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Publications: Dissertations & Theses

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• Dissertations & Theses @ Walden University The database contains full text of dissertations and theses written by Walden students.
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global The Dissertations and Theses database gives you full text access to over 3 million dissertations and theses from schools and universities around the world, including Walden dissertations. You can choose to search either all the dissertations and theses, or just those created at Walden.

Find dissertations by topic, degree, or chair

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Education: Full-text Dissertations

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Dissertations - National

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global‎: Full Collection Citations to dissertations and some theses from 1861 to present. Most records are from the U.S. Fulltext for most dissertations added since 1997 and some coverage for older graduate works. Also includes PQDT UK & Ireland abstracted content. Some full-text PDFs for dissertations from select UK institutions are being added.

Penn Dissertations

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: University of Pennsylvania subfile A subset of the ProQuest Dissertations covering Penn dissertations only. Citations from 1899 forward and fulltext from 1997 to the present. Selected full-text available prior to 1997. Search for advisor, author, or keywords. A search of the program name may pick up some dissertations for specific programs as this information may be on the cover page.
• Publicly Accessible Dissertations from University of Pennsylvania Starting in December 2015, Penn requires dissertations to be publicly available. These are hosted on the ScholarlyCommons website.

PennGSE Dissertations

Publically Accessible GSE Dissertations in ScholarlyCommons@Penn (2010-present)

GSE Dissertations in ScholarlyCommons@Penn (2008 and before) - Only accessible on campus

• GSE Dissertation records in the Franklin Catalog - Recent dissertations are available online, with a single print copy in the library collections. Older dissertations are represented by two print copies, as well as a microfilm copy. Print dissertations may circulate outside the Library. Search by author, title, or the subject heading: Penn dissertations--Education.
• PennCLO Dissertation records in the Franklin Catalog - Dissertations have the subject heading: Penn dissertations -- Chief Learning Officer Program or Work-based Learning Leadership .  Some records will be for print, others for online. Take the author/citation information and search in ProQuest dissertations for full-text.

Requesting Dissertations - Interlibrary Loan

• Interlibrary Loan - Book request form Non-Penn dissertations that are not available in full-text in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses may be requested through the Penn Library's Interlibrary Loan service. Make requests using the online request form for a book available on the left side of the BorrowDirect+/ILL page.

Penn Dissertion Manual

Dissertation Manual for the University of Pennsylvania Instructions on policies, formatting, and submissions.

Grad Center - Thesis and Dissertation Support

Dissertation Preparation guides

Additional Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETDs) Search Sites

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)

• Global ETD Search
• Find ETDs - Listing of searchable these and dissertation sites arranged by country and region.

PQDT Open (ProQuest)

• Open Access Theses and Dissertations Records come for institutional repositories, regional or national ETD consortia, and a set of ETD catalog records provided by OCLC Worldcat. With few exceptions, records are harvested from these sites using a standard called the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)  
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• Last Updated: Apr 16, 2024 8:23 AM
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• Public Resources
• Publishing Your Dissertation in a…

Publishing Your Dissertation in a Scholarly Journal

So you’ve decided you want to earn a PhD. You have read about the road blocks , you’ve selected your committee, and you’ve started writing your dissertation. But why start thinking about a publication? What does that have to do with earning the ultimate degree?

Writing a dissertation without a publication is like going to the trouble of making a cake but not baking it. No one can taste your cake, no one can benefit from your hard work—of course, no one can criticize your work either. But without a publication, or two or three, the dissertation is not technically a total success. You’d be amazed at how many people don’t get a publication out of their dissertation. Without advanced planning, a publication likely won’t happen, because, once again, there are often unanticipated roadblocks.

1. Publication will be completely driven by you and no one else. A publication will not be on the priority list of your dissertation committee. And you will likely be the only one to understand where to publish.

2. Planning is the most important step and the only way to be successful. If you wait until after you go through the dissertation process, you will be too exhausted to publish, and it won’t happen for a year or two. You must plan.

3. Configure your dissertation for three separate publications. This may be three separate chapters, or it may be three different data sets or arms of your data. Link this to the selection of your committee. In my previous articles, I recommended choosing a committee wisely, with different members being associated with different jobs. Committee members should not have similar areas of expertise. Their “jobs” should not overlap. There should be a content expert or literature review expert, a methods person, a results person and a “whip.” Ideally, the “whip” (think politics, as in majority whip or minority whip in Congress) is your dissertation chair. The jobs of each member should be distinct to avoid having members fighting or making conflicting suggestions. Each article should be aligned with a separate expert. So there can be a Review article, a Methods article, and a Results article.

4. You get to decide who is listed as an author on your articles. You will be first author, and your mentor should be last author (a position of honor). If a committee member does not contribute, they ethically should not be included in the list of authors. Many journals now ask you to list the authors along with their meaningful contributions.

5. Decide ahead of time the journals in which you wish to publish. Full disclosure — I am on the board of the Journal of the American Academy of PAs (JAAPA), and I’m a reviewer for the Journal of Physician Assistant Education (JPAE). I’m going to recommend these PA journals for one of your publications. Here is my pitch (although biased): We are THE scholarly journals for the profession. If your data is completely focused on PA education, then select JPAE. Think about JAAPA for any research on PAs themselves or PA analogues. Select a PA journal for a personal touch and some really important feedback. Your article will be on a stage with your peers. This gives you the home crowd advantage.

6. Lose ownership. Remember how I said your dissertation is like your baby? Well, your baby now has gone through elementary school and the tumultuous teenage years and currently is entering college. Your publication needs you to back off and give it some space. It will leave home for a while (often for the long review process). When it comes back, it might need to do some laundry, but it should essentially not look at all like the baby you once knew. A publication should look like a publication, not a dissertation. It should be neat and mature and all grown up.

7. Try for the highest level journal you can realistically get published in. Here is the main problem: time. You cannot ethically submit the same article to multiple journals. You will need to make sure you have three completely separate articles in order to submit to multiple journals. There are many people who believe you should publish in the most prestigious journal you can make it into. I do not disagree with this philosophy; however, the alternative is that your work might not get read in a higher scholarly journal because PAs and PA educators don’t tend to read these other journals. This is for you to decide. There are websites that can help you determine where to publish. But be careful and check out Beall’s List, a list of potentially predatory “scholarly” open-access publishers.

8. Best of luck — and don’t fail to publish. Don’t bake your cake and not put it in the oven. Remember to reach out to your peers within the profession to aid in your success. Ultimately, your committee will be pleased to add a publication to their CVs. They will remember this as their reward for all the hard work that they (and you) put into your PhD.

A publication is the lasting legacy for all of your tough efforts and sacrifice. It is the “so what” of all you have put into this academic Mt. Everest. Consider the impact that your work will have on the profession. Don’t run the marathon (or climb the mountain) and not cross the finish line!

Jennifer Coombs, PhD, MPAS, PA-C

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THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

• Academic Policies & Procedures

Dissertation Publication

Doctoral dissertations document the discoveries, findings and insights gained through University-supported research. The University requires — and takes responsibility for ensuring — that dissertations produced in fulfillment of degree requirements will be part of the publicly available scholarly record.

TGS deposits dissertations into the ProQuest Database and the  institutional repository  of Northwestern University. 

