Helping your PGRs disseminate their research

by Adina Dudau, Professor of Public Management at the University of Glasgow, SGSSS Associate Director and Supervisory Engagement Lead

Embarking on the journey of writing one’s first academic journal article can be both an exhilarating and a daunting process. It marks a significant milestone in your PhD students’ journey and in their academic career, if they wish to pursue that path. Even for careers outside academia, the ability to communicate confidently one’s research findings to various audiences can prove valuable. In this blog post, we’ll navigate the process of helping your PGRs craft their inaugural journal article, offering insights and practical tips whenever possible.  

The first disclaimer accompanying this piece is that my own experience has been only in the social sciences. As the publication world is shaped by disciplinary specificity, social scientists may be able to get more out of this article than non-social scientists. The second disclaimer is that, in the interest of length and focus for this piece, I will keep a focus on dissemination in academic journals. The third disclaimer is that I prefer learning through osmosis rather than through teaching, so while identifying potentially useful pedagogical exercises, I see role modelling and co-opting PGRs as collaborators as the best ways to help them disseminate their research. Finally, I wrote a mirror image of this blog post, a blog post directed at PhD students, which may also provide some insights into how we, as PGR supervisors, could support and mentor our students to disseminate their research findings.

Setting expectations right at the start: what research, when, why and where to disseminate  

While research dissemination can and should be done in a variety of ways, it is also worth making space for those which are most valued in the field (journal articles, in my field) and (rather than ‘or’) for those matching the student’s career plans post-PhD. Both these considerations are important, because career plans can change. Academic careers require an appropriate number of research outputs, while for non-academic careers this may not be required but it is certainly valued. On a more personal level, having one’s name in print is also a matter of great pride for many of our PGRs. 

What research is there to disseminate and when? Often, dissemination is planned at the end of a research project, which for PGRs means at the end of the funded period and sometimes after the start of a new job. There is an inherent problem with this approach: one can rarely manage to allocate reflection and writing time about X during a full-time working schedule on Y. Think of a student working full-time in their own country coming to the UK to do their PhD and then returning to their job. They are unlikely to be able to make space for anything as substantial as writing for publication. This is why some dissemination may need to happen before PhD submission.  

Strategic management of research dissemination 

Publication plans during one’s PhD: publish as you go. Considering the length of the peer-review process, a PhD student’s publication plan may need to consider first conceptual output(s) based on the review of the literature. Such outputs can be bibliometric analyses, systematic literature reviews, scoping reviews or conceptual developments, in the order of difficulty, with conceptual pieces requiring more seasoned academics’ help and bibliometric analyses being potentially easier to grasp by PGRs than they are by their supervisors. This difficulty scale is significant, because it is strategically important to plan a mix on solo-authored and co-authored outputs, to signal teamwork as well as independent thinking to any academic hiring committee post-PhD. If the methodology involved takes an interesting spin on standard techniques, then a methodological output may also be appropriate, or even the publication of the data in outlets such as the Elsevier’s Data in Brief. Publishing findings may be a tall order during one’s PhD, unless their thesis follows a 3-paper format (which is the standard in some disciplines, e.g. Accounting, Finance, Economics). Where this isn’t the standard thesis format in your field, an Alternative Thesis Format might be acceptable in your school, and this is generally more conducive to publishing during the PhD than the monograph option. If, however, the monograph format is the way forward for your student, then publishing results could start during the PhD and be finalised after (possibly by you, the supervisor, under a co-authorship agreement).  

Publication plans post-PhD. This is highly reliant on the student’s career plans (which may change but can offer an indication of the space available for time consuming academic tasks). Postdocs, particularly independent postdocs (‘fellow’ is a good key word to help spot those), are ideal roles during which to build one’s publication record. All other career options, including university lectureships, tend to leave little time for writing. However, most PhD research gets disseminated after thesis submission, so there are ways to accomplish that, however difficult, particularly in teams (student-supervisor(s) or even student-student where there are synergies between PhD students). 

Understanding the journal ecosystem in the field. Regardless of when one pursues academic publications, it is important to start strategizing by helping your PGRs understand the publishing landscape in the field. The options available for disseminations are open and a mix should ideally be pursued. But the academic publishing landscape is particularly tricky to grasp. 

When engaging with the literature in their area of study, encourage your PhD students to take note of the various journals in their field, and their focus key debates and writing style. This used to be easier before the mass online sourcing and reading of journal articles and there is pedagogical value in encouraging students, after a period of browsing articles at leisure, to narrow down their search to a handful of journals they noticed keep coming up in their earlier readings. Selecting a handful (or even just a couple) of journals that align with the scope and objectives of their research enhances the likelihood of achieving a good fit with the said journal. Reviewing for those journals could help, too, and you as supervisor could help by getting your PhD student registered as a reviewer or guiding them to register themselves.  

Consider the impact factor and reputation of the journal, but also the review length period (here you, as the supervisor, can help, as you may know more about peer-review length than advertised on the journal’s website), values such as to open science or research integrity, accessibility and relevance to your intended readership. Some people aim at the highest ranked journal in their field and then work their way down from there. This is not an effective strategy for two main reasons. First, top journals expect top-level refinement in the academic arguments they publish, and that takes years to develop. In this sense, it is worth discussing your own involvement in the writing process to avoid costing your PhD student years playing a game of snakes and ladders. Secondly, the introduction of the DORA principles to which an increasing number of institutions subscribe means that the quality of the article should not be inferred from the quality of the journal, so best fit with their arguments, rather than journal ranking, should count most. What is essential, however, is that the paper gets written for the journal, rather than retrofitted to match with any particular outlet. 

Co-authoring or solo piloting? Modelling the process of publication 

An experienced and involved co-author will substantially reduce the peer-review length (by producing a better quality paper, but also by targeting the right journal from the start). Having said that, there is value in single authorship for the student, as that demonstrates intellectual independence to any hiring committee, so PhD students should be encouraged to publish independently (too) if they wish. Co-authoring with someone external to the PhD is unproblematic for projects running alongside one’s PhD but merits careful consideration, in dialogue with the student, if it is for a manuscript which is at the core of their PhD. 

A key role of the supervisor as co-author is in helping the PhD student address academic criticism. Think of this as building a transferrable skill which will also come useful in conferences, as well as in the student’s VIVA and post-VIVA corrections. Help them grow in resilience and enhance their faith in their own arguments by address reviewers’ comments thoughtfully in the ‘response to reviewers’ letter, demonstrating commitment to rigor and dialogue.  

In terms of name order in the authorship and/or roles in the paper, PhD students may feel uncomfortable to discuss this upfront. There are also cultural considerations which contribute to that conversation being potentially difficult. Therefore, we as PhD supervisors should open this conversation. Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRedIT) is a useful guide in this respect and has been worked into a handy spreadsheet. It is a great conversation starter about contribution in your team, particularly if this goes beyond 2 authors.  

A Final Thought

Writing for external audiences about something one is as invested in as their PhD research is a complex journey, marked by challenges and triumphs.  The process requires resilience and you, as supervisor, are best placed to mentor your doctoral student on this journey. Do create pedagogical space for writing within the supervisory relationship but mostly find your own way and enjoy the responsibility of developing the new generation of researchers!