away from...
[00:11:06.210]They sucked up a lot of that time
[00:11:08.832]that I would've had.
[00:11:11.247]I'd just been like, "No, I'm good.
[00:11:12.668]I got some stuff that I'm working on right now."
[00:11:16.140]And we can talk about that another time,
[00:11:17.970]about how do you protect yourself,
[00:11:19.530]especially as a young faculty member.
[00:11:21.060]Because I think that is really important to think about.
[00:11:23.250]Everything is exciting, everything is shiny,
[00:11:25.530]and you also feel an obligation to prove yourself
[00:11:27.900]in a new place.
[00:11:28.733]And everyone is excited about you.
[00:11:29.910]Yes.
[00:11:30.743]And it's hard to be like, "Oh, you're excited about me.
[00:11:33.900]I wanna do things with you, let's do things. Let's go."
[00:11:37.440]And resist.
[00:11:39.210]Yeah. Resist.
[00:11:40.290]And have that moment where somebody's really excited
[00:11:43.830]and you're going, "Yeah, but let's wait a little."
[00:11:46.770]And that takes a little bit of...
[00:11:50.310]I would argue that takes a little bit of mentoring
[00:11:52.560]and somebody giving you the support
[00:11:54.720]that you need at that moment.
[00:11:56.850]But it also, it's just hard.
[00:11:59.070]Because you are in this business to get excited
[00:12:01.725]and to do wonderful things.
[00:12:04.680]And so the dissertation and thinking about,
[00:12:06.817]"How does my dissertation play out?" is important.
[00:12:10.350]The way I work with some of my students,
[00:12:12.990]especially the ones that I guide through, which the last few
[00:12:16.590]that have talked to me, I was on their committee,
[00:12:18.510]but were not mine.
[00:12:20.310]And I structure it as a way to think about the pilot study
[00:12:27.570]that will lead you to their dissertation,
[00:12:29.610]but is publishable.
[00:12:31.530]Whether it's examining an instrument or doing a mini version
[00:12:36.597]of what will be your dissertation or whatever it is.
[00:12:39.630]And that has proven really successful in having
[00:12:42.510]a publication before graduation.
[00:12:44.820]And then the dissertation itself will carry you through,
[00:12:47.940]and you've already put the infrastructure in publishing
[00:12:51.570]that pilot study of whatever it is at that point.
[00:12:56.370]And then you have those two pieces.
[00:12:58.830]In my case, one of the things that happened to me was,
[00:13:02.160]I did a pilot study in my own dissertation
[00:13:04.560]on a specific instrument that I created.
[00:13:08.280]It was lovely.
[00:13:09.210]And somebody, if I say so myself, and somebody published,
[00:13:15.810]just as I started working on that manuscript
[00:13:18.540]on that specific instrument,
[00:13:19.800]somebody published essentially the same thing.
[00:13:23.010]Not quite. And I'm going...
[00:13:25.110]The bastard.
[00:13:26.370]Yes. "You stole my thunder."
[00:13:28.980]But, yeah.
[00:13:30.600]So I didn't publish that and it was fine.
[00:13:34.680]But those are the things that you have to think about
[00:13:38.250]as you're doing, especially, and I've had a few people
[00:13:41.430]that have published, for example, the literature review,
[00:13:43.530]if they've conducted a meta-analysis that connected
[00:13:46.080]to the dissertation, and there's timing about that.
[00:13:48.960]So if you do have that in hand, you have to go ahead
[00:13:51.960]and write it up and put it out into the world
[00:13:54.240]because somebody will come.
[00:13:55.440]And you don't want to be to try to publish
[00:13:57.600]the fourth meta-analysis on that topic,
[00:13:59.580]or the fourth narrative literature review,
[00:14:03.810]because that's not gonna go as well.
[00:14:06.240]And that's not gonna get you
[00:14:07.830]the kind of attention you want.
[00:14:09.360]Well, and I think that's...
[00:14:10.890]So, I also did a multi-article dissertation,
[00:14:14.940]and shout out to James D'Amico, Karen Baldwin,
[00:14:18.780]Larry Mikolevsky, and Kylie Pepler
[00:14:20.730]for really helping me think through how all of that worked
[00:14:26.804]and how I could pull that together.
[00:14:30.750]Because some of the structures that they gave me
[00:14:33.930]to think about were, "Okay, you're going to tell,
[00:14:36.780]essentially, like three articles.
[00:14:39.240]Here's your..." So like you, my lit review in the beginning,
[00:14:43.860]was very truncated, right?
[00:14:47.340]Like, very broad-based.
[00:14:49.487]Here's the larger world of literacy.
