Are you sure about this? I got credit transfer from my St Andrews BSc(Hons) towards my OU BA(Hons). I got 180 points worth of credit, and used 150 points in the end. But it did have a grade, and it did bring my final degree result down. If I'd studied a bit longer and thrown away more of the credit transfer I could have got a 1st, but I settled for a 2.1 from the OU.

I usually pay for overseas things by credit card. There is usually a small fee added on, but nothing as extortionate as some banks do. Might that be an option? Even to have a card with a small credit limit on it for occasions like this. I was able to apply for a credit card early on in my science PhD in the mid 1990s.

Well done! And best of luck with the new job.

Not sure how true that is in humanities. Maybe it's different in science, but I'd be careful about generalising too much.

Basically I was quite unusual in having 2 journal publications during my humanities PhD. I had co-authored papers during my (had to abandon, as illness developed) full-time science PhD. But humanities was a quite different kettle of fish.

Erm I'm a bit unusual. I managed my part-time (6 year) history PhD on no more than 5 productive hours a week in the later years. You can do a lot in very little time, well I found that out anyway. Would have been nice to have more hours to work with, but I have a severely disabling progressive neurological disease. So was rather restricted, and increasingly so as the years rolled on.

My supervisor said I was extremely good at using very limited time ;)

Succeeding in a PhD is a lot about being less of a perfectionist, and just getting enough ok words down. You've got to learn to let it go. Have you tried dictating your writing? I found this great when I was struggling to express things right in words. I would record directly into my computer, speaking the ideas and sentences as they occurred to me. And then I played them back and typed them up. I found it helped me get through an impasse.

And sophisticated vocabulary is not something to aspire to in a thesis IMHO. People using overly complex words is a bad thing in academic writing, from the reader's point of view. It's better if you express yourself clearly and simply in straightforward language.

Have you worked out a schedule for your writing? I don't mean when you will write in the week, but rather targets for when specific chapters will be finished. I did this in my part-time PhD, taking the initiative to manage my own (very limited) time effectively. I found it really helpful. I was up against a firm finishing deadline, and worked back from that to work out how long I had to work on each section.

Of course you don't need a PhD to do it. I had 2 journal papers published during my part-time PhD, one in a very eminent journal. I was sole author, so all the work was on my shoulders. That's normal in humanities.

The advantage of having a PhD is you are more experienced in the process, and usually more confident, but you don't need it. Though I'd argue that you are more likely to have a successful submission the more experienced you are.

Journals often expect affiliations though. I always put myself down as independent researcher, and honorary research fellow (as I am) at my university.

The only thing I'd add to Ian's comments is that length and style of papers varies a lot by discipline. So you should do whatever is appropriate to your discipline.

In mine a journal paper is typically 8000 words long, and can be longer. That's not always including footnotes or endnotes. My husband (scientist) boggles at how long history papers are! And we would never use bullet points, ever. Sentences and paragraphs only!

So do what is right for your discipline. Read the relevant journals to get advice. And follow the submission guidelines to the letter. Make the editor's job easy for them, so they are more inclined to look kindly on your paper.

The Guardian today published a series of articles written by self-funding PhD students. Some of them are studying full-time, a few part-time. I found them really interesting, and suspect they might help potential PhD students who are considering self-funding. I was funded from my 2nd year onwards, but self-funding, especially for part-time study, is extremely popular in my subject, history, where there is virtually no funding available.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2013/jun/06/self-funded-phd-student-lives

Oh and one more tip: don't spread your work too thinly. I think it's better to have a smaller number of higher quality more substantial papers than a large number of lesser pieces. Also be careful that your papers do not overlap too much. And when you look at approaching journals start with your more ambitious papers first, hopefully those you are most proud of. Then gradually work down the list.

You don't need your supervisors at this stage, and should be able to cope on your own. I did, and have had 5 papers published as a single author (normal in humanities).

The key thing is to follow journal submission guidelines to the letter, and target your papers carefully. You can choose to aim for more ambitious journals that may e harder to be published in, and then if that isn't successful try further down the list. Or you could play it safe and go for an easier journal first. It's your choice, that only you can make. Sort of depends on how quickly you need to be published.

I would not recommend submitting too many papers at once, lest you need to do revisions on multiple ones, and get overloaded. Also do not be dejected if a journal rejects your paper. That is very common, for even the most experienced and successful academics. Alternatively if you are offered a revise and resubmit, even with sometimes harsh referee reports, take it: you have a good chance of being ultimately successful.

For more advice I would recommend getting hold of a copy of Rowena Murray's book full of advice in publishing journal papers. It is well worth reading.

And good luck!

Oh and it's currently heavily discounted, the iPad version of EndNote, so if in doubt I'd buy it now. It cost me 69p earlier, and it's usually $9.99.

But only of use if you have an iPad already. I would not recommend buying an iPad just to use it :)

As far as I know the iPad version of EndNote has only been out for a few days, so very few people will have any reasonable experience of it at all.

I've just installed it on my iPad 2, and am going to try it later. Not entirely convinced by how useful it will be, since I do most referencing when writing in Word on my Mac laptop. But it could be a useful reference tool for look-ups, and adding things on the go.

There are also charitable organisations who will provide small grants to researchers (both postgraduate and post-doc) for things like attending conferences. You need to try all of these possible sources. Your university (not your supervisor) should be able to give you pointers towards likely sources. And, normally, a department would be able to help a bit.

And I'm afraid that I agree that a paper is not part of conference proceedings unless it was presented. Sorry.