Tagged: phdchat

The Agony and the Ecstasy: Making Post Viva Corrections


Tips for Thesis-Making: The Second in an Occasional Series

This article marks the second in my very occasional series on the brute mechanics of getting your doctorate. As my last article (page numbering for your thesis) was a big hit, today I present some psychological and practical tips for dealing with post-viva corrections, alongside a small but significant service offered by Word that could save you significant heartache.

Much of the PhD’s final processes are shrouded in mystery. Yes, there are books and official guidance, for example, on selecting examiners and preparing for the viva voce examination, however, it is well known that no two vivas are the same. The distant country between the viva and graduation is even more mysterious. This enigmatic land was something I could barely countenance in the run-up to my own viva. It can be given scant regard in the “How To Get That PhD” books that garner every doctoral student’s shelves, simply because the corrections required will vary wildly between one student and the next. In this respect, corrections can be (wrongly) filed under ‘more of the same’.

If you are awarded your PhD with corrections, minor or major, the completion of these corrections may not be ‘more of the same’. Indeed they may be painful. If you have pushed hard to submit, perhaps testing yourself (and your dependents and supporters) to the limit, the elation of completing the viva can easily invert. Getting up the stamina required to keep going after what was meant to be the final hurdle may be difficult.  Your examiners report should be specific and it is to this end that you will be working. However, there are four additional points I would like to share. Take heed!

Attend Only to What the Examiners Have Requested

You now know your thesis inside out, having written it, and revised it for the viva. Part of the PhD process is learning to critically engage with your own work. As a result, at the end of your PhD you know that you would do things differently with the benefit of hindsight – moreover, you see the flaws in every chapter. Do not rewrite your thesis. Only attend to what the examiners have requested. This sounds straightforward, but requires vigilance.

Clarify Examiner Requests

There is a chance that some of the examiners’ requests are not crystal clear, or could be interpreted in varying ways. Check your examiners report very closely as soon as you receive it (or as soon as you can face looking at it).  If you do need to contact your examiners to clarify on any point, check with your supervisor or department on the correct protocol for this clarification and act on this advice quickly. If you are working to a new timetable (for example, for graduation, or time-limited corrections) you need to forefront this task, as you may have to make your request through a departmental intermediary who contacts your examiners on your behalf. From this point, your examiners may not be able to easily liaise to resolve your request quickly, particularly during the holidays or over conference season.

Note: if you are reading this pre-viva,  prepare to clarify examiner feedback during the viva itself to pre-empt this scenario.

Do Not Create Blockages

When attending to your examiners report, some corrections will be more substantial than others. Corrections can range from typographic errors – to significant chapter revisions. You may find that you do not deal with some of these rewrites as quickly as you planned – in my case I found I became seriously stuck on two occasions. In truth, I had already answered my examiner’s requirements, but I was obsessing over details that simply weren’t important. In reterospect, I think I was, by this point, close to burn out. I have seen other postgraduates in similar positions. As previously stated, this kind of attention to detail is a symptom of your critical and expert engagement with your field, you are now aware of the limits to your expertise and the weaknesses of your thesis. As stress increases, the ability to make sound decisions about prioritising within your work becomes befuddled and there is a tendency to slip into cyclical thinking that slows you down. You will not be able to resolve every wicked philosophical issue that your PhD touches on.  You must recognise that what you are experiencing is common to postgraduates in your situation. Make your arguments, as the examiners have requested, and move on. Do not look back.

If the issue is writer’s block Sifter has 5 great tips on getting going.

Create an Examiners Report: Review your corrections using Word

It is good form to submit a short report with your revised thesis to highlight for examiners where you have made the changes they requested (with page and chapter references) and any other changes (for example editing for length, or rectifying typographic errors).  If you have been making multiple changes across various drafts, it can be easy to forget quite what you did, and where. Moreover, it can be easy to underestimate the time that writing this report will take. As a result, I recommend the following step-by-step cheat for Word users as an opening gambit.

With the following ingredients you can create a document that clearly highlights all the changes you have made to your thesis. You will need:

  • A clearly labelled COPY of the thesis that you originally submitted to your examiners pre-viva.
  • A clearly labelled COPY of the current, final version of your thesis.

We are going to create a new document from these two files that merges them together and highlights (using Show Changes) where alterations have been made. Note, the following instructions work for Word 2007, but the functionality remains in other versions of Word.

Open Word with a blank document.

On the Review menu, select Combine.

Selecting Combine via the Review Menu in Word 2007
Selecting Combine via the Review Menu in Word 2007

From here you will be presented with the opportunity to open your original document (the submitted thesis) and the revised document (your new version). Click “OK” and a new document will open, combining the two files and highlighting the changes that have been made. Save this under a separate file name.

For earlier versions of Word, the process will differ. From memory, Word 2003 requires that you open your newest version of your thesis.  Go to the Tools menu, through which you select Compare and then Merge Documents.  You will be given the option to select a file. Select your original Thesis. Then click on “Merge into Current Document”. You will now have a version of your thesis that highlights all the changes you have made over the course of your revisions. Save this under a new file name.

With your corrections highlighted in this way, you can skim your combined document and review your examiners report for anything you’ve missed.

Any comments or corrections are welcome, as always.

