Hi All

I hope you can help me with this one, one of my supervisors has told me to start writing chapters for my Dissertation and then develop papers from these. My 2nd supervisor has told me to do the opposite, write papers and then develop these into the dissertation during the writing up period.

I am now totally confused, as both are accepted experts in the field which should I do?

write your dissertation first. thats whats going to get your phd, not papers, although papers do "help".
but it's easier to cut down the chapter and turn it into a paper, instead of the other way around.

trust me. my sups also made me write papers first and told me it would be easy to turn them into chapters. it is NOT!

i wish i had not listened to them, and instead worked on my chapters first.

This is VERY GOOD advice from Lara. Listen to her or you'll transform your life into misery. Whatever your sups say, never let them make you believe that you should write papers first.

Besides, Lara, my supervisor would hang you up the next tree for calling the thing "dissertation", according to him it is a "thesis" and only Masters or Undergrad are dissertations.. ;-) As if the world has no other problems.

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I don't really see writing papers before the THESIS (lol) as very efficient. I found that my thesis chapters are a lot more detailed. It's easier to go from detailed to less detailed rather than the other way around.

Definitely listen to Lara, she speaks from experience!

I was also advised to do papers first but I've found that impossible in the timeframe - I'm doing the thesis first and will then adapt papers. Papers are much more sharply focussed and leave out so much of your thesis.

It would be a better idea if they could agree between themselves on the best way for you approach something as fundamental as this, so everyone involved knows what plan of work you are following. It could get complicated if you frequently find yourself having to choose which supervisor's advice to follow, especially if it's conflicting. After all, you're the student and they're the supervisors, so you shouldn't be in a position of having to make that choice.

I have two supervisors from different disciplines, so both have different ideas about methodology, although both are excellent in their respective fields. We agree my plan of work at joint meetings so we all know exactly what I'm doing, and I copy both supervisors into emails when I've got questions relating to methodology so everyone's kept in the picture. It covers me as well, in case there are any problems in the future, where one wants to know why I'm doing things a certain way and not following his/her advice.

A friend, another phd student, did what your 2nd supervisor suggested. She managed to publish papers and she ended up using everything she wrote in 3 years in her thesis. However she was quite consistent from the beginning and she didn't have to change her approach at all. Whereas I didn't have a clue about what I was saying most of the time; my work changed a lot since I started my research. If I've been writing papers I wouldn't be using any of them in my thesis (in fact I had to re-write 2 of my chapters.) So it all depends on how you work, what stage you are at your research and what type of research project you have. In most cases, it is best to focus on your thesis and get papers from your thesis if you can.

Its a tough call really. My main supervisor says that it is good to get your work published before submitting your thesis as once it has been peer reviewed it is easier to defend in your viva and so he wants me to get some papers ready over the next few months and then I can bulk them up afterwards to put the info in my thesis.

In your case I think the best thing to do would be to try and get both supervisors together so that they can come to a happy medium rather than you having to decide which supervisor's advice to follow! But ultimately it is your PhD so I guess you have to think about what you want to do.

Yup, chapters first then papers.

However, it's definately worth getting the chapters published as papers afterwards as according to my sups, if you get it into a kickass journal with a lovely impact factor it's makes it 100 times harder for your viva examiners to lay into you too much as it's already been peer reviewed by a high quality journal.

Nice, huh?

Now, if only it was that easy...

My supervisors advised chapters first. Its easier to reduce a paper from a chapter (or multiple chapters if they're linked), than the other way around. Also, you'd need to complete all the data analysis for the chapter anyway. And finally, what if you write a paper, then its only when you write up the chapter, you realise that what you originally did was wrong or had some errors? Plus the amount of time it takes to write a paper...

How much does it matter if you've published before? I can imagine there are some examiners that might tear into a methodology etc, whether its been peer-reviewed or not. But I'm sure it does make some difference. Also, to have stuff published/in press, or even accepted for some journals by the time of your viva, that means you'd have to submit it maybe the end of your second year or start of your third? Wow, if I think how much my thesis and all my ideas have changed since then...