Copyright Policy

Except under unusual special circumstances, student authors own copyright for their dissertations and the University’s right to publish is non-exclusive. This means that the author, as the copyright owner, is free to also publish the work. Authors may make arrangements with other entities (such as scholarly societies and commercial publishers) for publication of the dissertation as a whole or in part, as well as for publication of other works derived from, or building on, the dissertation work. However, authors may not grant any other entity exclusive publication rights to the dissertation itself.

Northwestern University may use its copy or copies and make the content available to others without restriction. The University Library’s  scholarly research services  has resources to help scholars understand publishing options and author’s rights.

Copyright policy can be found at NU’s  Innovation and New Ventures Office  web page.

Delay of Publication (Embargo)

Students may elect to delay publication of the dissertation by submitting a request providing a rationale for the embargo and selecting an embargo length when depositing the dissertation via ProQuest. Students will have the option to select a publishing option that pertains to the  ProQuest database  and separately to the  institutional repository . An embargo has the effect of restricting online access to the dissertation through the ProQuest database and through the institutional repository for the period of the embargo. Metadata (author, title, abstract, keywords and subjects) about the embargoed dissertation will be available through ProQuest and the library catalog. Users of those systems are able to search for and see the metadata, but not the actual text or other content of the dissertation.  The University’s expectation is that dissertations approved by TGS will be released for use through the ProQuest database and through the institutional repository without delay. The University is proud of the accomplishments of its PhD graduates and wants their research to be available to the world as soon as possible. Consult TGS's policy on dissertations as well as the Institutional Repository Publishing Frequently Asked Questions for Dissertation Authors  for more information.

Dissertation Assistance

TGS recognizes that scholarly writing is a process that benefits from conversations and consultations with others. As such, TGS supports Northwestern services such as The Graduate Writing Place, graduate writing workshops, and dissertation boot camps, which offer appropriate levels of writing assistance, provided by facilitators/consultants who are trained to help you avoid any academic integrity violations. Beyond such services, all graduate student writers should consult with their advisors about appropriate forms of assistance before assistance is rendered. Regardless of the type of assistance you receive with your writing, it is appropriate to acknowledge this support. The policy on Dissertation Assistance can be found in the  Policy section .

Research Data Archiving

Researchers and institutions have a shared responsibility to ensure long-term research data preservation. The University Libraries offers data repository and management services to help students archive research data and analysis code for others to find and use. For a list of all services available, please take a look here .  

Arch  is a digital repository service for research materials. Students can use this service to deposit any supplemental files created for the dissertation research to be made available to the public, including data, analysis code, figures, presentations, and media. In addition to Arch, Northwestern researchers have access to Dryad, a data repository for preserving and sharing research data. Northwestern’s institutional membership allows researchers to archive and share any size data file at no additional cost.  

Thesis & Dissertation Guidelines

These guidelines provide students at Vanderbilt University with essential information about how to prepare and submit theses and dissertations in a format acceptable to the Graduate School. You can either explore the guidelines by topic below or review the complete Format Guidelines document .

General Information

Manuscript preparation.

• NEW: Dissertation Template
• Approved LATEX Template for Dissertations

Submission Requirements

Students in foreign language departments may submit manuscripts in a language other than English. The abstract, however, must be in English.

You may use a multi-part presentation format for combining original research that has been conducted in two or more related or non-related areas, or for presentation of combined journal articles (published or submitted for publication). You should organize the parts or articles into chapters, with well-defined subheadings, including an introduction, methods, results and discussion. Each chapter may contain its own list of references and appendices, or you may list them all at the end, depending on the custom of your discipline.

When using this format, the thesis or dissertation should nonetheless consist of an integrated argument that binds the chapters together. You should include the appropriate preliminary pages, an introduction presenting the general theme of the research, and a conclusion summarizing and integrating the major findings. Any additional appendices related to the dissertation as a whole or any general references from the introduction, conclusion or transitional sections should come at the end of the dissertation.

When you have previously published portions of your thesis or dissertation as an article or book chapter, you must ensure the work may also be published as part of the dissertation or thesis. The  standard provisions of copyright law  regarding quoted and previously published material under copyright apply to the publication of theses and dissertations. Many publishers provide exceptions to work published as part of graduation requirements and this is often clearly outlined as part of the publication agreement signed by the author.

In order to include your own previously published or co-authored material in your thesis or dissertation, you must comply with the following:

• You must be the first author, or obtain permission from your committee, to be uploaded as an Administrative file in Vireo.
• The article must be based on research completed while you were enrolled at Vanderbilt University.
• You must have permission from the publisher to reuse the work, which should be uploaded to VIREO as an Administrative file. The record of permission may take the form of the publishing agreement, a copy of the publisher’s webpage describing reuse rights, or an email approval from the publisher. You should also identify which chapters are associated with which articles when prompted within VIREO.
• If there are co-authors, you must obtain the permission of all co-authors to include the work in the thesis or dissertation as a matter of both copyright law and professional courtesy. Include these permissions (email approval is acceptable) as an Administrative file in VIREO.
• You must properly acknowledge previously published material and any co-authors within the text of your manuscript. This would typically take the form of a footnote, or, alternately, an italicized statement beneath the relevant chapter heading. The rubric should be: “This chapter is adapted from [Title] published in [Journal] and has been reproduced with the permission of the publisher and my co-authors [List co-authors]” and include the full citation required by the publisher, if any, or appropriate to your discipline.

If the work is submitted to the ProQuest database, ProQuest will scan the document to ensure it contains no copyrighted material without consent and proper citation.

Inclusion of Third-Party Content

If you are including content in your dissertation not authored or created by you, consider copyright issues. If your use of the content would exceed fair use under the Copyright Act, then you will need to seek the copyright holder’s permission in order to use the material. Obtaining copyright permissions often takes time and should not be left until the last minute.

You should discuss questions about copyrighted material with your dissertation advisor or contact the VU Librarian for Copyright and Scholarly Communications at  [email protected]  for help evaluating fair use or obtaining permissions.

Your thesis or dissertation is automatically protected by copyright as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form, such as being saved as an electronic file.  Although not required, it is good practice to include the copyright symbol, your name, and the year on the title page of your work (© 2017 by [your name]).

You also may choose to register your copyright, which will gain you additional protections in case of litigation for copyright infringement. You can file a copyright registration online directly with the  U.S. Copyright Office  for a fee of $45.00.

You will be asked to agree to the license to deposit your submission to the Vanderbilt Institutional Repository.  The Library, with the Vanderbilt Institutional Repository, enhances the metadata provided with your dissertation and adds your record to discovery tools like the Library Catalog and WorldCat, making it easily findable for scholars worldwide. The library also maintains the technical infrastructure of the repository.  If you plan to make your dissertation open access, we can assist you in understanding the options for licensing. If your dissertation makes use of copyrighted content, you will want to think early on about whether you may rely on fair use or need to acquire licenses. We will be glad to meet with you to discuss the requirements of your particular project.

PhD students also have the option to request deposit of your submission with ProQuest, at no additional cost to you. If you elect to deposit your submission with ProQuest, you must also agree to the ProQuest license. This agreement is entirely between you and ProQuest.  Vanderbilt’s sole responsibility is to pass on the license agreement and your work to ProQuest.  Please contact ProQuest Dissertation Publishing, at 1(800) 521-0600 or  [email protected]  with any questions.