[00:14:52.710]And then I had to dive back into that literature review
[00:14:57.330]in every subsequent chapter as I looked at
[00:15:00.120]these individual case studies.
[00:15:02.520]And what was super helpful around the mentoring that I got
[00:15:06.390]was thinking through all the various ways
[00:15:10.598]that I could slice what I was working on.
[00:15:14.160]So of course I had those three larger
[00:15:18.240]case-study-based articles and was fairly ready,
[00:15:22.530]like had a really clear notion of like what I could do
[00:15:26.490]with them to ship them out,
[00:15:27.870]of which I think I shipped out two out of the three.
[00:15:32.130]But also thinking through like methodologically,
[00:15:35.880]there were some things that I was playing with.
[00:15:37.920]And so that got published as a book chapter in a book
[00:15:43.170]around qualitative methodologies.
[00:15:47.160]Some of that lit review stuff got shipped elsewhere.
[00:15:50.610]So like I was able to... It was designed as three articles.
[00:15:57.270]But I think I actually managed,
[00:15:58.950]even though one of the articles I didn't send out,
[00:16:01.530]I managed to get like six different pieces out of that data,
[00:16:05.880]out of that writing.
[00:16:06.900]That's quite a bit. That was super helpful.
[00:16:08.640]And that's thanks to those people and their strategies.
[00:16:11.820]Sorry I let you down and didn't ship out the third one.
[00:16:15.720]I am a failure.
[00:16:17.490]You are not a failure.
[00:16:19.320]I mean, yeah, no I'm not. But it feels like.
[00:16:22.440]You are here, you are tenured.
[00:16:23.733]I am here. You are not a failure.
[00:16:25.770]I am tenured. I still have questions about that.
[00:16:28.380]But you know, whatever. Not my decision.
[00:16:31.260]Not my decision.
[00:16:33.660]So I think when, particularly when you are thinking
[00:16:39.349]about this strategy, where you are proactively thinking
[00:16:45.990]about ways to structure your dissertation,
[00:16:50.040]that allows you to flip it quite quickly.
[00:16:55.020]Whether that's your university allows you to write
[00:17:02.730]three articles, send them out, get them in print,
[00:17:07.601]and that counts as your dissertation,
[00:17:09.570]or you write the dissertation.
[00:17:11.490]We've talked a little bit about the pros and cons
[00:17:12.837]of both of those approaches.
[00:17:15.540]There's some strategies to be thinking about
[00:17:17.580]in terms of where do you see these things going?
[00:17:22.710]And then what are the requirements of your institution
[00:17:25.724]and your committee.
[00:17:27.360]'Cause they're the people who you need to keep happy.
[00:17:30.420]And I think that the other aspect
[00:17:34.590]of the dissertation phase and publication after dissertation
[00:17:38.370]is that it is, I at least recommend to all of my students,
[00:17:45.330]is collect more than you need.
[00:17:48.720]Don't promise your committee everything
[00:17:50.880]that you've collected and analysis of everything.
[00:17:53.370]Have that extra stuff that then you can leverage
[00:17:58.019]after you defended your dissertation, everything is great,
[00:18:01.680]you have another aspect that you haven't talked about.
[00:18:04.560]In my case, it was, for example, qualitative interviews
[00:18:08.550]with college students with learning disabilities
[00:18:11.670]about their strategies
[00:18:12.630]and how do they survive in this world.
[00:18:14.610]And that was another source of data
[00:18:18.690]that I could have leveraged for another publication.
[00:18:22.020]It sat in my journal, I never got to it.
[00:18:23.850]And that's fine too. Right?
[00:18:25.140]You didn't get to your last article, one less.
[00:18:28.740]I didn't get to my qualitative or by the time
[00:18:31.260]I got to my qualitative,
[00:18:32.760]I found out that all the tapes I used got erased.
[00:18:36.750]Because they sat in the drawer for that long, but--
[00:18:40.740]Your data atrophied. Yes.
[00:18:42.630]And actually there was a relief there as well
[00:18:46.320]'cause I didn't have to do it.
[00:18:48.330]But I mean, nobody has to do anything.
[00:18:51.150]But that sense of "I missed on a piece" was less there.
[00:18:54.750]Publisher perish, guy.
[00:18:56.310]Publisher perish, you have to publish.
[00:18:57.994]Still here.
[00:18:59.100]I published enough to get to where I needed to get.
[00:19:02.460]So that's fine.
[00:19:03.420]But you do want to have that extra data.
[00:19:06.030]And sometimes it doesn't fit.
[00:19:07.530]And the problem, not the problem,
[00:19:09.390]but what we're talking about in the dissertation phase
[00:19:11.490]is things need to fit together.
