Q: Can I get my Diplomate of National Board (DNB) thesis published after a gap of 10 years?

Detailed Question -

If my DNB thesis was not published in the years of [my] DNB completion, can I get it published after a long gap of 10 years?

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

We assume that you have already submitted your thesis to a repository as a part of the requirement of DNB, and now, after a gap of 10 years, you want to publish the work done in the form of one or more journal articles.

Firstly, it is customary to publish articles from one’s thesis. While both contain similar sections, converting a thesis into one or more journal articles requires certain steps. We have provided a few relevant articles at the end of this response to get you started.

Also, delays such as yours are not uncommon in academia. However, considering that 10 years have elapsed since the work was done, you might need to review the current state of the art and assess the novelty of your study. This would depend on the field of your work and the findings. At the outset, you should consider the following:

  • Review the current literature. You will need to update the references and include newer ones that are relevant now.
  • On referring to the state of the art, you will be able to judge what aspects of your research still advance published knowledge. Those will form the portions that are publishable. You could streamline the paper in a way to add some new perspectives, highlighting the changes that have taken place in the last 10 years.
  • When writing the introduction and discussion sections, you will need to update the text according to recent studies that were published during this 10-year gap.

Hope that helps. As before, we have provided a few relevant articles below.

And in case you are worried about the long gap, here’s something as inspiration…

Brian May, better known as the lead guitarist in the rock band Queen, published his thesis on astrophysics 30 years after he started his initial work. He deferred submitting his PhD thesis in the 1970s and returned to his research in 2006, finally submitting his updated thesis in 2007. He states in the preface of his thesis that he was able to “offer many new perspectives, because of the research which has taken place between 1974 and the present day.”

All the best for having your paper(s) published!

Relevant articles:

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