The expectation of the Graduate School is that all theses and dissertations will be made publicly available absent these limited circumstances.  You have the option to make your submission available immediately or to temporarily embargo its release for a limited period of time. Students may elect to embargo their work if they anticipate publication, are making a patent application, have restrictions imposed by sponsors, or privacy concerns.  Metadata, including the abstract, about your submission will still be visible in the Vanderbilt Institutional Repository, thereby indicating that your submission was accepted.  You should discuss any anticipated hold on publication with your advisor. If selecting the ProQuest publishing option, be sure that you make the same embargo selection under the Vanderbilt options. Once your submission has been released to ProQuest, we have no ability to retract it.

If, after consultation with your advisor, you would like to request a temporary embargo, you can elect from the following:

• No embargo and release immediately for worldwide access
• Six (6) month embargo
• Twelve (12) month embargo
• Twenty-four (24) month embargo

If you, after consultation with your advisor, determine that you need to extend your embargo beyond your initial selection, you can only do so with permission from the Graduate School. If you have questions about your embargo, you may email  [email protected]

The Graduate School recommends Campus Copy for procuring bound copies of theses and dissertations. You may contact them directly at 615-936-4544, or online at  Printing Services .

These guidelines provide students at Vanderbilt University with essential information about how to prepare and submit theses and dissertations in a format acceptable to the Graduate School. The topics range from writing style to the completion of required forms. There are instructions and sample pages on the Graduate School website for guidance through this process.

There is a distinct difference between submitting a manuscript to a publisher and providing a completed thesis or dissertation to the Graduate School. A manuscript represents a pre-publication format; a thesis or dissertation is a final, completely edited, published document. Students should use these guidelines, not other style manuals, as the final authority on issues of format and style. Areas not covered in this document or deviation from any of the specifications should be discussed with a Graduate School format editor. Do not use previously accepted theses and dissertations as definite models for style.

Manuscripts consist of four major sections and must be placed in the order listed:

• Title Page (required)
• Copyright (optional)
• Dedication (optional)
• Acknowledgments/Acknowledgment of Support (optional)
• Table of Contents (required)
• List of Tables (required)
• List of Figures (required)
• List of Abbreviations/Nomenclature/Symbols (optional)
• Introduction (may be referred to as Chapter 1)

Body of Manuscript

• References  (required)
• Appendices  (optional)

The dedication is an optional portion of the academic manuscript. It is a personal message from the author in tribute to a person, group, or cause. Most dedications are brief statements beginning with “To…” or “For…” such as “To my family” or “For my daughter, Samantha.” The dedication, if any, is considered to be the sole work of the author and does not reflect endorsement of the views and opinions expressed therein by Vanderbilt University, the Graduate School, or the members of the faculty committee.

The acknowledgment is another optional portion of the academic manuscript. It is appropriately used to thank those people and organizations that have helped or encouraged the author in the process of obtaining the degree or otherwise making the graduate degree possible: advisers, the committee, labmates or members of one’s cohort, family, friends, etc. Typically, an acknowledgment is no more than 1 page in length.

Acknowledgment of grant/contract or other financial support may be included on the acknowledgment page. Similarly, permission to reprint copyrighted material may be included here.

The acknowledgment, if any, is considered to be the sole work of the author and does not reflect endorsement of the views and opinions expressed therein by Vanderbilt University, the Graduate School, or the members of the faculty committee.

The abstract is a separate document from the manuscript; it is not bound with the thesis or dissertation. Abstracts must be printed on white, 8 ½ x 11-inch paper. No page numbers are printed on the abstract. One copy is required. Abstracts must have the original signature(s) of the faculty advisor(s). The maximum length of the thesis abstract is 250 words. The maximum length of the dissertation abstract is 350 words, including the dissertation title. Majors are listed on the last pages of these guidelines.

NEW: Abstract sample

The title page must be printed on white, 8 ½ x 11-inch paper. Committee member signatures on the title page must be originals. Spacing on the title page will vary according to the length of the title. The five lines following your name must be formatted exactly as found on the sample title page. The title page is considered page ‘i’ but the page number is not printed on the page.  The month, day, and year representing the conferral date must be listed on the title page.

• NEW: ETD Title Page sample
• NEW: Title Page With Signatures sample

Use a standard font consistently throughout the manuscript. Font size should be 10 to 12-point for all text, including titles and headings. It is permissible to change point size in tables, figures, captions, footnotes, and appendix material. Retain the same font, where possible. When charts, graphs, or spreadsheets are “imported,” it is permissible to use alternate fonts. Italics are appropriate for book and journal titles, foreign terms, and scientific terminology.  Boldface  may be used within the text for emphasis and/or for headings and subheadings. Use both in moderation.

Measure the top margin from the edge of the page to the top of the first line of text. Measure the bottom page margin from the bottom of the last line of text to the bottom edge of the page. Page margins should be a minimum of one-half inch from top, bottom, left, and right and a maximum of one inch from top, bottom, left, and right. Right margins may be justified or ragged, depending upon departmental requirements or student preference.

The title page is considered to be page ‘i’ but the page number should not be printed on this page. All other pages should have a page number centered about ½ inch from the bottom of the page. Number the preliminary pages in lowercase Roman numerals. Arabic numerals begin on the first page of text. Pages are numbered consecutively throughout the remainder of the manuscript. The Introduction may be placed before the first page of Chapter 1, if it is not considered a chapter. The use of Arabic numbers may begin on the first page of the Introduction.

The entire text may be single-spaced, one and one-half spaced, or double-spaced. Block quotations, footnotes, endnotes, table and figure captions, titles longer than one line, and individual reference entries may be single-spaced. With spacing set, the following guidelines should be applied: Two enters after chapter numbers, chapter titles and major section titles (Dedication, Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, List of Abbreviations, Appendices, and References). Two enters before each first- level and second-level heading. Two enters before and after tables and figures embedded in the text. One enter after sub-level headings.

Chapters may be identified with uppercase Roman numerals or Arabic numbers. Styles used on the Table of Contents should be consistent within the text. Tables, figures, footnotes, and equations should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript with Arabic numerals. These may also be numbered consecutively by each chapter. Equation numbers should be placed to the right of the equation and contained within parentheses or brackets. Use uppercase letters to designate appendices.

Departments will determine acceptable standards for organizing master’s theses into chapters, sections, or parts.  Usually, if a thesis has headings, a Table of Contents should be included. The dissertation must be divided into chapters. The use of parts, in addition to chapters, is acceptable.

Words and Sentences

Take care to divide words correctly. Do not divide words from one page to the next. Word processing software provides for “widow and orphan” protection. Utilize this feature to help in the proper division of sentences from one page to another. In general, a single line of text should not be left at the bottom or top of a page. Blank space may be left at the bottom of a page, where necessary.

Headings and Subheadings

Use headings and subheadings to describe briefly the material in the section that follows. Be consistent with your choice of “levels” and refer to the instructions on spacing for proper spacing between headings, subheadings, and text. First-level headings must be listed on the Table of Contents. Second-level and subsequent subheadings may be included.