[00:19:13.290]And you may have gotten into a nugget
[00:19:15.150]where it's really interesting, it's really cool.
[00:19:17.340]You have the data.
[00:19:18.450]It actually doesn't fit and it really is a separate issue.
[00:19:22.230]So thinking about how do you slice and dice the data
[00:19:26.100]is really helpful as you are guiding and you're thinking,
[00:19:30.127]"Okay, where does this go?"
[00:19:31.560]And in a recent dissertation I talked to, a student,
[00:19:34.080]she has 450 pages of dissertation with enough
[00:19:39.450]for maybe four or five pieces.
[00:19:42.690]And so it's lovely.
[00:19:44.520]But you have to start thinking about reducing,
[00:19:48.570]because the average article out there is 7 to 9,000 words.
[00:19:52.590]10,000 is a luxury. A few places will let you have more.
[00:19:56.610]But a dissertation of a few hundred pages
[00:19:59.760]is considerably more than that.
[00:20:00.750]Okay, so let's segue when, shall we?
[00:20:02.460]Yes let's say.
[00:20:03.360]Because let's say that you have not watched
[00:20:06.630]this brilliant podcast, which if you have not yet,
[00:20:09.870]hit that Subscribe button.
[00:20:11.430]Is that what they say? I don't know.
[00:20:13.980]I suck at this like social media stuff.
[00:20:18.090]But if you haven't like been able to strategize
[00:20:21.000]and you find yourself with a more traditional
[00:20:23.670]five-chapter dissertation, how do you make like HGTV
[00:20:29.880]and flip that dissertation into a multi-family home?
[00:20:35.190]All right. Right?
[00:20:36.217]So if you haven't planned for that or you haven't had
[00:20:40.440]the availability to plan for that,
[00:20:42.844]that's now kind of one of your bigger challenges, right?
[00:20:46.740]Yeah. And you've got to decide...
[00:20:49.050]Again, it's how do you take a piece.
[00:20:51.660]So for example,
[00:20:53.040]in a lot of the dissertations we're seeing,
[00:20:54.900]we're seeing mixed methods, which is fantastic.
[00:20:58.020]But that means that you have a qualitative piece,
[00:21:00.510]likely, a qualitative piece, a quantitative piece,
[00:21:03.600]and then the both of them sandwich together.
[00:21:06.060]That, theoretically at least, can be three different pieces.
[00:21:09.870]One more that is more on the methodology,
[00:21:12.840]maybe the mixed methods piece.
[00:21:14.820]And then the qualitative and being able to really highlight
[00:21:18.840]everything you found qualitatively.
[00:21:20.520]Because usually when we try the mixing,
[00:21:22.860]it gets reduced somehow.
[00:21:24.570]And the quantitative, if it's really robust enough,
[00:21:30.420]that can be an article on its own.
[00:21:31.890]So that's one way.
[00:21:34.080]I've got right now somebody who's talking to me
[00:21:37.200]and they've got case studies, and there's a group
[00:21:40.770]of case studies that are rural schools
[00:21:42.450]and then a few that are urban schools.
[00:21:44.580]So you can divide it that way and do a rural paper
[00:21:47.670]and an urban paper.
[00:21:48.960]And so you have to think about the structure, and read it
[00:21:52.710]with new eyes or ask somebody else to read it with new eyes
[00:21:57.720]and say, "Here are the pieces that I'm seeing."
[00:22:01.110]And this is where working with a good advisor
[00:22:04.710]or somebody else who's a mentor can really, really help.
[00:22:07.890]Because sometimes we are too close to it.
[00:22:10.350]And we've worked really, really hard and it makes...
[00:22:13.050]Ultimately, the dissertation makes sense to us
[00:22:15.450]more than anything else in our life sometimes, I hope.
[00:22:19.221]Maybe sometimes not.
[00:22:20.970]But often it does in a way that is very visceral.
[00:22:23.850]And we see how everything connects
[00:22:25.470]and everything has to live together.
[00:22:27.240]And we need somebody to come from the outside and say,
[00:22:29.437]"Yes, I understand it all connects together
[00:22:31.590]as well, it should, it's a dissertation.
[00:22:33.750]But here are chunks that you can separate."
[00:22:37.246]And sometimes think, I mean we talked about this,
[00:22:39.660]you can do the lit review and you say,
[00:22:43.507]"I've got a really good lit review."
[00:22:45.090]Or maybe even some students,
[00:22:47.452]especially ones who are more quantitative-minded,
[00:22:50.490]do a meta-analysis.
[00:22:52.830]And you maybe need to make it a little more robustly,
[00:22:55.890]depending on how long you let it lie there,
[00:22:58.227]or how inclusive your search was,
[00:23:02.847]and you might need to work on it a little bit.
