PhD skill: "Growing" your thesis

Summary: Your PhD thesis is the final document that you will defend at the end of your research path. That does not mean however, that it is something that you will write exclusively at the end. There are reasons why from Day 1 you can already keep a working draft of your PhD thesis at your side: (1) to keep you from wandering off-topic; (2) reduce the amount of work when writing your final thesis.

The PhD thesis is the documentation of your research work. It forms the proof that you are an autonomous researcher capable of doing scientific work. Your PhD thesis will be examined by several people who are experts in the field. Thus, the final months of your research path will be devoted to writing your thesis.

When you have recently started your PhD research, the PhD thesis may seem like very far away and thus, nothing of immediate concern. Obviously, multiple ways of completing your PhD thesis exist. It is up to you and your supervisor which path you deem most productive. Here I outline what you can do from the very beginning in your research.

Binder and shared workspace

Your PhD thesis will see a lot of development throughout your research path. Most of your work will be produced and stored digitally. Thus it makes sense to have a shared workspace that you and your supervisor can access. Apart from a digital store where you have all your things, it is also helpful to create a dedicated binder in which you organise your thesis. Contrary to a shared workspace, a binder gives you an immediate overview of the work you have done. It is much faster to browse through a binder than through a collection of files. Your digital store on the other hand allows you to search easier, and it reduces the amount of printed paper.

Shared workspaces have the advantage that co-authoring or co-editing files is very easy. The tricky part is to keep track of the changes; very often after three or four rounds of editing it is hard to still make sense of it all - especially if you do not sit around with your supervisor to discuss the changes. So once in a while it is good to consolidate revisions, fix them, and continue working on the stabilized text versions. Keep the older versions in an archive.

Research plan and PhD thesis

At the start of your research, probably all you have is a research plan, a mostly generally formulated problem, and tons of motivation.

A couple of things you can already do with your binder/workspace:

1. Tabs & folders that reflect your chapter structure. There are some universal items that are in any PhD thesis: (i) Title page; (ii) Table of contents; (iii) Introduction; (iv) Methodology; (v) State of the Art; (vi) Results; (vii) Discussion; and (viii) Literature. Chapters (iv) and (v) are closely linked to your research plan. Depending on your school, there may be guidelines and rules what should go in a PhD thesis. Additionally, there may be rules about layout, formatting, and other obligatory items. In the beginning, do not be too worried about formatting and stuff, but make sure to store those guidelines somewhere. They do become important for your final thesis.
2. Organise first, write later. Most of your early activities in your research deal with the literature research to get acquainted with your research topic and methodology. Check out Build Your References for more details how to organise this. References to papers, chapters, books, and so on should go in an organised list in your Literature chapter. Keep digital copies of said papers, chapters, and books and store them in your shared workspace in the appropriate chapter/folder.
3. Annotate. Do not just store stuff, but also include notes why you did so. Highlight sections of text you find enlightening or important.

In the beginning your binder/workspace will be quite empty, which is only to be expected. The chapters that will fill up first are (iv) Methodology; (v) State of the Art; and (viii) Literature.

As your work progresses

As you go on in your research, attention will shift from state of the art to a proper understanding of your own research and what methods you will use. Roughly in the middle of your research path you will have your first publications like conference papers, workshop contributions, or perhaps even a journal publication.

This is the point where your binder/workspace transforms from organising and archiving related work to the documentation and storage of your own output.

Move papers and material that are not yours to a parallel archive, and fill the binder/workspace with your own production only.

In this way it becomes clear what portion of the work you have already covered in your research, and where more work needs to be done. You will have a clear view of (iv) Methodology and (vi) Results. Consequently, you can make more precise and detailed subdivision of those chapters. Perhaps it will be necessary to increase the number of chapters especially for (vi) Results, that reflect better what you are working on.

As the number of your publications increases, a principal decision for your PhD thesis will rise: will your thesis be a commented collection of published papers, or will it be a completely new text? If your thesis will be a commented collection of papers, then your chapter organisation is a good indicator if your publications are (or will be) evenly spread along the chapters. If your thesis will be a whole new text, then the chapter organisation is a good indicator for your further writing.

Note, by the way, that a thesis as a whole new text does not mean you cannot draw from your published work. However, you cannot then produce your thesis with large bodies of text simply "copy-and-paste"-d from earlier publications into your thesis.

Things to keep on the side

As said above, in the beginning the binder/workspace for your thesis serves mostly for organising materials that you gather. Later, when the content is filled with your own production, you should remove the parts that are not from your hand. That does not mean throwing it away. Keep as a separate archive things like:

1. Full-text archive of papers, chapters, and books that you referred to.
2. Images, schemes, diagrams, photos, and so on including their source references.
3. Your universities' instructions how to format and deliver your PhD thesis, and the list of obligatory elements that should be in there.
4. Versioning archive of older drafts of your PhD thesis.

Towards the end: the PhD thesis

If you have "grown" your PhD thesis in the manner outlined above, then by the end of your research path, the production of the final PhD thesis should be much easier compared to starting from scratch.

Documents that grow over time should be carefully checked, in order of importance:

1. Verify that the chapter order, titles, and sub sections still correspond to your main research argument.
2. Check for repetitive text sections that may have ocurred through restructuring or shifting your text.
3. Check if your reference system is still consistent.
4. Check if you do not have superfluous references in your literature list that you do not use anymore in the text.

If you have seen your own text over a long period of time and multiple times, it becomes hard to detect (sometimes obvious) mistakes. Simple tools like spelling-checkers are very useful for straightforward correction.

An effective way to break out of this "blind spot", is to produce a printed mock-up version of your text in the form and layout of your final thesis. This provides enough distance, so to speak, to have a fresh look at your work. You can go through this version by yourself, with your supervisor, or with someone who is unfamiliar with your work.

Conclusion

"Growing" your PhD thesis makes it easier to stay on track during your research; it helps you organise and archive your work; and reduces the amount of work at the final production of your PhD thesis.