I think Geir's response is quite valid, but I can add a few comments from the Swedish perspective, and then in the area of biology and environmental science. In Sweden, the PhD studies are 4 full years, one year longer than in most European countries. It is fairly common that a Swedish PhD thesis will contain 4-5 papers and of those 1-3 will be published, and 1-2 being manuscripts. The thesis will be judged on its scientific content during a public defense that usually takes 2-3 hours, with an external examiner engaging the student in a discussion on his/hers work for most of this time, but there's also a three-person dissertation committee present, asking follow-up questions. At the end, the general audience is allowed to ask questions. A cornerstone of the system is that the thesis should be publicly available for 21 days prior to the defense so that anyone can read it and prepare questions. For this purpose, a copy of the thesis is literally nailed to the wall of the university.

Getting to the issue of publishing in OA journals, the Swedish research councils as well as the EU dictate that research funded by them should be published with open access. There are several ways of doing this, one is of course to submit to OA journals, and OA journals such as PlosOne and becoming quite popular, but even classic non-OA journals will nowadays offer various OA options.

Students and their supervisors have the ambition of publishing in as good journals as possible; internationally recognized with a good peer-review system.

People can, however, for many reasons - students sometime out of ignorance - publish good work in bad journals. This should in no way invalidate their work and it does not in the Swedish system. However, if I see a thesis with most of the research published in an obscure journal with questionable peer-review system (whether or not it's an OA journal is irrelevant), I'll look extra carefully at the data to try to understand why they were published in an inferior journal.

I am not sure which publications are accepted in the Scandinavian Ph.D. model. In a recent discussion on "dissertation by publications" a major issue that was raised is the overall quality of papers that journals publish in general. The resultant concern is that a dissertation that is compiled from published work may not represent acceptable work irrespective of where the papers are published.

P.S. Possibly a further reason that we should review our own reviewing approaches and standards.

Perhaps I am not aware enough of the Scandinavian specifics but in general for the theses being essentially a set of publications bundled together one will probably look at the specific OA journals where particular papers were published.

As a very rough guidance ("initial approximation"), I'd say that an OA journal is more likely to be OK if it is a *diamond* OA journal (i.e. free for both authors and the readers, so there are no access fees and no publication fees, see e.g. http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/ for details). Such journals do exist e.g. in mathematics.

Hi Silburn, I am sure that someone from the Scandinavian academy on RG could answer this. I see from the website below that OA is mandated for funded research and so it seems likely that some OA papers would be included.

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/access-by-region/europe-and-north-america/sweden/

Hmmm - good thread all around here. The Scandinavian model is not that widely adopted outside its shores . I agree that they probably need a big rethink as to what is acceptable - and what is not. The credibility of its award, especially outside its shores, is at stake. My PhD was by 'portfolio' - but included almost 40 international peer-reviewed publications that were over-arched by a preliminary thesis . Non of my entries were OE - but it was a bit before the time I suppose.

The Scandinavians and German speaking countries, on the whole, have very different, and by a lot of measures, quite enviable educational systems. I would not hesitate to say that, other than in some exceptional cases, it is likely that the work will have to represent a high quality synthesized whole. The candidate will be judged not on some spurious number of papers and journal ranking, but on the overall quality and contribution of the work.

Thanks Andres, Artur, Matt and Dean. The feedback has been very insightful. I had not heard of a PhD 'by portfolio/ before now Dean.

With the trajectory of OA publishers eg PLoS, SpringerOpen, WileyOpen, SageOpen, seemingly on the ascendancy, and with several OA journals achieving respectable Impact factors, it seemed logical that their manuscripts be adjudged acceptable for the multi-paper model.

There is a general perception out there that, in the academy, the gold standard for recognition, promotion, tenure, is closely linked to a track record of works published the long-standing, conventional journals.

