Yesterday’s Times Higher Education Supplement featured a lengthy article discussing the traditional model of the doctoral thesis.

The recent report constructed by a former UKCGE Executive Committee member Professor Bruce Christianson, The Role of Publications and Other Artefacts in Submissions for the UK PhD, features heavily in the article and presents data on current practice in the sector.

In the article Professor Christianson who is professor of informatics at the University of Hertfordshire is quoted as saying,

‘Universities typically require students to append an introduction, setting out the context in which the papers fit, and a critical summary at the end, bringing all the strands together. Despite all that, he estimates that the amount of material candidates have to write from scratch under the integrated format is about a fifth of that required for a traditional thesis.’

Link to article