[00:23:05.610]This is not just take the text
[00:23:07.530]and drop it into a general article.
[00:23:09.013]Oh yeah. No.
[00:23:09.900]Okay, let's talk about that for a second.
[00:23:11.850]All right.
[00:23:13.440]Please, for the love of all that is good in the world.
[00:23:18.210]And for the people who are going to review your article.
[00:23:21.690]Yes.
[00:23:22.710]So please do not, do not, do not,
[00:23:29.700]do not just take a chapter of your dissertation
[00:23:36.180]and send it into a journal.
[00:23:39.180]'Cause if you get to a reviewer like me,
[00:23:42.120]and literally I pull it up and it says,
[00:23:44.467]"Chapter 4: Findings,"
[00:23:47.970]I'm gonna automatically reject it and send it back.
[00:23:51.930]Like... Yeah.
[00:23:53.340]Not gonna lie.
[00:23:56.160]'Cause if that's what happens, I am out the lit review,
[00:24:00.210]I don't know what methods that you've done,
[00:24:02.670]I don't know a lot about that study.
[00:24:05.580]And if you as a writer haven't done the work to repackage
[00:24:11.867]and remodel your dissertation work,
[00:24:15.270]why am I gonna take the time to do that?
[00:24:20.200]Yeah. And we do get it once in a while.
[00:24:22.260]You do get a--
[00:24:23.820]What are your rates, like once in a while.
[00:24:25.950]Tell me what that means. 'Cause I get at least two a year.
[00:24:28.290]Is that because I'm a sucker?
[00:24:30.030]I don't know. I get less than two a year.
[00:24:32.983]I think I'm now down to one a year.
[00:24:35.340]For a while it was worse.
[00:24:37.200]I think it really depends also on editors,
[00:24:39.450]because I think some editors return those.
[00:24:41.970]They do their... They skim through and say,
[00:24:44.737]"Hmm, no. Go and do the work."
[00:24:47.323]So I think it's up to editors.
[00:24:49.500]So now we're talking to editors.
[00:24:51.150]Please, please, please, just do a skim read.
[00:24:54.150]And if it looks like they're just sending the dissertation,
[00:24:57.180]and if that phrase, "In this dissertation,"
[00:25:00.120]shows up in the article, maybe that's a sign
[00:25:02.635]that they need to do a little bit more work.
[00:25:04.920]Yep.
[00:25:06.000]Although, also if you're willing to like,
[00:25:09.690]I'm more than willing to be like,
[00:25:10.523]"Reject, moving on. Here's why."
[00:25:15.180]But yeah, don't do that. It does not...
[00:25:17.610]'Cause it kind of shuts down your relationship
[00:25:19.530]with that journal, right? Yeah.
[00:25:21.360]Instead, even though you have
[00:25:24.030]this five-chapter dissertation, I would argue
[00:25:27.600]the first place you start is thinking about
[00:25:30.870]what are your findings, right?
[00:25:33.450]So what are the big findings in your dissertation?
[00:25:36.180]And how can you...
[00:25:40.980]Like, if you're thinking about your chapters as striations,
[00:25:44.190]right, like they're stacked upon one another,
[00:25:46.470]you have your lit review, your methods,
[00:25:49.080]et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
[00:25:50.850]how do you pull a chunk going straight down
[00:25:55.890]through all of those and move them into an article?
[00:25:59.820]And I find that it's helpful to think about doing that work
[00:26:06.840]around the findings, right?
[00:26:09.180]Who's gonna be interested in particular findings?
[00:26:13.200]Which findings have to stick together
[00:26:15.750]and which findings can kind of get pulled out?
[00:26:19.721]And then kind of engaging in a backwards design of,
[00:26:24.480]in order to talk about these findings,
[00:26:29.010]what do I need to pull from elsewhere in the dissertation?
[00:26:33.000]And, what do I need to adjust and shift and change?
[00:26:37.980]And this is a conversation that I've often heard
[00:26:42.450]and I keep hearing in the dissertation defense.
[00:26:45.960]Because you've got your committee,
[00:26:47.400]maybe a few other people there.
[00:26:49.590]And the committee will often, throughout the discussion,
[00:26:53.580]after you present and we've all kind of had time
[00:26:57.330]to think about it, and we've all read it,
[00:26:59.610]that's an opportunity for the committee members
[00:27:03.870]to talk about what is most significant.
[00:27:06.060]And sometimes it's hard to see what is most significant.
[00:27:08.910]Because you've got this sea, I'm in thinking right now
[00:27:11.850]about Ji Guo, who had a really interesting dissertation
[00:27:16.290]and he had lots of findings.
