Rewriting Your Dissertation into an Article

One of the most common questions I receive, as a journal editor, is how do I make my dissertation into an article? This is the first in a series in which I will discuss this issue and offer some suggestions on how to approach this difficult task.

Let's review a few basics of the differences between a dissertation and a published journal article. An article, based on your project will be much shorter than your original dissertation. While a dissertation is often between 100-200 pages, a manuscript for a journal article is rarely over 30 double-spaced pages. A dissertation must exhaustively review the literature, however, the literature in an article is provided to put the study into context; the key issue is to lead the reader to clearly see the need for your study and the gap you are addressing. Much of the information in a dissertation is repeated throughout the paper- it can be characterized more as a book, a journal article should be succinct and to the point. So a few issues we have identified: your article should only have enough literature to put it into context, information should not be repeated frequently, and it should be succinct. Remember the basis of a journal article is the APA manual, so use the format it describes. Do check the journal's website for any exceptions it might prefer over the APA manual.

The first step, I recommend, is to do an outline of the project in an article format. Typically, this will be the following:

Cover page (title, your name, affiliation, and author notes), 

Abstract (check journal requirements- typically 200-250 words). Keywords

Body of paper

Title of paper

(1-2 pgs) Introduce the need for the study (why should we care about the topic?)

(2-5 pgs) Literature review discussing variables 

Method

Participants

Materials

Procedure

Results

Discussion

References 

Accepting Feedback Gracefully

An inevitable part of submitting a paper for review in a journal is getting criticism. This can be very difficult for people; they feel defensive and resentful. Please, take a step back from this and think about it, a reviewer has taken a great deal of time to read and review your paper. They do not like saying negative things any more than you like to receive them. However, it is the reviewer's job to help you get your paper into a publishable shape, and that is what he or she is doing when they give you feedback. It does not matter if a hundred other people think you are a marvelous writer, accept that this person does not, and see how you can fix it.

How should you approach the feedback? I suggest quickly reading the feedback and if you find you are feeling defensive close it and think about it for a while, resist the impulse to immediately write back. Remind yourself they are trying to help with your paper, and they want you to have your paper published. Then when you feel you are ready (hopefully no more than a day!), begin the revisions, take each comment one at a time, think about it and revise. If you find you are not sure what the reviewer means with a comment. Carefully write out an email of inquiry to the editor of the journal. Here is an example:

Dr. X,

Thank you so much for the thoughtful comments and suggestions on my paper, "Fear of Pencils!" I find I do have a question about a comment from reviewer A, in which he/she states: "I don’t know what you mean on p.3." Could I get this comment clarified please, what precisely is he/she referring to?

Thank you again for your help,

Jane Researcher

Always be polite, and thank them for their help. You will find you get much further with being open and kind than you ever will with being defensive. 

The Micro Level Writing Review

How do you review your own writing? Why should you spend time on this? Doing a good review of your writing before you submit it to a journal can save you a great deal of time in the end. Remember, every time it is reviewed, it can be several months, if you can reduce the number of reviews needed, it can save you a lot of time!

I recommend a several stage process of self-review; you can do the steps in any order that feels comfortable for you. Yes, it will take you time and it is not particularly fun, but it will save valuable time and it will teach you to write! First, review your writing at the micro level of individual paragraphs and sections. Make sure you have spell check and grammar check turned on in your paper. If you are not seeing some words/ sentences underlined in red or green in Word, go to the options menu (often listed under File)/ proofing and make sure spell and grammar check are turned on. Make sure the Exception boxes are not checked (these turn off spelling and grammar checks). Make sure that you then check all of the items in red (spelling) and green (grammar issues) underlining.

Step 1 is to pick a small section of your paper; read the section aloud, carefully listening for grammatical errors and missing words. You may also wish to consider utilizing and submitting your work, or even small sections of your work to electronic/online academic writing aids such as Grammarly and/or Turnitin. 

Step 2, read through the section again checking for APA errors. There are several common problems students have, for example, citations and use of the second person ("we," "our"). Read those sections of the APA manual and make sure you are doing them correctly. Make sure any jargon is defined (a good rule of thumb, would your grandmother or friend not in your field, understand the term? If not, define it).

Step 3 is the hardest one, check your content. Make sure you are only talking about one topic in each paragraph. Are your arguments clear? Does every fact or statement have a citation? Check the length of your paragraphs and break up long ones (there should be no page long paragraphs).

Following directions

One of most common reasons that papers are rejected at journals is that the author(s) did not follow directions. For example, if the word limit for articles is 10,000 words, sending in a completed dissertation (probably 40-50,000 words) is not going to be accepted. How can you avoid these kind of problems and avoid having your paper rejected? Carefully read the submission instructions to authors, and follow them closely!

New things

All new things are scary, because you do not know what to expect, and typically feel like you do not want to make any mistakes. Let me see if I can take you through the process of submitting your paper to the journal and what you should expect. First, of course you will write your paper and check the journal's guidelines; the Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences (JSBHS) are at: http://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jsbhs/

2) Once you are satisfied that you have followed all of the requirements in the journal, you are safe to proceed. Make sure you have the required files prepared, for JSBHS you will need an anonymous version of your paper in which you have taken out anything indicating who you are or your institution (because it will be sent out for a "blind" review- the reviewers will not know who wrote it). You will also need a cover letter in which you detail the required information discussed in the submission guidelines. You will go to the area of the journal website called "Submit an Article." The site will have you enter all of the required info, along with your paper and cover letter.

3) As the author, your part is done; now the editor takes over. First, the editor checks that you have followed directions. Then he or she assigns 2-3 peer reviewers, these are experts in the topic of your paper. The paper is sent to them along with instructions on doing the review. They typically have up to a month or so to complete the review.

4) When the reviewers have completed their review they write out their comments and suggestions and suggest a decision on the paper: accept as is, minor revisions required, major revisions required, reject. The editor then takes all of the comments and makes his or her own decision about the paper- whether or not it will be accepted, need revisions or be rejected for the journal. He or she then notifies you, as the author, what the decision is. (Know that it is very rare for papers to be accepted on the first draft, it typically takes several revisions).

5) You can then revise and resubmit it as above. The same process of review is followed, as above

6) Let's assume your paper has been accepted. Congratulations! The editor will have you submit a clean version that has all of your identifying info it. The paper will then be sent by the editor to a copyeditor, who will check grammar, APA, and references.

7) Then it will appear on the JSBHS website as a published paper!