In my previous dissertation-to-publication post, What to Do With Your Dissertation After You Defend, I offered a ten-minute exercise for a first look at the parts of your dissertation that are ripe for publication. By now, each chapter should have at least three lines sketched beside it: the chapter’s content in two sentences or fewer, which reveals its clarity; a first guess at its purpose, what it could become on its own (an article? part of a book?); and who its readers might be. Purpose is the column this post takes up. How many articles, book chapters, talks, workshops, conference presentations, or other forms did you find in that ten-minute scan? That list is the beginning of your dissertation-to-publication map, and it reveals what your dissertation can become. The next step is to understand what in your dissertation is a candidate for publication. The findings are usually the place to focus, but a dissertation will sometimes also yield a methodological innovation or insight that is important to publish in its own right.
Creating an inventory of publishable ideas from your dissertation reveals how your dissertation is a treasure chest: the source of several publishable pieces of scholarship, and likely the foundation of your future scholarship as well. Germano (2026) says of scholarly books that they “aren’t boxes of content” but can be thought of as “the vehicle and repository of struggles with problems over time” (p. 2), and the dissertation that comes before the book is that too: years of reading, method, data, and argument on one problem, which is why it can feed more than one output. This is not dissertation slicing. It is understanding how your study can offer several streams of evidence, each digestible for an academic or professional audience. Germano (2013) offers several clues to mapping out the publishable pieces of your dissertation.
Germano’s (2013) book focuses on helping academic authors transition a dissertation into a book, but in his introduction he lists several other pathways, and my own Dissertation to Publication program helps authors explore all of them. Your dissertation can become “a single scholarly article, a handful of them, a specialized monograph, a broader scholarly work, a trade book, even the seeds of two or more distinct projects that could occupy the author for decades” (p. 6). A book is one option of many. An author who begins with journal articles is not giving up on the book: those articles feed the larger project later and strengthen the eventual book proposal. I recommend publishing a few articles first, then pivoting to a book. When you see your dissertation as a treasure chest from which to develop original publications, you can begin to approach your next steps as a scholar creatively.
Ten things your dissertation can become
Your dissertation is also your publication map, with your findings as the major pathways through it. Each of the following ten pulls from a different part of your dissertation; only a full book project pulls from the whole of it.
- Journal articles: one finding, one chapter, or one strand of the analysis, or a methodological breakthrough or innovation in approach
- Scholarly monograph: the whole argument, re-aimed at a field readership
- Trade or crossover book: the story and the stakes, stripped of method
- Course or curriculum: the literature review, the methods, the conceptual framework
- Policy or practice document: the findings and recommendations
- Practitioner tools: instruments, protocols, coding frames, interview guides
- Conference presentations: any single finding plus the method, including any innovation in approach
- Workshops and training: the methods chapter plus the practical implications
- Public scholarship: the “so what,” in plain language
- Grant groundwork: the limitations and future-directions sections
Rather than freeze when you see this list, understand that these ten can fill your academic writing calendar and keep you publishing as you enter the field, establishing your scholarship and helping you gain tenure, if that is a goal you are pursuing, or expert status on your topic if you are a business leader.
Germano (2013) does warn that what makes revising a dissertation an anxious task is “having too much plastic” (p. 9). When everything about the work could still change, nothing has to be decided, and a new PhD looking at ten possible publications can freeze in the same way. My Dissertation to Publication program is meant to offer structure and support so you do not face these choices alone: scaffolding that gives you choice and breathing room as we work together to turn your dissertation research into the right number of publications for your study and your career goals. But even on your own, you can keep the full map folded in your pocket while you walk one pathway at a time to a finished piece, and this post is meant to help you do that, with or without professional publication support.
Focusing on a few strategic pathways is the best way to begin building a publication record from your dissertation research. Often this begins with a conference presentation, followed by a journal article. Other articles can come later, but to begin a publishing career, most academics need to publish in an academic journal. You are not abandoning the other pathways by choosing a presentation and then an article; you are building the ladder that leads to the longer forms. So for today, writing down which of the ten above your dissertation could feed lets you take stock of what your research can really become and how it can lead to future studies (pro tip: reread your own directions for future research, and you will see the trajectory of your scholarship for the next several years), and it lets you begin to make strategic choices about your path forward. Part of that strategy is the investment of time and energy. A conference presentation can be put together in a few days, and a focused writer can draft a journal article in as little as a month. These build your confidence, and when it comes time to write a book proposal, you know your ideas have already been validated by your scholarly community through the peer-reviewed articles you have published. You can start this process today, on your own, from the information in this post. Here is how.
Try this: open the chest once
Take the page from the last post’s exercise, or just your table of contents, and keep the dissertation itself closed, for the same reason as last time: if you open it, you will start reading, and if you start reading, you will start fixing. Make two columns. On the left, list each chapter, and the appendices as one line; that is where your instruments, protocols, and coding frames live, and they are the easiest pieces to forget. On the right, write which of the ten above that chapter could feed. More than one is fine. A blank is fine too. Give yourself ten minutes, timed. The limit is the point: this is the one step where everything is on the table, and it should not stay there.
Then star one line: the piece you could finish soonest, not the one you most want to write. The time from here to a visible result runs from days, for a conference proposal or a piece of public scholarship, to years, for either kind of book, so for most readers the star lands on a presentation, an article, or a policy piece. Leave every other line where it is. That page is now your parked list: the pieces you have not abandoned, waiting in rough order for their turn. Two things not to do yet: do not open the dissertation, and do not start writing the starred piece tonight. The star still has to be tested against your field, your timeline, and the career you want, and that is a different kind of work.
That appraisal is what a Publication Strategy Session is for: your ten-minute inventory becomes the full one, weighed against your field and your timeline, and you leave with your first piece named and the rest in order.
Warmly,
~Jennifer
References
Germano, W. (2013). From dissertation to book (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Germano, W. (2026). Getting it published (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press.