[00:27:18.270]But there was one thing that was really popped out for me,
[00:27:23.430]which was his work on self-regulation
[00:27:27.180]and the way we can see self-regulation
[00:27:29.599]inside learning management systems.
[00:27:37.080]So seeing the learning traces and being able to see
[00:27:40.140]how students manage their time and students manage
[00:27:42.960]their interaction with a course through how many times
[00:27:46.890]they look at the syllabus, things like that.
[00:27:48.780]He's done a fantastic job there.
[00:27:51.000]And he had a lot of other findings,
[00:27:53.040]but that finding kind of popped, and that became
[00:27:56.280]a couple of publications for him.
[00:27:58.320]And it's work he's continuing.
[00:27:59.734]So during that committee meeting,
[00:28:03.900]that was when it was discussed.
[00:28:05.610]So if you think about your dissertation,
[00:28:07.080]definitely, definitely record what has happened.
[00:28:10.290]Because at the time you're defending, your brain is melting,
[00:28:14.940]thinking about melting,
[00:28:16.890]is thinking about seven different things.
[00:28:19.020]You're trying to answer complex questions,
[00:28:21.510]you're a little bit panicked.
[00:28:23.670]Everything kind of comes at you.
[00:28:26.430]So you will not remember what has been said,
[00:28:28.830]at least not clearly.
[00:28:30.120]So recording it, if it's on Zoom,
[00:28:33.120]definitely, that makes it easy.
[00:28:34.890]But if it's not on Zoom, just have your phone and record it.
[00:28:39.240]Because later you can go back and there's actually usually
[00:28:42.390]very good advice about what journals you might think about,
[00:28:46.800]what are the things that capture the imagination,
[00:28:50.640]and that can serve as a guide to what are those slices
[00:28:54.540]that you can take out of your dissertation.
[00:28:57.060]And the other thing that I think is important
[00:28:58.950]to remember is genre.
[00:29:03.600]Yes. Right?
[00:29:04.620]It comes down to genre.
[00:29:05.880]Like, dissertations are a particular kind of genre.
[00:29:09.344]They serve a particular function, and they tend to be
[00:29:13.590]very much about can you, like from a sociocultural view,
[00:29:20.040]can you ground yourself in what is happening
[00:29:24.630]in the larger field?
[00:29:26.400]Right? So there's lots of...
[00:29:28.830]I think about my own dissertation,
[00:29:31.050]which is somewhat embarrassing.
[00:29:33.240]But like how much I had to be like,
[00:29:35.557]"Oh, I love these scholars and these scholars,
[00:29:38.250]and here's what they're doing and this over here and duh."
[00:29:41.010]Like there was a lot of exposition.
[00:29:44.473]Yeah. Right?
[00:29:45.720]Like if it were a novel, I would've broken up with me
[00:29:48.150]by like page 42.
[00:29:50.340]Right? And so...
[00:29:53.250]But that's the purpose of a dissertation,
[00:29:55.260]is you're supposed to show that, "Hey, look at me.
[00:29:58.830]I know all these things about this field and I am awesome.
[00:30:00.979]And hire me or graduate me. Then someone hire me."
[00:30:05.250]Yeah.
[00:30:06.570]But when you're thinking about writing for a journal,
[00:30:09.900]journals just kind of assume like,
[00:30:12.037]"If you're submitting to me,
[00:30:13.500]then you have already positioned yourself as someone
[00:30:16.500]who has expertise in this particular field."
[00:30:19.920]So you don't necessarily need all of that expository like,
[00:30:26.437]"Let me show you all the things that I know
[00:30:30.177]and all the various nuances that I can explore with you."
[00:30:33.570]Like, "Give me what's most important to your study."
[00:30:38.610]Because it's not, when I'm working with grad students
[00:30:43.110]as they're engaging in this shift from the dissertation
[00:30:46.980]that they've written into journal articles,
[00:30:49.440]like I believe a piece of feedback that I gave
[00:30:53.850]a recent student that I was working with was,
[00:30:57.757]"This is not Maxine Green's journal article, this is yours.
[00:31:02.430]So I get that that was very important to you
[00:31:05.220]and you want to spend four pages talking about it,
[00:31:07.800]but that's four pages before I've even been introduced
[00:31:10.200]to what you are trying to do."
[00:31:14.280]Right? So like it's not a lit review.
[00:31:18.965]Or I mean, it can be a lit review.
[00:31:20.760]Yeah, it can be. But then, really--
[00:31:22.590]Even then it needs to be guided by.