Hidde - that is probably true - but the danger is that external examiners might be prejudiced against current OE inclusions - and that could have a negative impact. I believe that, until the OE system is more 'robust', it would be wise for anyone enrolled in a Scandinavian model thesis to avoid them. Silburn does make a valid point that this is beginning to occur but, just as much as there are good examples to use, there are many poorer 'just give us the money and we will publish your work' examples out there.

Hi Silburn and others,

This is an interesting question. Being based at the largest university in Norway I have some experience to share. Firstly, our PhD model for sure does not demand that the student actually has published the papers in their PhD thesis, only that they are of "publishable quality" (as you correctly write). Due to the delay from manuscript to actual published article few students have more than one article actually published when they defend their thesis. The thesis (typically consisting of 3-4 articles and a synthesis) undergoes a rigid evaluation by a committee (2-3 professors or senior researchers). This review process is in principle totally independent of parts of the thesis being accepted in a journal or not. Since there is a public defence these evaluators have a strong incitement to do a proper job (a professor does not want to be made a fool of in a discussion with a PhD candidate). Although having part of the thesis already published in a high-ranking journal could indirectly influence the evaluators I'm convinced that in the vast majority of cases this doesn't have a decisive influence on the evaluators finding the thesis "defendable" or not. Thus, I do not think that using Open Access platforms vs traditional journals is a big issue or that the former poses any treat to the Scandinavian PhD model.

I think Geir's response is quite valid, but I can add a few comments from the Swedish perspective, and then in the area of biology and environmental science. In Sweden, the PhD studies are 4 full years, one year longer than in most European countries. It is fairly common that a Swedish PhD thesis will contain 4-5 papers and of those 1-3 will be published, and 1-2 being manuscripts. The thesis will be judged on its scientific content during a public defense that usually takes 2-3 hours, with an external examiner engaging the student in a discussion on his/hers work for most of this time, but there's also a three-person dissertation committee present, asking follow-up questions. At the end, the general audience is allowed to ask questions. A cornerstone of the system is that the thesis should be publicly available for 21 days prior to the defense so that anyone can read it and prepare questions. For this purpose, a copy of the thesis is literally nailed to the wall of the university.

Getting to the issue of publishing in OA journals, the Swedish research councils as well as the EU dictate that research funded by them should be published with open access. There are several ways of doing this, one is of course to submit to OA journals, and OA journals such as PlosOne and becoming quite popular, but even classic non-OA journals will nowadays offer various OA options.

Students and their supervisors have the ambition of publishing in as good journals as possible; internationally recognized with a good peer-review system.

People can, however, for many reasons - students sometime out of ignorance - publish good work in bad journals. This should in no way invalidate their work and it does not in the Swedish system. However, if I see a thesis with most of the research published in an obscure journal with questionable peer-review system (whether or not it's an OA journal is irrelevant), I'll look extra carefully at the data to try to understand why they were published in an inferior journal.

Bjorn, Hidde, Geir & Dean, I really do appreciate the central message that as long as the researcher demonstrates that the quality of the scholarship, the methodology, the design, the analytical frame and inferences are of the highest standards and communicated clearly and coherently then the type of channel is secondary.

Like the idea of putting dissertations on public display prior to the public defense so as to enrich the questions from the general audience

Typical Finnish PhD thesis (at least in the field of medical sciences) based of 4 or 5 publications. All included papers must be published or officially accepted for publication. Any publication in an international peer-reviewed journal goes. Open access or not. But.. You have your superviser who controlls what are you doing and where you are publishing. After thesis is completed, two Finnish or international peer-reviewers (always adjunct professors or professors from other than yours university) check your manuscript and suggest should it be accepted by your university. So, it is not a matter of being open access or subscription. It is peer-reviewing and learned skills of independent researching and writing which matter.

For my university's PhD guide see link below:

http://www.utu.fi/fi/yksikot/med/opiskelu/opinto-oppaat/Documents/academic_postgraduate_study_guide_2014_2016_01082014.pdf

Following

According to me, Yes