Acronyms/Abbreviations/Capitalization

Abbreviations on the title page should appear as they do in the body of the thesis or dissertation. (Examples:  Xenopus laevis , Ca, Mg, Pb, Zn; TGF-β, p53.) Capitalize only the first letter of words of importance, distinction, or emphasis in titles and headings. Do not alter the all-cap style used for acronyms (Example: AIDS) and organizational names (Example: IBM). Use the conventional style for Latin words (Examples:  in vitro, in vivo, in situ ). Genus and species should be italicized. Capitalize the first letter of the genus, but not that of the species name (Example:  Streptococcus aureus ).

Figures commonly refer to photographs, images, maps, charts, graphs, and drawings. Tables generally list tabulated numerical data. These items should appear as close as possible to their first mention in the text. Tables and figures may be placed in appendices, if this is a departmental requirement or standard in the field. Tables and figures should be numbered with Arabic numerals, either consecutively or by chapter. Be consistent in the style used in the placement of tables and figure captions. Tables and figures may be embedded within the text or placed on a page alone. When placed on its own page, a figure or table may be centered on the page. When included with text, a table or figure should be set apart from the text. Tables and figures, including captions, may be oriented in landscape. Make sure to use landscape page positioning on landscape-oriented pages. Table data and figure data must be kept together, if the information fits on one page.

The submission process for theses and dissertations begins at the Graduate School. Forms must be digitally submitted to the Graduate School.

View the Checklist for Graduation

The Vanderbilt Libraries have recently implemented  VIREO , an Electronic Thesis & Dissertation review and submission system for the Graduate School. The Graduate School requires electronic submission of all theses and dissertations through this new platform. Format reviews now occur within the VIREO submission process. If you have questions or would like an in-person format review,  contact administrators .

Students will use their VUnet ID and password to log in and begin completing the appropriate information, as outlined below.

Verify Your Information

• Orcid ID (can obtain in VIREO)
• Department/Program, Degree, Major
• Phone & Address

 License & Publication Agreements

• Vanderbilt License Agreement (required)
• ProQuest Publication (optional)

 Document Information

• Title, degree month/year, defense date, abstract, keywords, subjects, language
• Your committee, Chair email
• Previously published material (optional)
• Embargo options

Upload Your Files

• Primary document: thesis/dissertation
• Additional files: supplemental, source, administrative (CV, Survey of Earned Doctorates (additional SED information is in the Ph.D. Dissertation Requirements accordion below))

Confirm and Submit

• Students will receive a confirmation email once submitted

Any documents you will be uploading into VIREO as administrative files should be saved as a PDF, and named with your last name, first name-file-conferral month and year. Examples:

• King, Amanda-IntraTermApp-032021.pdf
• King, Amanda-CV-052021.pdf
• King, Amanda-SED-052021.pdf
• King, Amanda-Title Page-052021.pdf
• King, Amanda-Permissions-052021.pdf
• King, Amanda-DGS Approval-052021.pdf

Intent to Graduate OR Intra-term Application

Please note all students must submit either an Intent to Graduate form or an Intra-Term Application. Students planning to graduate at the end of the fall, spring, or summer term should submit the Intent to Graduate form through YES. Students planning to graduate on one of the  intra-term dates  should instead complete the Intra-Term Application and submit as an administrative file in their VIREO profile.

Format Review

A format review is required before thesis or dissertation approval. Review will take place through VIREO when you first upload your document. Allow time before the deadline for review and revisions. For questions contact  [email protected] .

Submit one copy of the title page, with original signatures of the advisor and a second reader (either a member of the committee or DGS of the program). The date on the title page will reflect the month, day, year of degree conferral.

Submit one copy of the abstract with the signature of the advisor.

Completion of Master's Degree Form

Form must be completed and signed by the advisor and the DGS, then submitted securely by the program.

Please note all students must submit either an Intent to Graduate form or an Intra-Term Application. Students planning to graduate at the end of the fall, spring, or summer term should submit the Intent to Graduate form through YES. Students planning to graduate on one of the  intra-term dates  should instead complete the Intra-Term Application and submit as an administrative file in their VIREO profile.

Defense Results

Students must schedule the Defense Exam with the Graduate School two weeks prior to the exam. Students will bring the Defense Results Form (along with the Title Page & Abstract) to obtain committee signatures. Upload the signed title page and abstract as one administrative file (title pate first followed by abstract) to VIREO as an administrative file, and have your department submit the defense results to the  graduate school submissions portal.

Title Page (+ Extra Copy)

Upload your signed title page as an administrative file in VIREO. The date on the title page will reflect the month, day, year of degree conferral. Be sure it is the date of conferral and not the date of your defense.

Upload your signed abstract as an administrative file in VIREO.

Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED)

Students finishing a doctorate degree are required to complete the  SED survey . Information provided to the National Opinion Research Council remains confidential and will be used for research or statistical purposes. Submit the Certificate of Completion with your VIREO submission as an administrative file.

Curriculum Vitae

Submit your CV through your VIREO submission as an administrative file. Directions on preparing a curriculum vitae are available here.

Revising Your Dissertation for Publication

While a dissertation’s in-depth research and analysis can provide a strong foundation for a book, the dissertation itself is not a book and will not be published by an academic press without substantial revisions. Some acquisitions editors are interested first books, especially if they bring new perspectives and fresh ideas to a field, while others do not often publish first books. If you are considering submitting your dissertation for publication, we recommend that you contact editors at university presses that publish in your subject area for guidance on revising your work. Many editors prefer to be involved in the early stages of this process so they can advise you on how to structure the book and your arguments to create a publishable book. Editors generally require changes in the length, content, tone, and style of a dissertation in order to produce a book that will appeal to buyers in the academic market. Read more about submitting a proposal in our Scholarly Publishing Guide .

Below are selected resources to help you revise your dissertation for publication as a book or journal article(s).

Advice from publishers

• Harvard University Press
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Rowman & Littlefield
• Taylor & Francis
• University of North Carolina Press
• Yale University Press
• Publisher Policies on using content in both a thesis or dissertation and an article (from MIT Libraries)
• From Dissertation to Book by William Germano (Lauinger Library, 4th Floor, PN162 .G37 2013)
• Revising Your Dissertation, Updated Edition : Advice from Leading Editors (updated edition, 2008) edited by Beth Luey (online; GU NetID and password required)
• From Dissertation to Book , Duke University (February 27, 2018)
• From Dissertation to Book ( full transcript ), Harvard University (December 17, 2010)
• How To Turn Your Dissertation into a Book , Yale University (April 6, 2016)
• From Dissertation to Book by Leonard Cassuto (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30, 2011)
• From Dissertation to Published Book (lanugageandphilosophy.com report on an American Comparative Literature Association workshop)
• Give It a Rest by Laura Portwood-Stacer (Inside Higher Ed, August 6, 2019)
• The Stages of Revising a Dissertation into a Book by Amy Benson Brown (Journal of Scholarly Publishing, vol. 52 no. 2, 2021, p. 127-140) (GU NetID and password required)
• Turning Your Dissertation into a Book (University of Washington)
• Publishing your Dissertation (American Psychological Association)

Patterns of dissertation dissemination: publication-based outcomes of doctoral theses in the social sciences

• Open access
• Published: 29 February 2024

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• Anastasiya-Mariya Asanov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3080-4213 1 ,
• Igor Asanov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8091-4130 1 ,
• Guido Buenstorf   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2957-5532 1 ,
• Valon Kadriu   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0006-1101-5349 1 &
• Pia Schoch   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0006-9471-4590 1  

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Dissemination of knowledge through the publication of findings is a cornerstone of the academic research system. Doctoral dissertations document the findings made by early-stage researchers during their doctoral studies. However, prior research suggests that dissertations may not be effective in disseminating these findings to the broader community of researchers. We study how knowledge documented in doctoral dissertations is disseminated. Specifically, we investigate which dissertation characteristics and institutional factors are related to the number of journal publications based on these dissertations and the number of citations that these publications receive. Our analysis uses a random sample of doctoral dissertations from German universities in economics, political science, and sociology. We find that “cumulative” dissertations—dissertations consisting of a number of separate articles—are turned into three times more publications which receive three times more citations than monographic dissertations. We also find explorative evidence that dissertations written in English and empirical dissertations have higher publication-based outcomes. We conclude that a policy allowing doctoral candidates to write their dissertations in a cumulative format provides them with an opportunity to share the results of their research through publications in peer-reviewed journals.

