Why publish your thesis?

Even though master theses are read within the university by for example other master students, they are not widely read outside the university or cited in research articles. A thesis is not exposed to the same level of scrutiny as a peer-reviewed article, and findings presented in a master thesis are therefore not taken as seriously. Publishing your thesis in a peer-reviewed journal can be worth considering if you have found interesting results that you want to share with a wider audience. Publishing an academic article is also a great experience if you are considering a future career in scientific research. You will probably need to do some additional work to get your thesis into the appropriate research article format, but a publication will give you valuable experience and be a great addition to your CV.

What is the difference between a thesis and a research article?

A research article is shorter, more concise and specific.
Research articles usually contain fewer explanations of why you conducted every step of the research process.
Shorter and more selective presentation of related research mostly presented in the introduction and discussion.
Most research articles follow the IMRaD format.
Usually a collaborative effort between you and your supervisor, as well as other possible contributors to your research.

Academic Journals

Who is responsible for the publication?

Most master theses never get published at all. Those that do, often have supervisors who publish on behalf of their master students by merging the student’s work with their own, or with the work of other master or PhD students. Talk with your supervisor about the possibility to publish even before you start your thesis work. Is your supervisor planning to include your work in one of their own publications, or could you get a chance to publish it as a first author? If you are part of a larger research group, talk to your supervisor before starting to write a thesis about potential funding or support for publishing after completion of the thesis.

Preparing the manuscript

Preparing a manuscript to submit to an academic journal often takes considerable time after the thesis is complete. The results of your thesis may not even be publishable on their own, without further research effort. This may be a time-consuming process, but if you wait too long after submission to get started, your supervisor is likely to publish it for you. You might still be included as an author on your supervisor’s paper, but most likely not as the first author if you do not contribute to the publication process.

Taking charge of your own publication will give you valuable experience in academic publishing, a great addition to your CV and an opportunity to display your work to a wider audience outside your university. It might require some extra work in terms of rewriting or even redoing some of your analysis, but this normal in any research process and will give you additional experience and skills as a researcher. Working on a publication can be done in combination with a job by working during evenings and weekends. If you know that you are interested in publishing parts of your thesis, attempt to write the thesis as similar to a research article as possible to avoid having to rewrite too much.

From Thesis to Article

Selecting the journal

Talk to your supervisor about potential journals to submit to. Your supervisor probably has a better overview of relevant journals within your field. Try to look into the ranking and prestige of the journals you are considering, and aim for something that is realistic. Often more general journals are ranked higher and are more widely read than the very specific or geographically restricted ones. Some journals may even have separate sections for student contributions, which can be worth considering.

Check whether your research group or faculty has to fund for publications. There are both open access journals that you have to pay to publish in and subscription journals, where university libraries and other institutions pay to get access to the journal, which leaves you with limited or no costs. Serious open access journals may be more available to a wider audience but often involves high costs.

Look through previous publications from the journal you are interested in.

Have they published similar research as you are doing?
Is it too similar so they are unlikely to be interested in the same topic?
Is it specific to the geographic region you have worked in?
Do previous articles have a similar structure as yours?
How long have previous articles taken from submission to publication date

Journal requirements

Most journals have detailed requirements concerning the format and structure of your paper. Look through these and ensure that you follow their requirements in terms of structure, length and tables and figures. Most journals have detailed specification on the presentation of tables and figures, which may require you to go back to your statistics software to change fonts, symbol sizes, etc. Journal requirements are often rather detailed and strict, but it is really important that you follow them. You would not want to be dismissed before you even get to the review process because you used the wrong font or figure colours.

The review process

If you are required to suggest reviewers for your article:

Pick someone with relevant experience in your study fields.
They should not be closely connected to you or your co-authors.
If you suggest someone you have cited in your paper, make sure you have cited them correctly.
Do not aim too high - the most well-known scholars in your field may be too busy to review the work of a master student.
PhD students from other universities can also act ask reviewers.

After you have submitted your article it will first be looked over by the editor or preliminary reviewers to check whether it matches the journal topic and format requirements. If approved the article will be sent to anonymous reviewers. The review process may take a long time, depending on the journal. If you want your article published as fast as possible, talk to other scholars about their experience with the review process in that journal. If the journal is known for a very long review process, consider publishing in another journal.

Responding to comments

After the review, your article may be rejected or accepted with major/minor revisions. The reviewers will provide comments on your manuscript and often suggestions on how to improve. These may be quite substantial and take time to implement before you can resubmit. Remember the reviewers are trying to help you and they have they spent their spare time to give you these comments. Occasionally, comments from reviewers can be rather rude or indicate that they have not read your paper very well. Try, however, to respond to their comments in a polite manner, and remember if they misunderstand it is probably your fault as the author. If you get very annoyed by their comments, wait a few days before you respond. You need to respond to each comment and if you disagree or chose to ignore some of their comments, you still need to explain in your response why you chose to do so.

How to handle rejections

If you are rejected you may always re-submit your article in another journal. Rejections are not uncommon and authors often have to go through several journal submissions to get something published. Many of the best known scientific papers in the world were rejected many times before they finally got published. Do not get discouraged if your paper gets rejected in several journals. Getting accepted also depend on which reviewers you are given, and you may get unlucky. If you progressed to the review stage, engage with the reviewer’s comments, and try to improve your paper before resubmitting it to another journal. Every time your paper gets rejected and revised it will probably improve.

Related resources

Publishing

How to publish

7 steps to publish in an academic journal

The Nordic journal ranking system

NMBU Student Journal of Life Sciences

Tips for publishing

Predatory journals

Predatory journals (youtube)

Predatory journals

Publishing in valueless journals

8 ways to identify predatory journals

List of predatory journals

The peer review process

How to respond to reviewers

How to deal with conflicting reviews