Provided it is approved by their advisor and committee, doctoral students may choose to submit an article-based thesis rather than a conventional thesis. An article-based thesis will need to satisfy the following requirements:
- Include at least three articles, completed as part of the student's Doctoral research, which are either published and submitted for publication, or in publishable form in peer reviewed outlets of sufficient caliber, as deemed by the thesis committee.
- The candidate will be the first author of all or all but one of these articles; he/she will have contributed extensively to the conceptualization and writing of the article of which he/she is not the first author.
- The articles included in the thesis will be different original contributions that are connected by a strong common theme.
- Apart from the articles, the thesis will include an introduction as well as a synthesis and discussion of the material presented in the articles. The synthesis and discussion can be the object of a chapter or an extensive conclusion. The student would include, in the preface, their specific role in each article that comprises the dissertation.
Conventional theses can also include material that has been published in article format. In such cases, however, this material needs to be blended into the thesis in a seamless fashion to respect the flow of its argument.