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Introduction

Doctoral candidates contribute in many ways to the productivity of their universities—for example, as research and teaching assistants (Kifor et al., 2023 ; Larivière, 2012 ; Rodríguez-Montoya et al., 2023 ). However, their primary task and the key prerequisite for being awarded a doctoral degree is to make a research contribution to the respective discipline, which is documented in the doctoral dissertation. Moreover, dissertations turn into published papers serving dissemination of the acquired and documented knowledge. Yet, not many factors are known that determine the success of knowledge dissemination from dissertations (Mayir et al., 2017 ; Paglis et al., 2006 ; Rojko et al., 2020 ).

Depending on the country and discipline, it takes about 3 to 6 years for a doctoral candidate to fulfil all requirements for the doctoral degree, including submitting a comprehensive dissertation of 100 to 400 pages and to graduate (Günauer et al., 2013 ; Siegfried & Stock, 2001 ). Prior evidence indicates that dissertations contain high-quality research. For example, one review (McLeod & Weisz, 2004 ) shows that the methodology in experiments from dissertations was stronger, while the mean effect size reported in dissertations was smaller than in the published articles in the same field, suggesting the dissertations were less susceptible to overestimating the effect size than the published articles. Despite this, compared to journal publications, the citation rate of dissertations in the scientific literature has declined over time (Larivière et al., 2008 ). Less than 12% of the dissertations produced by UK doctoral candidates have at least one citation on platforms like Scopus, Microsoft Academic, or Google Books (Kousha & Thelwall, 2020 ).

Even though dissertations themselves are not cited much in the academic literature, one might expect that the research and data that dissertations are based on contribute to publications in peer-reviewed journals. However, research shows that only about 25–29% of dissertations in psychology, counseling, and social work (Evans et al., 2018 ; Maynard et al., 2014 ; Osborn et al., 2023 ) ended up with at least one article derived from them published in a peer-reviewed journal. Similarly, only around 40% of electronic theses and dissertations in engineering produced at a South African university received at least one citation, and only 16.8% of them were converted into research outputs such as books, journal articles, or conference proceedings (Bangani, 2018 ). Studies of medical theses dissemination show similarly low publication rates of 17% in France (Salmi et al., 2001 ), 17.6% in Peru (Arriola-Quiroz et al., 2010 ), and 23.8% in Finland (Nieminen et al., 2007 ). Finally, 53.2% of dissertations in Turkish language education are turned into journal publications (Karagöz & Şeref, 2021 ).These prior findings indicate that substantial resources are dedicated to producing high-quality research that is documented in doctoral dissertations but often not disseminated to the broader community of researchers. Yet, little is known about how universities can enhance dissertation-based research dissemination. Several studies have explored individual factors associated with the research productivity of doctoral candidates. Paglis et al. ( 2006 ) found no significant association between advisor mentoring and research productivity, which was defined as the total number of conference papers, journal publications, book chapters, and grant proposals accepted. Rojko et al. ( 2020 ) did not find a significant difference in the average publication performance of doctoral candidates before and after the implementation of the Bologna reform in Slovenia.

Other research has explored differences in the extent of doctoral dissertation dissemination. For example, making doctoral dissertations available through open-access repositories at universities resulted in higher citation counts (Ferreras-Fernández et al., 2013 ). Mayir et al. ( 2017 ) did not reveal an association between the publication rate and citation counts of dissertations in surgery and the type of study on which a dissertation was based (e.g., randomized study, case study, cross-sectional study). Closest to our study, Smaldone et al. ( 2019 ) compared the number of peer-reviewed publications based on dissertations from the Columbia University School of Nursing that were written in a monographic or an article-based (i.e., “cumulative”) format. The study found that article-based dissertations were associated with larger numbers of publications in peer-reviewed journals. Similarly, a survey of Australian students and alumni (Thomas et al., 2016 ) from instructional technology programs found that those who chose an article-based dissertation format reported receiving more citations on their dissertations.

In this study, using a random sample of German dissertations, we investigate dissertation characteristics and institutional factors that may be related to higher research output. We quantify research output as the number of papers based on the dissertation that are published in peer-reviewed journals and the number of citations from these papers.

We aim to answer the following four questions: First, do rates of publications based on dissertations and their citations differ between economics, sociology, and political science; second, do monographic and “cumulative” (article-based) dissertations differ in publication and citation rates; third, do dissertations from universities with and without an established graduate school or graduate academy differ in publication and citation rates; and fourth, do dissertations from universities that were successful in the German excellence initiative differ in publication and citation rates.

Materials and methods

Pre-analysis plan.

Prior to conducting the empirical analysis underlying the present paper, we specified in a pre-analysis plan the process of sampling, data collection, a set of outcomes and explanatory variables, a set of control variables, a set of hypotheses, and the empirical strategy. We store the pre-analysis plan and a replication package at Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U7M2A .

We selected a sample of 1500 doctoral dissertations from 2004 to 2006 and 1500 doctoral dissertations from 2012 to 2014, drawn randomly from the German National Library’s database of all dissertations published in Germany during those years. We determined the desired sample size and sampling strategy based on statistical power calculations before data collection to have a representative sample of dissertations for the sampling frame years. We focused on dissertations classified under the fields of Economy (“Wirtschaft”), Politics (“Politik”), and Social Sciences (“Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie”). To ensure accuracy, our team manually classified the dissertations in the sample, particularly distinguishing between those in economics and those in management sciences, which are both classified as “Wirtschaft” in the database. After this classification process, we were left with a total of 1840 dissertations from 73 German universities. Given 1840 dissertations (observations) across 73 universities (clusters) with observed intra-university (-cluster) correlation (ICC) of 0.04 for the main outcomes, assuming a conventional significance level of 5% and 80% of statistical power, the minimum detectable effect (MDE) size is 0.19 of a standard deviation. Thus, we have sufficient statistical power even to detect a correlation of about 0.1 ( r ), which can be considered a small effect size given empirically observed effect sizes in observational research in economics (Ioannidis et al., 2017 ).