[00:31:24.960]It needs to be like, if it's a lit review,
[00:31:27.720]it's your process, how you went through that lit review,
[00:31:30.990]how you analyzed, how you put things together.
[00:31:34.260]And that's the commonality between that.
[00:31:37.461]Like, you have to foreground you and what you have done.
[00:31:44.670]Like, you're standing on people's shoulders, of course,
[00:31:48.270]but you're being very clear about,
[00:31:50.287]"Look, this is what I did, this is how I did it.
[00:31:53.130]This is what I found, this is how I found it."
[00:31:56.250]And partially, I think the way to think about it,
[00:31:58.530]is think about yourself as a reader
[00:32:00.180]when you are getting to somebody else's piece
[00:32:02.550]when you're reading it in a journal.
[00:32:04.170]You are interested to know that they're grounded,
[00:32:06.570]and you want to understand the theoretical framework
[00:32:09.450]or what other research they're basing their work on.
[00:32:12.420]But you don't want to read from Aristotle
[00:32:15.780]to Maxine Green kind of process.
[00:32:19.569]But until you get to what has actually happened,
[00:32:23.840]what is your contribution?
[00:32:25.680]I see the same thing when the graduate students
[00:32:28.440]sometimes present at conferences,
[00:32:30.810]you have 12 minutes and three minutes for discussions.
[00:32:33.450]If you talk about everybody else,
[00:32:35.850]you will not have time to tell us what you've done,
[00:32:38.010]which is why we came here.
[00:32:39.900]Exactly.
[00:32:40.733]We love, as academics, we love to be like,
[00:32:43.177]"Let me tell you everything that I know about this"
[00:32:45.330]versus, "Here's what I've done."
[00:32:47.310]Yeah. Right?
[00:32:48.240]And that's a shift and one that becomes really essential
[00:32:51.840]when you're thinking about getting into a journal article.
[00:32:57.870]And so keeping that in mind, right,
[00:33:00.977]like that shift in genre,
[00:33:03.737]the different ways that we write for that.
[00:33:07.230]Thinking about your findings, I also find it helpful
[00:33:11.250]to just build it a broad-base strategy around,
[00:33:16.867]"Okay, this is the first piece that I'm sending out.
[00:33:19.230]This is the second piece that I'm sending out.
[00:33:20.700]This is the third piece that I'm sending out."
[00:33:22.710]Partially because, one, you get to cite yourself,
[00:33:27.120]which is super fun.
[00:33:28.140]Yeah. Right?
[00:33:28.980]And that also selfishly saves me word count
[00:33:35.550]in subsequent publications,
[00:33:37.320]which is something to think about.
[00:33:38.460]Like, "Oh, I did this particular model,
[00:33:41.700]let me give you the basics.
[00:33:42.750]And oh, I'm gonna cite this earlier piece
[00:33:45.660]that I just sent out so I don't have to explain it all.
[00:33:49.770]But if you want more information, you can go see that."
[00:33:52.140]Yeah. That's great.
[00:33:53.100]And that's where a pilot study being published
[00:33:55.199]is exactly that.
[00:33:56.700]You're taking, you're kind of offloading from your need
[00:33:59.730]to explain and say, "You want to learn more
[00:34:03.000]about the context or you want whatever it is,
[00:34:05.940]or about an instrument or something like that?
[00:34:08.250]It's published, it's somewhere else, and I can move on."
[00:34:10.830]That's definitely a huge leg up.
[00:34:13.589]Again, thinking about word count and--
[00:34:16.020]Right. And staying on on point.
[00:34:18.240]On point. Yes.
[00:34:19.073]'Cause you're going from like a 300-page dissertation to,
[00:34:21.810]like you said, you have maybe 9,000 words, if you are lucky.
[00:34:25.500]Yeah. Right?
[00:34:26.480]And the other thing that I like to think about is,
[00:34:30.180]as I'm setting up which articles I'm gonna send out
[00:34:34.770]and their connectivity.
[00:34:36.000]Also, which one can I get out with the least amount of work?
[00:34:44.940]Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:34:45.870]Which when you're setting up your publication pipeline,
[00:34:51.150]which if you haven't seen that video, go see that one.
[00:34:52.706]Look at me, look at me hard-selling.
[00:34:53.861]Yeah. Nice connecting.
[00:34:55.470]Trying, I'm trying. Not good at it, but we'll go with it.
[00:34:59.880]Making Progress. Making progress, right?
[00:35:01.800]Like hard-sales, et cetera, are just weird.
[00:35:04.950]But when you're thinking about that publication pipeline,
[00:35:09.420]getting stuff out, getting stuff into
[00:35:14.848]that editorial process is important, right?
[00:35:16.798]Because timing is everything.
