After more than 5 years doing my PhD with more problems than I care to go into (both personal and work-related) I am in the last few months of writing up and am convinced I am not going to be awarded a PhD. My work undertaken is a fraction of what it was meant to be and I have not had any publications. The final piece of lab work is now unlikely to go ahead due to time and fundsing constraints. Without this i fear that I will definately not be awarded the PhD.
can anyone relate this? perhaps been through it themselves? any advice/support would be welcome
:-(

do you need publications to get the PhD? in my field its not necessary. I think the best thing is to confide in your supervisor about your fears and see whether they are founded, this is probably just nerves about the whole thing

I have asked outright and I just get a very guarded response, and previous discussion about the final tests have implied that without it the PhD will be weak. I just don't know what to do. 

It is concerning that the supervisor suggests you must complete work that funding is not available to do. If you have given the full story here I am not sure how this is justifiable. Is it funding that the lab must generate rather than that you can provide, because otherwise perhaps you could get a job and fund the remainder of the work yourself, doing it part time if you are close to completion? I would seek advice from your supervisor about what you can do to optimise your research and how you can be expected to complete work necessary within available funding to complete your PhD satisfactorily. But as long as you pay your fees, or someone else pays them for you such as a research council, the university must provide you with the facilities to complete your work to a satisfactory standard. I would also seek advice from others in your department/graduate school or students union who you think might be open to concerns.

To me it seems important that you resolve your concerns before you submit your PhD as you enter a more difficult situation in relation to your university if they fail you, and then you ask why/what you could do differently. Is there the possibility of you finding work and making some progress with your professional life in general, while delaying submitting your PhD until it's satisfactorily finished?

Hi Moomin

This reminds me of a chap we had here a while ago, obviously shouldn't name names. He took 4 years to complete his PhD with very minimal results indeed. As long as your supervisor knows what he or she is doing, and you passed all the upgrades etc, you should not be in a position to fail having got this far. You could say that failure would represent a failure of the system.

Where you may have a problem is if your boss does not know what he or she is doing. In that case you could get somebody who does to have a look, but as is say, if you've been allowed to get this far, it should probably pass.

As for publications, if your in biological sciences like me, they help, but you can pass without them. It isn't necessarily your fault things did not work because it was probably your boss who designed the project and applied for the funding. This isn't to say you can blame them for everything, but it is why no positive data should be no barrier.

Good luck