Thesis & Dissertation Services

This guide is meant to assist students in publishing their thesis or dissertation at Tiffin University.  Publishing your work as part of a masters or Doctoral program can be a long, confusing, and stressful process and you may not know where to begin.

The guide contains the following:

• Publishing Options

This shows the different options you have when considering publishing your thesis or dissertation, as well as the differences between a thesis and a journal article.

• Theses Services

This describes the different theses services that Tiffin University offers to students.

• Thesis Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This page contains commonly asked questions that students have when publishing their theses.

• Dissertation and Thesis Databases

A list of databases where you can locate published theses and dissertations.

• Preparing for Publication

Resources that help students properly prepare their work for publication.  This includes preparation tips and how to avoid predatory publishers.

• References

List of references that were used to create this guide.

• Get Help

Additional resources for extra help.

If publishing a thesis or dissertation is a long and stressful process, why should you do it?  While the process requires a lot of work, there are several benefits to publishing your thesis or dissertation:

• Wider audience: If your thesis is published in an academic journal, it will reach a significantly wider and more diverse audience.  It will also be more accessible to those specifically interested in your discipline.  Members of a wider audience include academic teachers, professors, service providers, and commissioners (Tribe & Tunariu, 2017).

• Greater impact: The findings and implementations of your thesis will have greater impact in your field of discipline if it is read by a larger audience (Tribe & Tunariu, 2017).  The more readers it reaches, the more the information will circulate in the field.

• Credibility: If you are able to tell others that you have published a work, it provides great credibility to you and your research.  This also benefits your reputation as a researcher, should you write theses in the future (Tribe & Tunariu, 2017).

• Professional development/career progression: Publishing a thesis or dissertation is a great resume builder because it shows future employers that you are reliable, credible, and thorough with your work.

According to Hatch and Skipper (2016), Ph.D. students who landed tenure-track positions within 5 years of graduation wrote an average of 4.3 peer-reviewed publications before they graduated.  What does this mean for your degree and future career goals?  It means that your research and writing skills are critical in completing your program.  Not all Ph.D. programs require you to publish work before graduation, but it will greatly benefit you in your job search because it presents a degree of professionalism and intelligence to an employer.

When you are submitting your thesis or dissertation to an academic journal, you are turning your thesis into a journal article.  This process will require you to edit and change the format of your work.  In some cases, you may need to rewrite sections to make them more concise.  That being said, theses and journal articles have characteristics that distinguish themselves from one another.  According to Hayward (2017), there are several differences between a journal article and a thesis that you should consider during the publishing process:

• Purpose: The purpose of a thesis is to demonstrate how much the author knows and has learned, whereas a journal article aims to establish the author's credibility and contribute valuable knowledge to the field.

• Potential Audience:  The audience of a thesis are university professors and educators, while the audience of a journal article consists of researchers and professionals in the field.

• Length: Theses tend to be significantly longer than journal articles.

• Abstract: Abstracts in theses and dissertations are longer than those in journal articles.

• Introduction: Introductions in a thesis show the reader that they are knowledgeable of existing literature on their subject.  A journal article focuses on how the work fills a gap in research.

• Materials and Methods: A thesis includes details about all methods used for the study, while journal articles describe the specific methodology used for the study.

• Discussion: Discussions in a thesis or dissertation show how the author understands and interprets the results of the study.  A journal article discusses the study's primary findings and how they apply to the author's research goals.

• References: Theses include a complete bibliography or references page, while a journal article uses items in a references page only if they were cited throughout the work.

• Appendices: These must be included in a thesis or dissertation, while it is optional to include in a journal article.

For more detailed information on the differences between theses and journal articles, you can read Editage's full article here.