Outcome variables

We were interested in two primary outcomes—the number of publications based on the doctoral dissertation and the total number of citations from these publications. Relevant publications were identified as follows. Initially, our team of research assistants, under the supervision of the research team, exhaustively searched for one peer-reviewed publication of each author in various sources (the author’s personal website, the author’s university page, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and WISO) and recorded the author identifiers. To ensure the correct person was found, we verified that the author’s publication lists contained the dissertation as well. Author identifiers were then matched with the Scopus database, and the list of publications was cross-referenced with the dissertation itself to identify which publications were based on the dissertation. The identification of dissertation-based publications was conducted manually by research assistants based on a formalized algorithm created by us, which entailed comparing titles, abstracts, and, if necessary, the introductions of the dissertation and each publication. Research assistants were encouraged to leave comments regarding uncertainties, which were then resolved by a member of the research team. To additionally ensure accuracy, the research assistants’ work was systematically and independently double-checked at random by senior researchers, i.e., a random sample of 30% dissertations was extracted to check for potential mistakes. In both instances—resolving an uncertainty and double-checking a random sample of dissertations—the senior researchers followed the same formalized protocol: check whether the title, abstract, and if necessary, introduction match. To determine whether the paper and a dissertation match, the algorithm required to compare the topic and the object of the study, the study sample, the method and the location of the study. When there was a significant overlap in these categories between the paper and a dissertation/dissertation chapter, the paper was classified as a match. After independent double-checking, the rate of agreement between research assistants’ and senior researchers’ classification was 94%.

Most of the publications from Scopus matched to the dissertations were classified as journal articles. We base our analysis on these observations. However, some of the Scopus items classified as conference proceedings, reviews, book chapters, notes, etc., were (later) also transformed into journal articles. Therefore, two senior researchers independently re-classified these cases manually (agreement between researchers in this classification was more than 95%). We performed a robustness check based on the dataset including these cases (Online Appendix S12 ).

Explanatory variables

We pre-specified four explanatory variables:

Cumulative dissertation

A “cumulative” doctoral dissertation is a dissertation written in a specific format. In addition to introductory and concluding chapters, it includes three or more chapters written in the format of journal articles. Writing cumulative dissertations is a recent and still relatively uncommon practice at German universities. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, only 13% of doctoral candidates in 2021 pursued a cumulative dissertation, with the remaining doctoral candidates opting for the traditional monographic dissertation format. For doctoral candidates in law, economics, and social science, the share of cumulative dissertations in 2021 was 18% (Bildung & Kultur, 2021 ). Cumulative dissertations have been suggested to address the low rates of dissertation citations observed in the past (Francis et al., 2009 ; Larivière et al., 2008 ). We accordingly hypothesize that cumulative dissertations have a higher number of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.1).

Graduate academy

Graduate academies are specialized institutions within universities that offer comprehensive support and guidance to doctoral candidates from all academic disciplines. The first graduate academies in Germany were established in 2000 and have since become an integral part of most German universities (Bundesbericht Wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs, 2017 ). In addition to offering general support and advice, graduate academies typically provide additional quality assurance measures and offer specialized training and mentorship programs for doctoral candidates. These programs are designed to enhance the academic and professional skills of doctoral candidates and to help them succeed in their respective fields.

We hypothesize that dissertations written at universities with established graduate academies have higher numbers of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.2.a).

Graduate school

The traditional format of doctoral education at German universities relied on on-the-job training under the supervision of an individual doctoral advisor. The adoption of the graduate school model in Germany originated from the establishment of the first Research Training Groups (“Graduiertenkollegs” in German), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the mid-1980s.

In Research Training Groups, a team of professors and post-doctoral researchers jointly provide guidance and supervision to a number of doctoral candidates, all working on dissertations within the group’s common thematic focus. In addition to on-the-job learning opportunities, research training groups offer specialized training programs to enhance doctoral candidates’ academic and professional skills. Research Training Groups emphasize the training of early-career researchers subsequently embarking on academic careers (DFG, 2010 ). In the 2000s, they provided the template for graduate schools funded by the German Excellence Initiative.

We classify both the Research Training Groups funded directly by the German Research Foundation and the graduate schools funded by the Excellence Initiative as graduate schools. We hypothesize that dissertations written at universities with a graduate school in the respective discipline have a higher number of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.2.b).

Excellence university

The Excellence Initiative is a large-scale funding program that was jointly established by Germany’s federal government and the individual federal Länder in 2006. Its objective was to promote the best German universities to top positions in international university rankings and increase collaboration between German universities and the non-university research sector. The Excellence Initiative encompassed three funding lines: graduate schools, clusters of excellence funding thematically focused research centers connecting universities and research institutes or businesses, as well as university-wide development strategies (“future concepts”). Success in the Excellence Initiative entailed substantial resource and reputation effects on the respective universities. In particular, winning universities in the funding line for development strategies were often considered “excellence universities” (Buenstorf & Koenig, 2020 ; Möller et al., 2016 ).

There is mixed evidence of the changes in universities that received Excellence Initiative funding. Some evidence shows a decrease in the number of citations per researcher at universities funded in the first round of the Excellence Initiative compared to universities that did not receive funding (Menter et al., 2018 ). Other evidence points out that universities funded for their development strategy attracted students with higher GPAs—the effect remained for three years after the funding was awarded—and that students perceived these universities as having higher quality (Fischer & Kampkötter, 2017 ). Based on these findings, we hypothesize that dissertations written at excellence universities have a higher number of publications and citations (hypothesis 1.3).

Control variables

We collected control variables available from the dissertations, the German National Library portal, and the university websites for each dissertation in the sample. We used the post-double-selection Lasso procedure (Belloni et al., 2014 ) to select relevant control variables from the set of available control variables. This machine learning procedure relies on a two-step method to identify control variables for inclusion: (1) fitting a lasso regression to predict the outcome variable and (2) fitting a lasso regression to predict the explanatory variables of interest. The union of the variables selected by the procedure is included in the regression. The post-double-selection Lasso procedure reduces the risk of omitted variable bias, while at the same time avoiding overfitting in the presence of many potential control variables (Belloni et al., 2014 ). It is popular in many social sciences (Kreif & DiazOrdaz, 2019 ) and in medical research (Dukes & Vansteelandt, 2020 ), but has not yet been widely adopted in the scientometric literature despite the abovementioned advantages. The full list of control variables is available in Table S1 in the Online Appendix.

We pre-specified that a set of available control variables used in the post-double-selection Lasso procedure will consist of variables with less than 20% missing values. Most variables like language, university and field were retrieved from the German National Library portal and have no missing values. Some explained and controlled variables that could only be obtained from the dissertation text have missing values as 23 dissertations could not be obtained. The analysis included these variables due to a very low missingness rate.

Empirical strategy

We use the following main regression to estimate the relationship between publication-based outcomes and the format of the dissertation (cumulative or monographic), as well as the presence of graduate academies, graduate schools, or excellence funding:

where \(Y_{ij}\) is the publication-based measure for dissertation i in university j ; \(CD_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i at university j is in a cumulative format; \(GS_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i comes from a university j with an established graduate school in economics/sociology/political science; \(GA_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i comes from a university j with an established graduate academy; \(EU_{ij}\) is a binary variable equal to 1 if dissertation i comes from an excellence university j ; \(Controls_{ij}\) is a vector of control variables selected through the post double-selection Lasso procedure (Belloni et al., 2014 ). We cluster at the university level. \(f\) stands for a general functional form in regression analysis. We mainly use negative binomial regression as the number of papers and citations (publication-based measures) is prone to have a skewed distribution and to be overdispersed. We also estimate the Poisson regression model following Azoulay et al. ( 2019 ) and a simple linear regression as robustness checks. We performed control variables selection based on the post-double Lasso procedure for each hypothesis tested to see the sensitivity of the results with respect to the second stage of the procedure. In addition, we estimated negative binomial regressions including (i) the full set of institutional variables collected, (ii) the full set of individual author-dissertation variables collected, and (iii) the union of them as additional robustness checks. All estimations were done with R software version 4.0.3. except we had to use STATA for the robustness check regressions with full sets of controls (to ensure model convergence with many controls).