Journal Hacks for PostGraduates


Impact and Dissemination: two words to strike fear into the heart of any research student.  However, sharing your research is important, particularly in emergent and interdisciplinary fields, where research can become lost between academic genres. Publication is also increasingly necessary for bagging an academic post following study.   Fortunately, there are several straightforward ways for you to get your research Out There. For those with a finished thesis this may mean publishing a string of papers stemming from the PhD across several journals. For others, it may be preferable to publish a thesis online in a University or Open Access repository (for example nottingham Universities etheses repository), or with a Creative Commons licence in a personally hosted space. Importantly, the two may be mutually exclusive: some journals will not publish research that is already in the public domain for copyright reasons. As a result – consider which approach you will adopt, and which you can reasonably achieve.

With debate raging over the future of academic publishing, copyright and closed versus open access models of publishing your publication decisions may be swayed by ethics, politics, practical issues of audience share, accessibility and/or consciously aligning yourself with institutional values. In any event, between and amongst these controversies there are other opportunities available for sign-posting your work at both the middle and end of your studies. In each of the following instances I sketch options available to PhDs, postgrads and even…undergraduates.

Using a Journal to Circulate your Abstract

Last year, the journal of Disability and Society launched a ‘completed thesis’ list section to their journal to encourage new PhDs to share their research with a wider research community and help build Disability Studies as a discipline.

The journal cites this as as an important resource for readers, as well as a mode for sharing the names of new entrants to the discipline. Embracing new entrants in which way, is an important step for any learning community, be it focussed on a journal or a wider discipline. Junior researchers contribute new ideas to any discipline. Moreover, boosting the status of undergraduate and postgraduate researchers in the production of knowledge, promotes what Tang, Xi and Ma (2006) identify as the ‘scale free’ or egalitarian networks that prove more effective for knowledge transfer than traditional hierarchical networks.

I submitted my 100 word synopsis several months ago, and I recently received notice that my abstract will be included in the December issue of Disability and Society (Volume 26, Number 7). The information I submitted ran as follows:

  • Name of author: Sarah Lewthwaite
  • Thesis title: Disability 2.0: Student dis/Connections. A study of student experiences of disability and social networks on Campus in Higher Education.
  • University awarding degree: University of Nottingham, UK, PhD 2011.
    At university many undergraduates depend upon social networks such as Facebook to enter student life.  Using accessible internet-enabled interviews with 18 disabled students from three UK universities, this qualitative study examines disability as a socio-technical, networked experience. Networked publics are found to be highly normative. For some disabled students the network supports ‘normal’ status. For others, the network must be resisted as a form of social domination that is punitive and disabling. Foucauldian analysis demonstrates how, in each instance, social andtechnical network conditions propel students towards disciplinary techniques that mask diversity, rendering disability invisible. As a result, disability is both produced and suppressed by the network.

When drafting this text I was aware of a tension between the language of internet research / digital sociology (“networked publics”) and a wider Disability Studies audience.  I would not claim that this abstract is by any means “plain language” or summarises a 100,000 word thesis adequately. However, I do feel that my most important conclusions are outlined and key words gesturing to specific methods and discourses are highlighted (“Foucauldian”, “accessible”).

If you are a scholar in disability research, I highly recommend that you add a submission to the “completed thesis” to your post-phd ‘to do’ list. If you are working in another discipline, you may want to check journals in your field for similar opportunities, or request that this kind of space is developed.

Position Pieces and Student Perspectives

A second opportunity for postgrads is available in the form of a position piece. These are often short communication papers (not necessarily requiring data and hard research) that assert a new perspective on a research domain. Postgraduates are often uniquely positioned to supply these viewpoint pieces, bringing fresh ideas into a field. I was invited to submit such a paper to the journal of Learning Media and Technology who have a Viewpoint section combining postgraduate perspectives with more established arguments. This kind paper allows you to position your arguments within a field without exposing unfinished data. Check the journals in your field for similar opportunities.

In addition, Student Perspective sections are also valuable.  Disability and Society have launched a ‘Student Perspectives’ section for such papers. Again, this offers an excellent space for position pieces exploring any topic relating to disability research. The journal’s invitation for submissions runs as follows:

We have established a section within the Journal, entitled Student Perspectives, in which student papers will be published. Papers will be refereed and can explore any topic related to disability issues and questions. The papers must be authored by students undertaking under-graduate, postgraduate or research degrees. The papers need to be between 3000 and 7000 words (maximum).
The papers should:

  • Provide an adequate review of disability studies literature.
  • Have clearly acknowledged sources.
  • Be specifically written for the Journal taking into account its ethos and audience.
  • Conform to the academic requirements of the Journal
  • Where necessary adequately discuss the methods used.
  • Have particular attention paid to the presentation and analysis of empirical data.
  • Pay attention to the Journal’s policy on language.

The paper should not be a straight reproduction of work produced for academic assessment.
Submission details are the same as for main articles. See link to Instructions for Authors.

This is great for sharing an angle on a final year project, MA/MSc/MRes work or early PhD findings and literature that brings something new to the field, but might not constitute a full research paper.  It may also also offers a useful sandpit for those researching outside traditional social disciplines where a project may be undertaken but rarely disseminated outside a department, despite valuable findings (Computer Scientists, I’m looking at you). Importantly, Disability and Society invite both undergraduate and postgraduate submissions, so if you are undertaking research or developing a position at any level of university study – you have the opportunity to enter the refereeing process and potentially share your research in a international academic journal. Guidance is published on the Disability and Society webpages.

All of the above are possible, in addition to more traditional forms such as Letters and Book Reviews. If I have missed anything, or if you have additional thoughts, please comment.