Q: How do I split my dissertation and framework into journal articles with the same data analysis?

Hello Lama – Welcome to the forum!

To start off, note that we have edited your question slightly, both for brevity and clarity. Also, we have several resources on the site around converting dissertations/theses into journal articles. We shall point you to some of those at the end of this response. For more information, you may look up the site using relevant keywords. For now, we can provide a few pointers and specifically address two aspects of your query.

First up, the pointers. A journal article is different from a thesis/dissertation in several ways. It’s around a very focused topic, is aimed at busy researchers and academics, is therefore shorter, and follows some very specific guidelines (that may also differ across journals). You need to keep these points in mind before starting work on converting your dissertation into one or multiple journal articles. You may learn about other differences through this resource: 9 Differences between a thesis and a journal article

Next up, we’d like to talk about the framework. The theoretical framework is more a requirement for a dissertation/thesis, but not so for a journal article. In the article, you may just need to mention this, or at the most, talk about it briefly, rather than explain it to the extent to which you would do in your dissertation. Journals are more interested in the methods (for the purpose of reproducibility of results) than the framework that the research is grounded in – unless of course the framework is imperative for your study.

Finally, without knowing your study and methodology, it would be difficult to comment on whether you can use the same data and analysis across all papers. A bigger consideration, or concern, might be the issue of salami slicing. This basically means splitting up what is possibly only one paper into multiple papers with the aim to increase the paper count. Keeping this in mind (along with the other points discussed earlier), you will need to make a judicious decision on how many papers it would be feasible to extract from your thesis.

Now, as mentioned earlier, for how to convert your dissertation/thesis into a journal article, you may refer to the following resources:

• The basics of converting your PhD thesis into journal articles
• Can I submit an article to a journal based on my dissertation?
• If I publish a journal article based on my dissertation, will it be considered self-plagiarism?

Hope that helps. And all the best for the conversion!