PhD by publication: a prospective as well as retrospective award? Some subversive thoughts

Although the discipline of nurse education within the UK has been part of the higher education sector since the 1950s, relatively few nurse academics currently hold a doctorate. This has implications at a national, local and personal level, and can be partly accounted for by the particular demographic and work issues faced by nurse academics, together with issues about the nature of the traditional PhD itself as a suitable and relevant qualification in the discipline of nurse education. As an alternative, we suggest a route to a PhD that takes advantage of the regulations already in place in many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) for a 'staff doctorate' by publication and which has been set up to accredit academic staff who have a corpus of published papers. In addition to this retrospective PhD by publication we also suggest that that the prospective route to a PhD by publication be promoted, based on established programmes in Europe and Australia. We argue that both routes address many of the issues and difficulties faced by nurse academics, their HEIs and the discipline generally and are relevant to other countries in the developed world as well as the UK. Promotion of these routes will give individual tutors and lecturers the opportunity for academic, professional and personal development within their own organisation and at the same time enable HEIs within the developed world to increase their overall performance in the next Research Excellence Framework (or equivalent depending on their country), thus enhancing the standing and reputation of nursing as an academic discipline.