Additional outcome variables

While we hypothesize that cumulative dissertations convert into more journal publications that receive more citations, monographic dissertations may get more citations themselves. We test this conjecture and supplement the main pre-specified analysis using the methodology developed by Donner to estimate the number of citations the dissertations received (Donner, 2021 ). We followed the algorithm he described and searched for citations to the dissertations in Google Books (using Webometric Analyst) and Scopus and combined the results (Table S4 in the Online Appendix).

Specifically, we used a snapshot of the Scopus data from April 2022. In the first step, we restricted the cited reference data to the publication years of our dissertation sample ± 1 year. In the second step, we looked for exact matches with our dissertation sample regarding the author’s surname and initials and the dissertation publication year being around ± 1 year. Lastly, we compared the dissertation title to the Scopus cited item title and cited source title after standardizing them to the length of the shorter title. We calculated the similarity using the Optimal String Alignment (OSA) method and divided the result by the length of the standardized dissertation title, which led to outcomes between 0 and 1 (with 0 being an exact match and 1 being no match). If the outcome was between 0.00 and 0.25, we deemed the citation valid. After manually checking some dissertations at random, we observed that some authors were occasionally stored in the reference data with their full first name instead of their initials, so we also considered those cases.

Furthermore, we considered names containing German Umlaute (ä, ö, ü) by turning those into a, o, u, and ae, oe, ue. As we focus on the dissertations, we do not include the non-dissertation cited source titles containing words like “Journal”, and “Conference”. Following Donner’s ( 2021 ) approach, we applied the same approach to find indexed Scopus source publications matching with our dissertation sample. Lastly, to make sure that we do not have false-positive matches, we sampled 100 citations from the 2376 citations found and manually checked in the actual publications if the references list contains matched dissertations. We did not find any mismatch.

After obtaining the dissertation citations from Google Books and Scopus, we searched for the overlap between both sources. We found 18 citations present in both citations retrieved from the Google Books database and the Scopus database and removed them from the Google Books citations. We then combined the citations from both sources as described in (Donner, 2021 ).

We provided the analysis on combined Scopus and Google Books citations in line with the pre-specified empirical strategy above, being interested in whether monographic dissertations receive more citations. Finally, we manually collected Google Scholar citations, which have been used before to estimate the scholarly impact of dissertations (Kousha & Thelwall, 2020 ), and applied the above empirical strategy to assess if the results also hold for Google Scholar citations.

Our data shows that 26% of the dissertations in economics, 11% in sociology, and 7% in political sciences end up with at least one publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Additionally, the average number of papers based on the dissertations is 0.52 for economics, 0.18 for sociology, and 0.1 for political science. The corresponding citation counts of papers resulting from these dissertations are 14.63, 8.74, and 1.28, respectively (Table  1 ). We also observe that variance exceeds the mean on both primary outcomes—overdispersion for the number of papers and citations from these papers—suggesting that the negative binomial is the preferred specification.

Interestingly, we observe a considerable increase in the number of publications for dissertations in economics during the years 2012–2014, as shown in Fig.  1 .

Share of cumulative dissertations and average number of publications based on the dissertations per field over time

Results based on tests of the pre-specified hypotheses

Results based on tests of the pre-specified hypotheses with and without control variables selected by the double-lasso selection algorithm (Belloni et al., 2014 ) can be found in Table  2 . We find that cumulative dissertations are associated with a significantly higher number of journal articles than monographic dissertations ( p value < 0.00001). Furthermore, the total citation count of papers based on cumulative dissertations is also significantly higher than for monographic dissertations ( p value = 0.06).

On average, cumulative dissertations turn into three times as many publications as monographic dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{CD} = 1.13;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 3.1\) ), even if we account for a large set of controls algorithmically selected by double lasso. Moreover, the average total citation count of the papers from the cumulative dissertations is more than three times as high as for monographic dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{CD} = 1.11;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 3.03\) ). In addition, we observed a notable increase in the share of cumulative dissertations in economics during the second period, followed by a higher number of publications, as shown in Fig.  1 .

Our analysis indicates that dissertations from universities with established graduate academies are initially associated with a higher number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. This association becomes insignificant with the inclusion of algorithmically selected control variables and we do not observe any significant difference in citation counts with or without control variables. We also investigated whether the presence of graduate schools in the respective discipline or recognition as an excellence university was related to the publication-based outcomes. However, we did not find statistically significant difference at any conventional level of significance in the number of publications or citation counts between dissertations from universities with or without graduate schools and universities with or without excellence status.

Out of all journal publications for which the year of publication is known, 62.2% were published in the years after the dissertation defense, and 37.8% were published in or before the year of the defense. We re-ran Model 2 from Table  1 separately for publications from the years before and after the defense (Table S2 in the Online Appendix). The significantly positive relationship between cumulative dissertations and the number of publications holds for publications both before and after the defense.

One might expect that, while cumulative dissertations are turned into more journal publications that receive more citations, monographic dissertations receive more citations themselves. We scrutinize this conjecture using the same empirical strategy as before on the following two outcome variables: (a) dissertation citations in Google Books and Scopus constructed following (Donner, 2021 ) and (b) Google Scholar citations.

We find a significantly negative relationship between cumulative dissertations and the number of dissertation citations. On average, a cumulative dissertation receives 36% fewer citations in Google Books and Scopus (Table  3 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{CD} = - 0.45;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 0.64\) ). In other words, monographic dissertations receive only 1.5 times more citations in Google Books and Scopus than cumulative ones. We also find a significantly negative relationship between cumulative dissertations and Google Scholar citations. The average number of Google Scholar citations is 63% lower for cumulative dissertations than for monographic dissertations (Table  3 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{CD} = - 0.99;e^{{\beta_{CD} }} = 0.37\) ), which implies less than a threefold increase in Google Scholar citations for monographic dissertations compared to cumulative ones. Finally, we do not see a stable association between dissertations from excellence universities and the number of dissertation citations.

We assess our results using Poisson and linear regressions as robustness checks. All results hold with these alternative specifications, both for primary outcomes (Tables S4 and S5 in the Online Appendix) and dissertation citations (Tables S6 and S7 in the Online Appendix).

In addition to estimating the regressions with covariates selected by the post-double Lasso selection procedure, we also estimate regressions with all institutional (Kifor et al., 2023 ; Rojko et al., 2020 ) and/or individual author-dissertation factors (Larivière, 2012 ; Mayir et al., 2017 ; Maynard et al., 2014 ; Paglis et al., 2006 ) as robustness checks (Tables S8 , S9 , S10 and S11 in the Online Appendix, columns 1–3). The results remain robust to the inclusion of these control variables. They are also robust to the inclusion of covariates selected at the second stage of the post-double Lasso algorithm for each pre-specified explanatory variable, except for the association between graduate academy and the number of papers (Tables S8 , S9 , S10 and S11 in the Online Appendix, columns 4–7). Thus, we consider the association between the number of papers and the presence of a graduate academy non-robust.

