So you have recently finished writing your thesis or dissertation – huge congratulations! What’s next? How can you make the most of your thesis? If you’ve done a good job researching your topic, now it’s time to take steps to ensure your thesis will not end up in a drawer and will instead see the world. How can you do that?
We want to help you make the most of the value you’ve created with your research and get recognition for your hard work, so we’ve put together some ideas about how you can get your research out there.
Firstly, if you have worked on a topic related to some of our recommended research directions, you might be interested in publishing your research on our Finished Theses page so others can read your research and learn from your experience of writing your thesis or dissertation. If you’re interested in this option, please message admin@effectivethesis.org.
This option does not exclude the others below, since you do not need to publish the full text of your thesis on our website, just your ‘Author’s note’ and a message that people can reach out to you if they want to read the full text. Therefore, we would recommend reaching out to us to have your thesis published on our website even if you consider some of the other options below. We would love to hear from you and share your work with others.
If you have worked on a topic related to some of our recommended research directions, we also recommend publishing part of your research or learnings on the Effective Altruism Forum. If you’re not already familiar with the EA Forum, it’s the central place for collaborative discussion in the EA community – a community of people interested in using evidence and reason to do as much good as possible.
If your research is related to one of our recommended research directions, this means you wrote on a topic that many people in the EA community likely will beinterested in, as it’s a topic on which further research is particularly likely to improve the world. So the EA Forum is a place where you’re likely to get engagement and feedback.
Posting on the EA Forum could help you connect with other talented, motivated people who are also interested in the topic you did your research on. You could connect with future collaborators, organisations who might want to hire you, people whose work could benefit if they know about your research, and others who could give you feedback and ideas for future research.
Here is an encouraging talk by Aaron Gertler, who moderates the EA Forum, on Why you (yes, you) should post on the EA Forum (our tips below are taken from this talk). Posting on the EA forum would mean summarising your main learnings from your thesis, so this could be compatible with the other options mentioned in this post such as publishing your research on our website or in an academic journal (since for each of these channels you would probably use slightly different text/parts of your thesis).
Start by considering what you most want to get out of posting on the Forum. You could summarise the parts of your work which encapsulate your best ideas or the main parts you are uncertain about in order to get feedback on them. For inspiration, we recommend reading through Aaron’s advice for posting on the EA Forum. We’ve summarised some of these tips on how to construct a good EA Forum post from your research below.
Begin in a way that quickly gives readers context on what your post will be about.
You could also publish a paper based on your research in a peer-reviewed journal. This is one way to get more people to see your research, contributing to global scientific knowledge. It’s great career enhancement if you want a research career or to apply for a PhD. It’s also a way of getting feedback from reviewers and teaching you more about the academic publishing process. Sometimes supervisors will help you publish your work or publish with you. This is an opportunity you should take if it’s available. Publishing is a lot easier if someone with a more established reputation is the co-author of your paper.
Here is a brief summary of the process for publishing in a journal, along with a few other resources:
The first strategic decision you will have to make is to select suitable journals. The resources below can help you evaluate journals using relevant criteria.
Every journal has specific guidelines with which you need to conform. Transforming your research into a paper will take some time. The resources below should help you with this writing process.
In most cases you simply upload your final paper online. Your paper will be peer reviewed and either be rejected, accepted or most likely before acceptance you will be asked to revise your paper and include feedback from reviewers.
Here are a few additional resources to help you understand the whole publishing process further:
Different types of journals use different business models. Open Access journals make money from charging authors (you) a large article processing fee (APC) of up to 4000$, with an average of approximately 2000$ per article. The benefit is that everyone can access your research without barriers.
On the other hand, subscription-based journals earn money from their readers, who pay for reading the journal regularly. This means that it is cheaper and sometimes free for authors to publish there. You will also find hybrid models.
You should also look at journals that do not use any common business model. Here are some no-fee open access journals and here is another collection of journals where you can submit without fees, however, these are often less established (unless subscription based) and there may be some risk involved. Beware of predatory journals and check whether the journal you’re interested in is legitimate before publishing with them. Think, Check, Submit supports you in avoiding journals which exploit inexperienced researchers and these lists can help you identify predatory journals.
Another class of journals are student journals. There are a handful of journals which publish student research. This is usually free (or you may need to pay a small processing cost) and it is easier to get published, however these journals are not as well known, so you may want to try established journals first.
Pre-print platforms allow you to quickly publish a final draft of your research paper, before it has gone through the often lengthy process of peer-review and being published in an academic journal. While the papers on a pre-print platform have not gone through a peer-review process, there are advantages to pre-prints, both to you as an individual researcher and to the research community, so this is an option we encourage you to explore.
Before you publish in a pre-print journal, however, check the submission guidelines of the peer-reviewed journals you will ultimately try to publish in. Some journals will consider preprints to be prior publications and this may harm your ability to publish your paper later.
Here are some pre-print journals you may want to consider:
Prizes and awards give you another kind of validation and recognition of your work and are a good thing to put on your CV to increase your career prospects both within academia and outside. Some awards may come with the opportunity to present your paper at a conference, and can result in you becoming part of a network of other researchers.
Bear in mind that submitting a paper to a journal and submitting it for awards are sometimes mutually exclusive – check the submission requirements for any awards and journals to which you want to submit your research.
We have a list of awards here and also encourage you to apply for our Effective Thesis Exceptional Research Award. You can also sign up for our newsletter to hear about awards related to your research direction.
If you continue to pursue an academic career, we can offer you further support. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us at admin@effectivethesis.org.
Congratulations on your finished research and good luck with whatever next steps you take!
