Resource of the Week #168: From Dissertation to Book

Hello again. This week’s resource is another one that Julie Walker at INASP mentioned. It regards converting a dissertation to a publishable book manuscript.

The resource is a post on the website titled Vitae. This website is an online career hub from The Chronicle of Higher Education (a periodical largely for faculty and administrators at universities). Access to the website is free.

This post states and explains 2 main points: (1) “A dissertation is not a book.” (2) “Your writing style matters as much as the content of your book.” It includes comments and advice in these regards from editors at university presses.

The advice in this article is consistent with that in AuthorAID workshops. In such workshops, we often say, “Don’t publish your dissertation. Rather, publish a book (or one or more articles) based on it.”

Because dissertations and publications have different purposes and different audiences, they cannot be the same, even though they may present the same main findings.

More about writing and publishing books appears in the AuthorAID Resource Library. For example, this library includes a presentation on the topic. As well as discussing other aspects, this presentation contains slides contrasting dissertations and books.

Until the next post—

Barbara