The Ulutas Medical Journal p-ISSN 2149-0430 e-ISSN 2149-388X

Turning a thesis into a journal article

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A thesis is the longest piece of research most Turkish medical students and residents ever write. Turning it into one or more journal articles makes the work visible and is often a graduation requirement. This guide covers the decisions you need to take; your own university's regulation and your target journal's instructions always decide the details.

Choosing what to publish

A thesis can contain several questions. A journal article should answer one. Pick the finding that is the most complete, new and clearly supported by your data, and write the article around it. The other results may fit a second paper, but avoid splitting one study into many thin papers.

Publishing from a thesis is not treated as prior publication by the policies we checked. Elsevier's publishing ethics page lists a published academic thesis among the exceptions to its rule against submitting already published work. Even so, tell the editor about the thesis in the cover letter, and cite it. The ICMJE asks authors to disclose any substantial overlap with earlier work in the submission letter.

Many universities require a publication from doctoral work. As one example, the Marmara University graduate regulation we read requires at least one research article, published or accepted in specified indexed journals, before the defence of a doctorate in the natural and health sciences. Requirements differ between universities, programmes and years, so read yours.

Cutting to journal length

  • Use the journal's article structure; the ICMJE notes that original research typically follows IMRAD.
  • Keep only the methods needed to repeat the work. Move the long literature review into a few paragraphs of introduction.
  • Report the main outcomes in the text and tables; keep secondary tables for supplementary files if the journal allows.
  • Rewrite; do not paste thesis chapters. COPE's guidance on text recycling asks authors to cite earlier publications, be open about overlap and reword text that is not a methods description. The same is true for your own thesis text. Methods may legitimately overlap, but results and discussion should be freshly written.
  • Write an abstract that matches the article, not a shortened thesis abstract.

Authorship with your supervisor

This is the point that causes the most conflict. The ICMJE criteria say that an author must have made a substantial contribution, helped draft or critically revise the work, approved the final version, and agreed to be accountable for it. They also state that general supervision, funding acquisition and administrative support alone do not qualify someone for authorship, and that language or technical editing does not either.

University rules may add their own conditions. The Marmara regulation, for example, expects the student to contribute significantly to the research and writing, and says the thesis supervisor's name must appear on publications from the thesis. It does not say in the text we read how the author order is decided. Combine both: use your regulation, and still ask whether each named person meets the ICMJE criteria.

  • Agree the author list and order in writing before you start writing.
  • Name thesis committee members as authors only if they meet the criteria; otherwise thank them in the acknowledgments, with their permission.
  • If you cannot agree, the ICMJE says the authors decide, journal editors do not adjudicate, and the institution investigates a dispute.

Ethics approval and data

  • Use the ethics committee approval that covered the thesis. State its body, date and number in the manuscript; check the journal's instructions for what it asks.
  • If the thesis is open in the YÖK National Thesis Center, readers can see the full text. The Center says that theses whose authors permitted archiving and full-text access are available as open access; ones without permission are not available online. Tell the editor if your thesis is publicly available.
  • Check that the data in the article match the thesis. If you corrected errors after the defence, mention it.

Choosing a journal

Choose a journal whose readers fit your topic and whose article types fit your design. Read its instructions for authors, then check its trustworthiness with the Think. Check. Submit. checklist before you send anything; see our guide to that checklist. If your university requires a given index, confirm the journal's status in that index on the index's own site, not on the journal's claim.

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