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A Guide to Publishing a Dissertation

The moment your dissertation is accepted by your university’s graduate college is one of sweet relief. You’ve reached the end of a very long road, and the work is done. Or is it? For many academics, the siren song of pursuing publication strikes not long after the ink is dry on their diploma. The idea of seeing your name in a prestigious academic journal or emblazoned on the spine of a book is indeed tempting. However, submitting to academic journals or becoming a published author can be a lengthy journey of its own.

While publishing your dissertation may seem like the natural next step in your scholarly journey, there is a lot of work that needs to be done before you’ll see your research in a journal or your book on a shelf at your local library or bookstore. Completing your dissertation is the first step to becoming a published author, and there is plenty that you need to know before pursuing publication.

These are a few frequently asked questions about publishing a dissertation:  

• Can a dissertation be published?
• What do I have to do to publish my dissertation? 
• Who publishes dissertations?
• Why publish a dissertation?

Can a Dissertation Be Published?

Yes. Of course, this is merely the short answer. Since we’re talking about academia, a simple “yes” does not tell the whole story. While there is sometimes an assumption that dissertations get published by the university that granted the author their Ph.D., this is incorrect. Though the final revised and edited copy of a dissertation is bound and can sometimes even be found for sale on sites like Amazon, it is not truly published. 

However, the fact that your dissertation has not been published does not mean that you are automatically free to pursue publication. Upon submitting your dissertation to your university, you likely signed some paperwork related to your dissertation as a piece of intellectual property. You might not be free to pursue a publishing contract or publish on your own right away. You’ll want to read the fine print, in the event there is a required waiting period for publishing. 

Publishing Your Dissertation in Academic Journals

Dissertation research can be published in two ways; it can either be expanded into a book or pieced out into multiple academic articles. There are benefits to both approaches. While getting a book published often carries more prestige, academic journal articles allow for (relatively) quicker publication, while the research is fresh. Breaking your dissertation down into multiple articles also offers more opportunities for publication. 

To pursue article publication, first decide how to deconstruct your manuscript to separate your research into multiple articles. This will involve some revision and structural changes, but the natural “breaks” in your dissertation should already be clearly defined by chapters. The introduction, literature review, and the methodology/results sections can all be transformed into individual articles and submitted to separate journals for publication. 

When searching for journals to submit each article to, make a list based on your literature review and reference page. You may want to rank the journals by impact factor or another method, but make sure to submit your articles to top-tier or higher-tier journals first. If they are declined or heavy revision is suggested, you have a lineup of less-competitive journals ready to go. 

When I was a newly-minted professor in my first job post-dissertation, I chose to go the journal route and got my dissertation research published as multiple articles. While it does take some work to reconfigure each article into a piece of writing that can exist on its own, I’m glad that I did it this way. I was new to the peer review process and I learned a lot about submitting to academic journals. It was also a good way to add much-needed lines to my CV for my yearly performance evaluations. 

Preparing a Book Manuscript 

A dissertation is a very long document . It feels like a book, but in reality, your dissertation is not yet a book. Your dissertation is part of a book, and the work ahead of you is to complete your manuscript. You will need to add additional context, and probably flesh out the next steps of your research outlined in the discussion section of your dissertation into fully-realized chapters. What was formerly your dissertation will then be sold as an academic monograph. 

It is also important to note that the qualities that make a dissertation successful are unlikely to directly correlate to marketability. Your dissertation may offer a vital contribution to the body of knowledge in your field, but will it sell? Is it timely? Does it have a hook that will make it stand out in a competitive market? These are all questions to take into consideration when preparing an academic manuscript for a broad audience. 

Finding Publishers for Your Book

There are a few routes that can be taken when searching for a place to publish a dissertation as a book. The most common is academic publishing. (The other two are commercial and independent, both of which are difficult unless you have a built-in audience or a large social media following.) Every year, academic presses around the country receive proposals and offer book contracts to authors. Many of these presses are affiliated with universities, and their proposal requirements and contract terms are similar. 

Many manuscripts that began as dissertations land at university presses. If you are interested in pursuing a contract with a university press, go to their website and familiarize yourself with titles they have published recently. See if they are open to unsolicited submissions and look at their proposal requirements. If it seems like a good fit, consider putting together a proposal and submitting it. 

