Although your dissertation has been published in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, you are still the copyright holder.
As long as you hold the copyright, you are able to decide how your dissertation may be made available and are able to revise and edit it into new formats (e.g., reworked into a book, divided into a few journal articles, presented at a poster session, etc.).
Brainstorm possible projects (articles, conference presentations, etc) that could be created from your dissertation, which may include:
Common article and conference presentation types vary across disciplines. Your field may publish non-empirical scholarly publications such as conceptual/theoretical papers, commentaries, literature reviews, etc. Study the types of content published in journals and presented at conferences in your field of study.
→ Pick ONE project to be your initial goal.
Identify 1-3 possible journals that are a good fit for your article - review their guidelines & word counts.
Next, you will want to revise your dissertation manuscript. We recommend starting with your "Questions/Hypotheses" section.
We have built a spreadsheet/tool with recommendations for revising your dissertation manuscript into a scholarly article.
These recommendations are based on the common IM RaD empirical research article format: Introduction/Literature Review, Methods, Results, and Discussion. These recommendations may not apply to other non-empirical article formats, book chapters, or conference presentations. When in doubt, defer to the manuscript guidelines for the specific journal you are submitting to.
Use the links below to download the tool.
After revisions, read through the entire newly-shortened manuscript (or chapter, conference presentations, etc) and ensure that it flows and is understandable.
Return to the journal/conference you are going to submit to, review their guidelines again, and do a final edit of your manuscript to ensure compliance with all guidelines.
Happy publishing and presenting!
Did you use anything (such as images, test instruments, etc.) in your dissertation to which you yourself do not own copyright?
If so, make sure that the permissions you have for the item include publication or presentation - you want to make sure that the permission is not limited to only use in your dissertation.
Your dissertation is a very special case: even if you publish it in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, you still retain full copyright over the content and can reuse parts or all of your dissertation in other publications.
This is not true for most other forms of publication. Usually, when you publish an article, book, or chapter, you sign exclusive rights to that work to the publisher. This can also be true for some conference papers and presentations (check the speaker agreements).
What does that mean? It means that (outside of your dissertation) you cannot reuse and repurpose verbatim content once it has been published. All scholarly published work must be unique.
Likewise, you may only submit an article manuscript to ONE journal at a time for consideration.
