Dean Marion E. Broome recently published an article entitled "The Manuscript Option Dissertation: Dissemination and Challenges" in Nurse Author & Editor. 

Introduction:

Dissemination of a student’s dissertation findings is always a goal of doctoral (PhD) students and their faculty committees. In most cases the dissertation is the culmination of an average of four years engaging in an in-depth study of an important research problem. The dissertation committee is composed of four to six faculty members from several disciplines whose expertise in theory, methods, and analytics support the student’s area of study. In general, members of the committee will ultimately participate in publications derived from the work, and are expected to meet the criteria for authorship described by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Traditional dissertations vary in length but typically consist of 5-8 “chapters” and may be anywhere from 75 to 300 pages long…sometimes more! In nursing, the most common structure is five chapters, as follows: 

Chapter One, an introduction describing the problem or gap in knowledge, scope, significance, research aims or questions;

Chapter Two, containing a review of extant literature and if appropriate, a theoretical framework;

Chapter Three, a methods chapter which describes the design, hypotheses or research questions, sample, procedures, and analytic approaches used in the study;

Chapter Four, primarily concerned with reporting the findings; and

Chapter Five, consisting of the discussion and recommendations.

Graduates who choose the traditional dissertation format must then decide post-graduation how they will distill the findings from the dissertation into publishable papers, which is always a challenge. An alternative format for reporting dissertation findings, most commonly called the “manuscript option dissertation,” or the “three article dissertation” (Robinson & Dracup, 2008) has both advantages and disadvantages for the PhD student/candidate/graduate (see Table 1).  The manuscript option dissertation is gaining traction is schools and colleges of nursing in the US and internationally. This article will discuss issues to consider in deciding “yea or nay” for the traditional versus this alternative format.