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Book Review

Preprint · March 2017

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18379.80163

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Muge Bakkaloglu
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BOOK REVIEW BY MUGE BAKKALOGLU

Title: Authoring a Ph.D.: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation

Author: Patrick Dunleavy

Publisher: London: Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN: 978 – 1 – 4039 – 0584 – 0 Paperback

First Published 2003

Pages: 297

Patrick Dunleavy’s Authoring a Ph.D. book is designed to guide both Ph.D. students in the

humanities, arts and social sciences and their supervisors on their Thesis or Dissertation writing

journey. Dunleavy believes the research students also need to acquire a core of general authoring

skills. That is why his book aims to build a framework and provide some useful tips on how to

plan, draft, write, develop, revise and rethink a thesis/dissertation and finish it on time.

He also clearly states that completing doctoral thesis/dissertation is a personal process and this

journey can be different according to students, supervisor, universities, research topic and

context. However, this book provides a generic advice in a systematic way. That is why I found it

useful and necessary.

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This book has a structured context which contains nine chapters, starting from the beginning of

the journey till the end. The author uses the word thesis and dissertation interchangeably in the

book. Here is the title of the chapters:

 Chapter 1- Becoming an author

 Chapter 2- Envisioning the thesis as a whole

 Chapter 3- Planning an integrated thesis: the macro-structure

 Chapter 4- Organizing a chapter or paper: the micro-structure

 Chapter 5- Writing clearly: style and referencing issues

 Chapter 6- Developing your text and managing the writing process

 Chapter 7- Handling the attention points: data, charts and graphics

 Chapter 8- The end-game: finishing your doctorate

 Chapter 9- Publishing your research

Authoring skills are crucial to complete the doctorate successfully. It is not enough to be a good

researcher to be successful in completing Ph.D. Ph.D. students should have at least acceptable

level of writing skills to explain their findings in their research. Dunleavy believes that in most of

the social sciences and all of the humanities disciplines, a set of general authoring skills determine

around 40 to 50 percent of anyone’s success in completing a doctorate. That is why Ph.D.

students should improve their writing skills as much as they can to become an academic writer.

There are two models of Ph.D.:

1-Classical model with Big Book Thesis: Having limited preliminary coursework and focusing more

on thesis writing. Thesis requirement is 80,000 to 100,000 words.

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2-Taught Ph.D. model with papers model dissertation: having coursework at the first stage

assessed by general examination. Dissertation requirement is 60,000 and four or five publishable

quality journal papers.

While writing their thesis, Ph.D. students always think how readers will understand their text. It

is author’s responsibility to create good quality but not boring, easy to understand contexts and

manage readers’ expectations. Academic authors typically spend so much time in developing

their research, less time in writing. However, writing is critical to exchange your ideas in a

structured, organized way to the readers.

The first thing that Ph.D. students should do is to find a research question. The topic should be

authentic for the student. Otherwise, it will be harder to find the motivation to complete the

thesis. The thesis topic should show originality and contribute to the discipline. Otherwise, it will

be meaningless to study on. The common pitfall at this point is spending so much time such as

12-18 months on literature review and postponing the creative work. Ph.D. students should limit

the time frame for the literature review. Dunleavy suggests brainstorming sessions for 15-20

minutes and to jot down at least seven ideas for the research topic. Students should revisit those

ideas from time to time to structure them.

The next thing is creating the macro structure of the research topic such as how many chapters

should be written, approximately how many words in each chapter should be written, will there

be sub-sections in chapters and so on. Dunleavy suggests maximum two chapters for lead-in

materials which cover literature review and five chapters for core material which covers the

original work and 1-2 chapters for the lead out materials which covers the integrating

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summation. In humanities and social sciences, there are four ways of handling long, text-based

explanations: descriptive, analytic, argumentative and matrix pattern.

After building the macro structure, the first thing is to divide the chapters into parts. The chapters

and the sections in the chapters should all be approximately same length and have the same

importance for your argument. As a rule of thumb students should break up the text every 2000

to 2500 words. Otherwise, the reader can lose track of the argument. So in a standard-length

chapter of 10,000 words, four main sections are needed for big book thesis. These sections are

called first-order headings. If another breakdown is required for sub-sections, then second-order

headings can be used. The headings for first and second order should be clear and in a different

format (such as font size) for readers and should be consistent across all chapters. The students

should avoid over organizing chapters and having too many levels of headings. Each chapter

should have an introduction and conclusion parts. It is also important that the headings should

describe the sections and chapters. Students should avoid non-substantive, interrogative,

inaccurate and repetitive headings. After deciding titles, starting a chapter is not easy. To have

an interesting start and to catch the attention of the readers, three ways can be used: including

quotations, introducing a strong example and setting out a paradox or intellectual puzzle.

