Yes, in the same way that a traditional PhD student will have a primary supervisor to oversee your project.

With this researcher-supervisor relationship, your options may be open in terms of whether you need to be based at the C3S in person or if you choose to work remotely as a distance learning student, communicating with your supervisor over email or video calls.

As a DBA candidate at the C3S, you will have access to the professional development programme provided by the Research Development Unit. You will be able to access training in essential skills through our programme of workshops, mentoring and coaching. A dedicated postgraduate Careers and Employability team under the Research Development Unit (RDU) will also help you with preparing the next steps in your career after the completion of your PhD.

The body of work that you submit will be read and assessed by two examiners that are experts within your subject area of research. This will be followed by the viva examination with the two examiners, in line with the conventional PhD approach. To be awarded this research degree you will need to demonstrate that your work has made an original contribution to furthering the subject knowledge within your field.

Universities will have specific guidance about factors such as how many publications you can include in your portfolio and there may be some restrictions on when they should have been published. Typically, you will include 5 publications in your submission to your PhD examiners, but this can in some circumstances be as low as 3 or 4 or as high as 10 separate papers. Most often these will be in the form of journal articles accepted by peer reviewed journals but can also include published book chapters, scientific or technical reports that have been published or other forms of publication that have gone through a level of peer review.

There is no one correct answer! Regardless of the thesis mode, the goal of doctoral study is to make an original and significant contribution to a field. How many papers it will take to meet this goal will depend on many factors. An Australian survey found that the average number of papers included in Australian thesis was 4.5, but this ranged anywhere from one to 12 papers. Publishing in itself is not a guarantee of conferral of your degree, and quality may be more important than quantity.

Doctoral candidates often publish with their supervisors. Supervisors have always assisted their students in the development of their traditional thesis, to differing degrees, but in the past this has gone relatively unacknowledged. Most university guidelines will require candidates to declare each author’s contribution to a paper, and thus a higher level of authorial transparency is achieved. Co-authoring papers gives doctoral students an apprenticeship in writing journal articles, as well as experience in collaborative writing and working in research teams – a regular part of an academic’s job.

Early and frank communication is important. The three co-authored papers in Shannon’s thesis were written in the beginning stages of her candidature when more hands-on support in the process of writing and publishing was needed. She was then well-equipped to write the remaining four papers alone. Margaret’s thesis was unusual as all included papers were sole authored, which was only possible as she had already co-authored two peer-reviewed papers prior to candidature.

We strongly recommend establishing clear mutual expectations between candidate and supervisor as early as possible.

The process of preparing a manuscript, submitting to a journal, waiting for reviews, attending to requests for revisions, copy editing, and final publication can be extensive in some fields. This can be very frustrating for candidates who are working to a doctoral submission deadline. It is important to check journal guidelines for their average turnaround times. Once a paper is under review, don’t be afraid to follow up politely once this time has passed.

It is also important to check your PhD-by-publication guidelines, because many universities allow the submission of papers at various stages of production, such as those still under review. This allowance is particularly helpful to ensure the inclusion of papers developed in the later stages of your candidature.

For doctoral candidates just developing their new identities as researchers, rejection can be difficult to take. The reality is that even experienced academics deal with rejection at some time, perhaps more often than they might like to admit! The important thing to remember is that rejection is a normal part of the process. The decision is not always about the quality of the paper, but its fit within that particular journal at that particular time. It is important to become familiar with any journal that you intend to submit to, including the theories and methods that are favoured, and the type of academic voice appropriate for that journal.

There are particular difficulties in developing a single submission based on multiple publications, each with their own focus, style, and format, and, as we recently explored, there are a number of favoured options for structure. Nikander and Piattoeva offer useful advice on how to use the integrating chapter to connect papers together.

There are also other issues that might arise from the transformational nature of doctoral study, where students learn while doing. For example, Margaret began to question her use of one of the informing concepts she had used in her early papers. In her subsequent work, she challenged her own simplistic use of this concept. Rather than become discouraged by the discovery of earlier flaws in our work, we understand that as researchers, we will continue to grow and cast a critical gaze over our past knowledge base. We both used the integrative chapter of our thesis to highlight these limitations, but also to make explicit the evolution in our understanding; as such, it was a very enjoyable chapter to write!

A clear advantage of DBA is that you’re submitting your thesis that has already gone through extensive assessment at C3S. This means that by the time you come to defend your work at a viva voce with the degree granting body, it’s much easier. For example, the questions your examiners may ask you could be very similar to the questions you were asked by your reviewers during your initial assessment at C3S and so you will already have prepared suitable responses to these.

Another advantage of this route is that it’s a much quicker way of obtaining an accelerated DBA degree; traditional DBA programs take between three and four years from registration to completion whereas it is possible to get this DBA within one year of registration with the C3S. The shorter duration means that you might have to pay only one year of TUITION fee, meaning that this approach is cheaper than a traditional method.