Q: Can you help me narrow down a topic for publishing an article based on my PhD?

It’s interesting that your university has said you could be exempted from the dissertation based on the published article. This may be an allowance by your university, though it may also depend on the field you are in.

Coming to your query, selecting a topic based on keywords alone may not be the best way to go about this – unless the keywords are more like concepts or medical subject headings (MeSH) as in PubMed. In fact, it’s a reverse way of engineering the article. Ideally, keywords should come from the article, not the other way around.

Anyway, your university has provided an initial direction, by preconditioning that the article be based on your major subject. So, you will need to look at topics within your major. Which is why we may not be able to directly help you identify a topic, as we wouldn’t know your subject area and also because you would be the best person to decide based on your expertise in the field. However, we can provide some pointers, as below.

To help you identify a research topic, you may go through these resources:

• Don't know where to start? 6 Tips on identifying research gaps
• Finding the right research question is the first step to successful publication
• How to choose a research question

You should also identify potential target journals, both to narrow down a few to submit your finished manuscript to and also to know the kind of articles they publish. Here’s a video to help you with this: Selecting a suitable target journal for your manuscript

Note that journal articles differ from theses in several ways, as you can find out through this infographic: 9 Differences between a thesis and a journal article

Finally, a key decider for journals is the novelty of the study. So, you will need to keep this in mind too.

Hope this helps. All the best for your article!