The next important point is writing clearly. The writing style should be value-added and

accessible. Students also avoid using too many professional jargons and redundant text.

Paragraphs should be a unit of thought, and the pattern of paragraphs is critical, thus should be

well organized. Each paragraph length should be ideally between 100 and 200 words. The

sequence materials within paragraphs should follow the topic, body and wrap formula. Sentences

should not be longer than 40 words, and ideally, it should be around 20 words. Referencing is

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also another important point. The references should be proper and accurate in the thesis. Each

university can have their own preferences on reference style. Dunleavy advises students, to learn

appropriate reference preference from their universities.

According to Dunlevy writing is a multi-stage process and iterative. Going from the first draft to

a final version will produce many changes. Students should get insight from their supervisors and

colleagues when they complete the draft of a chapter. According to feedbacks, the text can be

developed more. In some original cases, the chapter may need remodeling even though students

make several incremental changes. These are part of writing processes. Students should plan

their writing times and stick to their plans to have productive writing sessions. In a simple

calculation if a student writes 1000 words a day which is feasible, the drafting the whole thesis

twice over take 160 days. However, the progress also depends on the intellectual morale.

Tracking word counts after each day can be a motivational factor for students.

Another point that students should consider is selecting the right layout for charts, tables,

graphics. Their format should be easy to read; the units of the measurements should be clear,

and they should have a clear title. Students can also provide basic statistical data on the table

such as median, mean, interquartile range and so on. Readers should understand what that data

shows clearly when they see it. Students should avoid complex 3D designs for layout, long

decimal numbers in tables. Otherwise, they can lose the reader’s attention quickly.

Finishing thesis is not an easy thing. However, when students have the draft of the full thesis,

Dunleavy suggests overviewing the whole thesis again starting from the thesis title, headings,

and the context. Context should be in a logical order and should support the argument. Poor

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charts, long sentences, repetitive headlines, complex grammar, blur arguments, inaccurate

references should be avoided.

The last phase of the thesis is publishing it. At this stage, Dunleavy suggests many ways publish

it. Students can publish thesis or publish each chapter as a journal article or publish the thesis as

a research monograph. To publish the chapters as a journal article, students need to rework on

your writings and form it as a journal article. Dunleavy thinks the goal of publishing is to acquire

a kind of immortality.

Dunleavy’s book has several strengths. First of all, it is useful, and the information is practical.

There are several rules of thumbs that may help students and supervisors in this journey. That is

why I think Dunleavy meets the expectations of the readers. Another strength is the book’s

structure. It is well organized and easy to track as a reader. I think this book also a good example

of what he is saying to us. The writing style and the vocabulary are also very accessible. I think

students can easily follow this book as an instruction for their thesis. I also liked his way of macro

and micro structuring of the thesis. It showed me that from up to down if we plan the thesis

structure and if we plan our writing time, it is possible to complete thesis on time successfully.

Analytically I found the tips on word counts and so on very useful.

Even though the mechanical part of the thesis is clear enough, I found the emotional part a little

weak. The author accepts that the morale is vital to complete the thesis. However, he does not

give much importance to this topic. Therefore, I believe the book should cover more information

on how to motivate yourself to writing as well.

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Dunleavy doesn’t picture the perfect world for this journey. In this book he accepts that bad

things can also happen such as you can even remodel your writings or you can be bad with your

supervisor or you can fail your comprehensive exam and so on. But he also provides a way to

overcome these issues.

Thesis and dissertation used interchangeably in this book. But the overall word counts for each

chapters, sub sections were more based on big book thesis case. Therefore, it can be complicated

for some students if they won’t read the book from the beginning. Some readers may want to

pick the important chapter and read that part. Therefore, a clarification may be needed when

there is a difference in that specific topic between dissertation and thesis.

In summary, this book can be a very beneficial source for each PhD students and the supervisors

in humanities, arts and social sciences. This book provides a very clear guidance on many topic

regarding authoring a Ph.D.

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