A PhD is not just "an original contribution to knowledge"

One of the common phrases I’ll hear is that a PhD is an “original contribution to the body of knowledge”.

This is one of those phrases that gets repeated so much that nobody seems to stop and think about what it actually means, or whether it’s an appropriate phrase to use. So in this video I’m going to break down some of the common misconceptions around originality and give you a different perspective on what’s actually required.

Now, this idea of an original contribution to knowledge causes a lot of confusion, even among people who give advice to PhD students. I’ve heard some say that to conduct original research means you need to look at something that hasn’t been looked at before. This just isn’t true.

If you look at the academic literature, you might find that there are many research groups working on the same basic problem. These areas are often competitive and fast-moving, but being part of an active area of research can be a good thing because there’s a ready-made audience for your work when you publish, and because these areas attract funding and create jobs.

If you’re so original that literally nobody has looked at the problem before, even if you do amazing work you might find it hard to get others interested and you might find it very hard to get a job in academia or to find funding for research, if that’s what you want to do after you finish.

So there is nuance to this idea of originality…

You need to be original in a way that’s of interest to others.

Sometimes, this could mean doing something completely new, that has some kind of application or relevance to others, or it could mean looking at something that a lot of people have already researched, but doing something different. This could be by using a different technique, or it could be by questioning some of the common-but-untested assumptions held by others in the field.

It’s often this kind of research that has the biggest impact, but if you do something that questions this kind of common assumption, you’d better be prepared to defend it because paradigm-shifting work always attracts greater scrutiny.

This brings us to the next key element, that’s so often completely missed by those who focus on originality, and that is competence.

You can be wildly original, but if your research is badly executed then you’ve got nothing.

But if your research is novel in just a few ways and very well-executed, you’ll be OK.

In other words, instead of setting originality as the defining element of a PhD, it’s far better to focus on developing skills.

Skills come before originality

As I mentioned in my last video, I define the purpose of a PhD as developing and then demonstrating the skills of a professional academic researcher.

The phrasing here is important… the skill development has to come first, because it’s your skills that enable you to make a contribution to knowledge.

The mistake that’s so often made is that people spend far too long reading and writing to find a research gap and to come up with an original proposal, but without developing any of the practical skills they need to actually execute the research. In some cases, people can spend years refining the idea, leaving themselves just months to conduct the work, but without the skills or experience to do it well (though I do recognise that sometimes it’s the supervisors who hold students back until they have a perfect proposal, while also giving no guidance).

But if you get practical experience developing research skills early (not by reading but by doing), you’ll be much more likely to to come up with a good proposal because, first, you understand what’s practical and, second, you’ll find interesting things to work on by actually working.

You’ll also have a much better understanding of what’s already been done because you’ll have some practical experience to relate to.

In my own PhD…

In my own PhD, I reached a point where I could very quickly assess the quality of a paper reporting scanning probe microscope experiments because I had done literally thousands of experiments using that kind of equipment.

And one of my papers came about not by starting with an original idea, but by investigating an unexpected result. And that accidental discovery only became an original paper because I had the skill to recognise it and investigate it properly.

Skills are your safety net

Skills are the foundation you need to be able to develop and execute your ideas, but they’re also your safety net.

Let’s say you come up with a brilliantly original idea, but then someone else publishes what you planned to do.

This is never good, but if you’ve developed a solid set of skills during your PhD then you are far more likely to be able to adapt quickly.

So lets go back to my definition of a PhD, developing and then demonstrating the skills of a professional academic researcher, and lets focus on the demonstration part.

Professional academics try to produce work of a publishable standard. In some countries, to obtain a PhD you have to have a certain number of publications in peer reviewed journals. And while that isn’t the case everywhere, it provides a pretty good approximation for what examiners are looking for.

So instead of asking what makes an original contribution, we should be asking what makes research publishable.

What makes research publishable?

This will vary across different fields and different journals, but there are some general principles.

Originality is important. You do need some new insight or discovery to report, but an original insight or discovery isn’t enough. The reviewer will also be probably be asking;

1. Is it clear what the research is trying to do and why it matters

2. Have appropriate methods been used to achieve the research goals? This is not just the general choice of method but the details of the execution.

3. Has sufficient, high-quality evidence or data been gathered?

4. Has the analysis been competently executed and clearly explained?

5. Are your conclusions consistent with the data and analysis?

This isn’t a complete list, there are other things like using appropriate citations and so on, but if any of these are missing, the paper will probably be rejected or sent back for revisions, regardless of the originality.

Some of these points relate to the clarity and structure of the writing, but the most important points come back to the quality of execution of the research… It comes back to developing skills.