10 Benefits of Publishing Your Thesis as a Book
As a Ph.D. scholar or academician, you must have spent an inordinate amount of time by your desk trying to come up with your Ph.D. thesis. Enormous amount of fieldwork, with flowing sweat must have gone into getting the data for your research. Almost similar amount of fieldwork, commitment and inspiration goes into writing a manuscript. In fact, when you write your research, you find it can be expanded to be book chapters, to include every spec of information. Now it is important that you publish your hard work to make it available to students, studying that area and also people interested in that subject. In fact, your research may have a wider scope if you publish phd thesis as book. Besides being a matter of immediate interest to your fellows and students, your research can also receive the attention of a broader audience, if you want.
Here are 10 Reasons why you should publish your research as a book-
- The Inclusion of Academic Curriculum: Most successful academic books have their roots in great research work. Broader interest in your research topic may result in the inclusion of a topic in the regular curriculum. When a topic is read widely, it creates more awareness.
- Preserving Knowledge: Ideally, knowledge outlives the researcher and hence, researchers have a solemn responsibility to preserve the fruit of their lifelong endeavour. And this can be done by turning a thesis into a published book.
- Documentation: A piece of research is best preserved and used when it becomes available as a book with ISBN. In such case, it can also be referred by colleagues and junior research fellows pursuing the same field. ISBN is a unique number that helps in the listing and tracking of a published book worldwide.
- Including Holistic Information- A research method and processes are often more complex that the actual published paper, which merely joins bits and pieces of information with some numbers and results. The actual findings, responses of subjects, their emotions, and the actual experiences of researchers are often drowned in subjectivity. However, if a complete information about the challenges, requirements, and findings can be given as a part of the research, more concepts and ideas can evolve, alternate perspectives can develop on research questions. Such elaborate detailing can be covered only when a research is published as a book. Every information, enquiry conditions, responses, emotions, controls and challenges in the journey of research, can be worked out into a book.
- Research as Inspiration:Many scholars publish their work as a vital clue as well as a source of inspiration to the students of the next generation. Say for example: John Dalton’s atomic theory. Most of the things he suggested in his theory were later proved flawed. But, his proposition opened a new avenue in the field of scientific research. If you publish your thesis as a book and it makes a remarkable impact on the world science, you can inspire others to do good research because even academicians can attain fame.
- Adds More Values to Research: Another benefit of publishing is, it adds credibility to research work. It may sound weird. But it is true. No one knows or even cares to know what a researcher is doing inside the laboratory or study. But, the moment published books start coming, the editors review and the Press covers authors’ interviews, people start getting serious about it and this way researchers influence a wider network of people. Our culture needs more scientists, researchers, and inventors as our role model for some positive influence.
- To Generate Income– Academicians and researchers spend a huge time of their life on studies; they sacrifice their career, financial situation and social prestige for seeking answers to the research questions. But survival requires money, no one should be deprived of a financial stability only because they are dedicated to academics. Hence, if you want to earn money with your research, you must publish it as a book. Royalty received on the sales of your book can help your livelihood. If that happens, researchers can remain committed to their work with same motivation.
- Career Transition– By publishing a research in book format, a researcher or academician becomes an author. The step means creating a new career scope, adding a self-identity in terms of profession. Even though you write as an academician, or student, your work is not essentially authorship. But when your work comes out as a published book, you are proclaimed as an author. You get a new career option, and the book works as a transition between researcher and author.
- Add to Existing Knowledge– This can happen in a different way. If you add your research as a book chapter to an existing collection of works, it becomes part of a book by adding to the body of literature. Your contribution creates an academic resource which can be followed in curriculum later, but it significantly develops the work by other scientists and researchers who have contributed to the book.
- Recognition– An academician who works equally hard, if not more, as an author, deserves the same celebrated recognition and prestige like that of a published author. When researchers find something radical or solve an old problem of humanity, they publish their thesis in order to be recorded in the literature as the exponent of that theory. When you publish your thesis as a book, you own the solemn rights over your product that gets sold, and people know you closely than they would, if you were a scientist. Media limelight and social recognition comes easily for an author than an academician. The thesis in form of book helps with this process.
To summarize, it is never too late to publish your thesis as a book, because a book has a unique ISBN which stands out as a piece of literature. A book gives you larger scope to include details of information from the research process. The published book can give you money and recognition as an author. Hence, many researchers in today’s time believe in writing their research as books, or including them as book chapters in a collection of scientific works to absorb the benefits.