[00:35:18.720]Simply because you put it in, doesn't mean it's going
[00:35:20.940]to get published in like six months or anything, right?
[00:35:23.880]And then that also buys you time to think about
[00:35:27.932]which of those articles is going to be the most impactful.
[00:35:34.200]Like, which is the one that you want to send
[00:35:35.850]into that tier-one journal.
[00:35:38.730]That you're going to have to spend
[00:35:40.410]a bit more time prepping on.
[00:35:42.990]So if you have a manuscript that's a little less work...
[00:35:48.420]Go for it. Go for it.
[00:35:49.920]And then at the same time you're like building
[00:35:52.093]the structures for those two other, or three other,
[00:35:55.347]however many, I can only juggle three at a time.
[00:35:58.920]Bu other people might be able to do more, I don't know.
[00:36:03.583]But thinking about, okay, you get that one out,
[00:36:07.410]and then you get this one out,
[00:36:08.550]and then you get that final big one out.
[00:36:10.350]Or maybe you move the big one into the middle, I don't know.
[00:36:13.230]But thinking about having a strategy
[00:36:14.876]around that is super important.
[00:36:17.970]And one more thing that I want to mention,
[00:36:21.090]that while you are thinking about what's in the pipeline is,
[00:36:26.830]you may need to redo pieces of your analysis,
[00:36:32.580]either add to it, or you get some feedback at the defense
[00:36:36.780]and they're saying, "This is fine at this point,
[00:36:39.930]but you need to attend to these three things."
[00:36:42.870]Or, "We would've liked to hear more about that."
[00:36:45.360]So do not think about this,
[00:36:47.088]"These are the only findings I can have."
[00:36:50.670]You may need or you may want to add a layer
[00:36:55.890]or to do it in a better, more concise way.
[00:36:59.250]Because in a recent dissertation I looked at, for example,
[00:37:03.180]there were maybe 60 different models, quantitative models,
[00:37:08.610]that were analyzed.
[00:37:09.443]That is way more than you would put in maybe 10 articles.
[00:37:13.985]And it didn't warrant 10 articles.
[00:37:15.979]It was just a specific way that under, again,
[00:37:19.710]the genre of dissertation, they let it get through
[00:37:25.170]and it was fine, it did the work.
[00:37:27.510]But if you want to have a point
[00:37:30.090]and really concisely put everything together,
[00:37:33.300]it needed a somewhat different approach
[00:37:35.106]that was considerably more efficient
[00:37:36.990]without losing any of the data.
[00:37:38.670]And that is possible.
[00:37:39.810]Sometimes, especially on a qualitative side,
[00:37:42.990]you want to actually add a layer
[00:37:45.510]because there's not enough there.
[00:37:48.000]And especially if you're taking a piece
[00:37:49.710]and not the whole thing, you may actually want to expand it
[00:37:53.640]in a mixed methods dissertation.
[00:37:55.809]You might have a piece, and the qualitative was good,
[00:37:59.280]but you had more material but it just didn't fit in there
[00:38:02.367]and it served its purpose.
[00:38:03.870]But now that you're publishing it as a separate piece,
[00:38:07.650]you may want to add more of your data.
[00:38:10.290]So you go back and add a little bit
[00:38:11.970]and you cannot shy away from that.
[00:38:14.010]It's not a done deal, as long as you have data
[00:38:16.228]and you can think about it, there are better ways
[00:38:18.870]and your committee is there to help you think about it.
[00:38:20.787]And if you have a mentor, think with them.
[00:38:24.600]And if you need to bring somebody in as a co-author
[00:38:27.480]to help you organize, that might be a solution as well.
[00:38:30.960]Great.
[00:38:33.452]Because at the same time as you're doing all of that, right?
[00:38:36.360]Like again, this is about buying yourself some time,
[00:38:40.260]'cause as you're writing about the data
[00:38:41.727]that you've already collected,
[00:38:42.960]you're also getting new projects started, right?
[00:38:47.070]Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:38:48.660]So that's part of what allows you to,
[00:38:51.120]going back that pipeline, have a pipeline that continues
[00:38:55.320]to have stuff hit that will help you with your tenure file.
[00:38:59.850]Yes, eventually.
[00:39:01.474]And we maybe will do an episode about IRB
[00:39:08.820]and thinking about research
[00:39:10.964]both ethically and constructively.
[00:39:13.560]But I do want to say that one of the things
[00:39:17.002]that you may want to have is you can't think
[00:39:19.950]of your dissertation as a thing on its own.
[00:39:23.610]It's something in a train, right?
[00:39:26.070]If you have three different papers in it,
[00:39:28.830]that's already good.