In summary, our findings suggest that cumulative dissertations are turned into more publications in peer-reviewed journals and receive more citations to these peer-reviewed publications. In contrast, monographic dissertations receive more citations as separate works.

Explorative results

We also exploratively examine the variables selected as control variables by the double-lasso procedure. Of the dissertations in our sample, 33.4% were written in English, with the rest being written in German (except for four dissertations in French, two in Italian, and two in Spanish). With 45.1%, the share of dissertations in English is highest in economics, while in sociology and political science, the shares were 18% and 16.6%, respectively.

Our findings indicate that dissertations written in English have significantly higher publication-based outcomes. On average, English dissertations turn into almost twice as many published papers as other dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{English} = 0.94;e^{{\beta_{English} }} = 2.56\) ). In addition, the average citation count for papers based on English dissertations is more than three times as high as that for dissertations in German and other languages (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{English} = 1.07;e^{{\beta_{English} }} = 2.92\) ). These results are consistent with other research comparing publication and citation levels of dissertations written in English versus the local language (Nieminen et al., 2007 ; Donner, 2021 ).

Empirical dissertations comprise 34.6% of our sample, with economics having the highest share at 48%, followed by sociology at 21.2%, and political science at 6.4%. We defined a dissertation as empirical if it contained hypothesis-testing statistical procedures, including moments of statistical distribution (mean, median, variance, etc.), regression coefficients, standard errors, p values, t values, or z values. Empirical dissertations had 50% more publications than other dissertations (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}2:{ }\beta_{Empirical} = 0.45;e^{{\beta_{Empirical} }} = 1.57\) ) and more than three times as many citations to these papers (Table  2 \({\text{Model }}4:{ }\beta_{Empirical} = 1.21;e^{{\beta_{Empirical} }} = 3.35\) ). Furthermore, our analysis shows an upward trend in the share of dissertations written in English and in the share of empirical dissertations (see Fig.  2 ).

Share of dissertations in English and share of empirical dissertations per field over time

The algorithm also selected control variables denoting online dissertations, the number of pages, and the field of the dissertation as control variables, but these variables are not consistently associated with significantly different publication-based outcomes in our analysis. Finally, we inspected control variables that were not selected by the algorithm but that we included in additional robustness estimations (with the full set of institutional variables collected, the full set of individual author-dissertation variables collected, and the union of them). We do not observe any associations between these additional control variables and publication-based outcomes that are robust across model specifications. Notably, we do not observe gender differences in publication-based outcomes of dissertations across model specifications.

In this study, we investigated how publication-based outcomes of social science dissertations in Germany are associated with dissertation characteristics and institutional factors. Consistent with our hypothesis specified in a pre-analysis plan, we observe that cumulative dissertations lead to a higher number of publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as a higher number of citations from these publications. We also find that the share of cumulative dissertations increased over time in economics. Our analysis does not suggest that the citation advantage enjoyed by publications based on cumulative dissertations is offset by a lower number of citations to the dissertations themselves. While we found that monographic dissertations receive more citations than cumulative ones, their implied advantage in direct citations is smaller than their disadvantage in publication-based citations. We thus conclude from our analysis that results of social science dissertation research documented in cumulative dissertations tend to be disseminated more extensively than results documented in monographic dissertations.

As dissertations are not randomly allocated into cumulative and monographic formats, the patterns we observe in our data cannot be interpreted as causal effects. Indeed, our analysis suggests that publication and citation outcomes for dissertations are affected by dissertation characteristics and institutional factors and that controlling for these variables helps explain some of the differences in outcomes. Regarding institutional factors, we do not see any robust significant difference in publication-based outcomes of dissertations from universities with or without graduate academies, graduate schools in the respective discipline and recognition as “excellence universities”.

Going beyond the hypothesized associations that were specified in our pre-analysis plan, we explored how differences in control variables selected by the double-lasso procedure (Belloni et al., 2014 ) are related to publication and citation outcomes. These exploratory analyses indicate, first, that dissertations written in English are associated with significantly more publications in peer-reviewed journals and higher citation counts compared to those written in German or other languages. Second, empirical dissertations in our sample also had higher publication-based outcomes compared to other types of dissertations. Overall, shares of dissertations in English and empirical dissertations seem to be increasing over time. In a nutshell, it appears that dissertations written in English or empirical dissertations increase in number and tend to particularly contribute to the dissemination of knowledge produced by doctoral students in German universities.

Various factors, however, like author characteristics and institutional conditions can affect the choice of dissertation language and topic. Moreover, we did not hypothesize in the pre-analysis plan if dissertations written in English or empirical dissertations are associated with higher publication-based outcomes, barely allowing us to post-hoc speculate about the cause of the higher publication-based outcomes of the dissertations with these characteristics. Thus, we interpret these findings as indicative and encourage further empirical work to probe into their robustness in other settings.

It is hard to distinguish the causal effect of the dissertation features and institutional factors on the publication-based outcomes as this study is based on observational data. More research can be done in the future to identify causal effects and extrapolate the results for other countries. Additionally, automatic, or alternative formal matching algorithms between publications and dissertations could be used to cover more research fields, languages or countries (e.g. Donner, 2022 ; Echeverria et al., 2015 ; Heinisch & Buenstorf, 2018 ). However, based on the results of the study, we can conclude that a policy that allows doctoral students to write cumulative dissertations permits them to strengthen their research output counted as papers published or cited.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank for excellent research assistance Denise Bornewasser, Maria Paz Catalan Palma, Besmir Daci, Lea Hartwig, Alana Hindiyeh, Irila Kola, Christina Lerke, James Macumber, Dariia Melnyk, Veronica Vela, Jana Zaremba. Special thanks to Johannes Koenig for finding efficient ways to work with Scopus data and to Maria Mavlikeeva.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. All authors gratefully acknowledge funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant number 16PH20011 (PI: GB) and via the German Competence Network for Bibliometrics under Grant number 16WIK2101A. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Conceptualization: GB. Funding acquisition: GB. Investigation: A-MA, VK. Methodology: A-MA, IA, GB, VK, PS. Formal Analysis: Anastasiya-Mariya Asanov. Visualization: Anastasiya-Mariya Asanov. Supervision: IA, GB. Writing—Original Draft Preparation: A-MA. Writing—Review & Editing: A-MA, IA, GB, VK, PS.

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Asanov, AM., Asanov, I., Buenstorf, G. et al. Patterns of dissertation dissemination: publication-based outcomes of doctoral theses in the social sciences. Scientometrics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04952-1

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Congratulations to Pranav Ambardekar on his Ph.D.

Pranav Ambardekar successfully defended his dissertation “The Epistemology of Reflection” with Declan Smithies as his advisor. In his dissertation, Pranav argues for a moderate position on the significance of reflection in the epistemological enterprise. One of the chapters of his dissertation, entitled 'On the Epistemic Value of Reflection' has been accepted for publication and is forthcoming in Ergo . 

In the fall, Pranav will join the Department of Philosophy and Critical Thinking at FLAME University in Pune, India as an Assistant Professor. 

Congratulations Pranav!