There are quite a few academic publishers and university presses, so you’ll need to do your homework to find the right one for your research. As an academic, one of my favorite parts of any conference is the book fair. I love perusing all the new titles from academic publishers and university presses, and it’s a great way to become familiar with many of them at once. 

Another benefit to these book fairs is that tables are often helmed by acquisitions editors. In my experience, talking to an editor for a press that I’m interested in is a great use of downtime at a conference. If you decide to do this, have an elevator pitch of your manuscript memorized and ready to go. If the editor likes it and invites you to submit, your proposal will go to the top of the inbox. 

Why Publish a Dissertation?  

There are a couple reasons to think about publishing your dissertation. If you are starting your career as an academic, particularly on the tenure track, publishing is an essential part of fulfilling your scholarship requirement. “Publish or perish” remains a very real aphorism in academia, and the more quality publications you add to your CV, the better. 

Publishing a dissertation as an academic monograph is also a great way to start making a name for yourself as a scholar. Being an expert in your field has limited utility unless you are writing, publishing, and presenting at conferences consistently. Publishing is a great way to establish your expertise, and having a book to promote can also help you secure lectures at universities and keynote invitations. If you have the time and the inclination, publishing your dissertation can pay dividends (not literally–academic monographs tend to earn their authors very little). 

While publishing your dissertation requires a good bit of transformation into a more substantial academic monograph, authoring a book can open a lot of professional doors. Though there are also other projects that will undoubtedly demand your attention–conference presentations, critical articles, new research–publishing your dissertation will give you an opportunity to finally close the book (pun intended) on your graduate research and set your sights on new horizons. 

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Courtney Watson, Ph.D.

Courtney Watson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English at Radford University Carilion, in Roanoke, Virginia. Her areas of expertise include undergraduate and graduate curriculum development for writing courses in the health sciences and American literature with a focus on literary travel, tourism, and heritage economies. Her writing and academic scholarship has been widely published in places that include  Studies in American Culture ,  Dialogue , and  The Virginia Quarterly Review . Her research on the integration of humanities into STEM education will be published by Routledge in an upcoming collection. Dr. Watson has also been nominated by the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Rising Star Award, and she is a past winner of the National Society of Arts & Letters Regional Short Story Prize, as well as institutional awards for scholarly research and excellence in teaching. Throughout her career in higher education, Dr. Watson has served in faculty governance and administration as a frequent committee chair and program chair. As a higher education consultant, she has served as a subject matter expert, an evaluator, and a contributor to white papers exploring program development, enrollment research, and educational mergers and acquisitions.

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The latest news and answers to your questions about scholarly publishing and open access.

How can I publish an academic article as an undergraduate student?

Choosing where to submit your work as an undergrad.

As a researcher, where you submit will really depend on the details of the submission and where it best fits, as well as where you're likely to be successful at this point in your career. Journals will often consider any original research and will assess it based on the novelty and contribution to the field of research. However, there are a few steps you can take to increase your chances of being successful in getting your work published at this stage.

• Check out our post on Getting Published: Tips for choosing an academic journal for general suggestions about journal publishing, including where to look for possible journals and options for making your work open access.
• Check the journals' rejection rates. Journals with very high rejection rates may be more challenging to publish in as a student, simply because they accept fewer articles.
• Consider whether you can work with a faculty member to co-author the paper that you submit.
• Do some research to find out where other undergraduate students in your department have been successful in getting published.

Journals dedicated to publishing undergraduate research

More information about undergraduate publishing.

Visit the following resources to learn more about Scholarly Publishing, and contact your liaison librarian or [email protected] for additional support.

• Scholarly Publishing and Open Access webpages
• Attend a Research Commons workshop, such as the Preparing to publish (while the Research Commons workshops are primarily offered to graduate students, undergraduate students interested in publishing are welcome to attend).

*Don't see an SFU student journal in your discipline? Consider starting one! Visit the SFU Library Digital Publishing webpages and contact [email protected] to learn more.

Contact us : For assistance with scholarly publishing, please contact  [email protected] .