[00:39:30.090]But I think about it, you have pilot studies before that
[00:39:32.725]that lead you to the dissertation.
[00:39:33.979]And dissertation most likely needs to lead you
[00:39:36.720]to the next few things.
[00:39:38.640]So if you think about your IRB,
[00:39:40.539]I always advise my students, "Open up the IRB.
[00:39:43.986]I know you want to finish in August, 2024,
[00:39:47.310]but write the IRB until August 2028."
[00:39:50.685]You can keep collecting data, even if you finish in '24.
[00:39:53.850]If you still are affiliated with the university,
[00:39:56.400]you can keep collecting data, and you can keep expanding,
[00:40:00.300]changing, morphing it.
[00:40:01.740]That's easier than doing a new one.
[00:40:03.840]So if you are really thinking you will continue
[00:40:06.719]in that field, you definitely want to do that.
[00:40:09.300]In my case, that wouldn't have worked
[00:40:10.950]because I've shifted from work.
[00:40:14.400]My dissertation work as was about college students
[00:40:16.239]with learning disabilities and that is not what I do now.
[00:40:21.060]Although it is an area...
[00:40:23.040]Because it's a very small area of expertise,
[00:40:26.190]I get to do a lot of reviews in that area,
[00:40:29.190]and I get a lot of citations in that area
[00:40:31.620]because there's a limited number of people
[00:40:33.247]who are publishing.
[00:40:34.650]So it's an interesting field that I keep actually up on
[00:40:38.130]because I'm one of the people they keep turning to,
[00:40:41.767]"Oh, we've got an article about college students
[00:40:44.460]or adults with learning disabilities."
[00:40:47.160]So I keep abreast of that field in delightful ways,
[00:40:51.510]but that was unique to my situation.
[00:40:55.890]There's a variety of things when we'll talk about
[00:40:58.350]dissertations a little bit more, I can talk about that.
[00:41:00.960]But my work before that was about reading acquisition.
[00:41:05.070]Then I talked about college students
[00:41:07.860]with learning disabilities.
[00:41:08.693]And then in my job, when I got here,
[00:41:11.190]and I started doing research,
[00:41:12.360]I went back to reading acquisition and motivation
[00:41:14.252]around reading acquisition.
[00:41:15.840]So that was almost a detour for me.
[00:41:19.500]And now you just do everything.
[00:41:20.787]No, no. I do not do everything.
[00:41:22.740]You kind of do. Quite a bit.
[00:41:24.330]Kind of feels like you do a lot of things.
[00:41:27.990]There's a price for that.
[00:41:29.550]There is. There is.
[00:41:31.110]But you do delightful things in delightful ways.
[00:41:33.480]Thank you. So, all right.
[00:41:35.190]So in this episode we've been thinking about moving
[00:41:39.030]from dissertation to publication.
[00:41:42.150]Two different ways to think about it.
[00:41:44.040]One is planning for that dissertation
[00:41:47.700]as a collection of articles.
[00:41:49.470]But if you haven't had the chance to do that
[00:41:50.632]and you find yourself with a five-chapter dissertation,
[00:41:53.910]there's some ways to slice that,
[00:41:55.560]some ways to be thinking about organizing it,
[00:41:58.920]getting it out there, and making it work, right?
[00:42:05.190]So we've got a couple of ideas of future episodes. So...
[00:42:12.480]And if you want to give us other ideas,
[00:42:14.610]you can contact us and tell us all about them.
[00:42:17.340]Comment, comment. Comment, like, and subscribe.
[00:42:21.180]Is that the other thing I'm supposed to say?
[00:42:22.560]Yes, I think so.
[00:42:23.970]Why am I doing all the hard-sell right now?
[00:42:25.620]That's usually you.
[00:42:27.000]I know. I don't know. What is wrong?
[00:42:30.090]I think you want to go into sales.
[00:42:32.160]I don't, actually. I really don't.
[00:42:34.503]Okay, I'll stay in my lane and I'll do the sale.
[00:42:37.440]I mean...
[00:42:38.273]Like, comment, and subscribe.
[00:42:42.090]With ideas. But this has been super enjoyable.
[00:42:47.160]Oh, also new background, kind of.
[00:42:48.810]We don't know if we're gonna stay here or not.
[00:42:49.920]We don't know what we're doing.
[00:42:51.720]Speaking of remodeling.
[00:42:53.610]Yes.
[00:42:54.443]So anyway, we're not that kind of doctor.
[00:42:56.880]Thanks for hanging out with us. See you in the next one.
[00:42:58.876](soft upbeat music)

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Not That Kind of Doctor - Turning Your Dissertation into Manuscripts

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