Few countries can compete with Germany in their respect for the doctorate, with those found misusing the revered “Dr” or “PhD” titles  So it may surprise readers that the spiritual home of the PhD (invented in Berlin in the early 19th century) is increasingly turning its back on what most regard as its cornerstone: the doctoral dissertation.

Instead, growing numbers of Germans are gaining their PhDs through “cumulative doctorates”, known in other countries as “PhDs by publication”. In some disciplines, such as economics and business administration, the dissertation or monograph has virtually disappeared.

That is a shift, according to some, that was long overdue. Virtually unchanged since the days of Wilhelm von Humboldt, the traditional PhD dissertation is the end result of a long and torturous process yet remains “a book that was not a book” that sits unread on a shelf or in an institutional repository. Given the option to publish three or four articles on a common theme and connect them with an introduction and conclusion, this has been an easy choice for many doctoral candidates. Producing a string of relatively concise articles makes sense for departments hungry for research papers and citations.

There are, however, growing concerns about the PhD by publication route. Length is one worry. A typical four-paper cumulative doctorate will probably not be more than 100 pages long, whereas even partial fulfilment dissertations were often twice that length. Is the quality of the four published papers so much higher than the traditional PhD to compensate for the reduced length? Many scholars have their doubts.

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If the collated papers are significantly groundbreaking, then this shorter format might stand up to scrutiny. Barring some isolated cases, standard dissertations of book length contain a level of depth and detail that is generally significantly higher than in a handful of journal articles.

In short, the dissertation is a more substantial project. Such generalisations should be made with caution as academic practice and views of the cumulative doctorate will vary between disciplines but scholars will surely recognise other problems. For instance, some journals are reluctant to publish negative findings or results that are not attention grabbing; for a PhD thesis, which is generally not seeking a mass audience or novel findings to the same degree, these pressures are not so acute.

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There is also the particularly thorny issue of authorship. The old-style dissertation is single-authored but the “cumulative” tend to have two or more authors. Attempts are made to ensure that the actual doctoral candidate has done “most of the work”, but is this reliable or sufficient?  Even a separate specification of who did what may be fuzzy and unsatisfactory. For instance, stating that someone “developed the concepts for the investigation” is rather vague and can be misused.

Untangling the matter of academic contributions is made even more contentious when PhD supervisors and even examiners are co-authors. Some wonder if the rise of the cumulative doctorate could, in fact, be explained by professors seeking authorial credits on the basis of a relatively modest proportion of the work. In severe instances, this is simply free-riding and could constitute academic misconduct, with student learning and welfare far down the list of priorities.

Piggybacking on PhD students’ work has recently been raised at the highest levels. Supervision alone, despite the skills involved, is often passive and may constitute a very small fraction of the total hours needed to produce the work, said Hjördis Czesnick, who leads Germany’s Ombudsman for Research. Separating the candidates’ contributions from those of the co-authors may be difficult and “salami-slicing” (my translation) of PhD dissertations should be avoided where possible, she said recently, particularly if the aim is inflating publication counts.

More fundamentally, one might wonder if this dynamic is actually a contradiction in terms. If a supervisory co-author has made only a marginal contribution towards a collection of papers submitted for a PhD, such as reading the paper and making a few comments or suggestions, maybe they should actually be thanked in a footnote rather than being listed as an author? And if a professor can truly claim a meaningful share of the work – enough for an authorial credit – should the main author be getting a doctorate, for what is actually a joint project?  

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The original idea behind the cumulative doctorate was to enable an experienced and older academic who did not have a doctorate, but had done (generally individually) seminal and outstanding work, to be duly rewarded with a doctoral title. Has this model evolved into the norm and strayed too far from its roots?  

A possible solution is to clearly differentiate the cumulative doctorate from the single-author PhD by dissertation – not because they are necessarily lesser academic creations than conventional dissertations but because they are different animals.

Would a different title other than PhD or Dr also be appropriate? Maybe this is going too far. If cumulative PhDs can demonstrate an original and substantial contribution to the field has been made and – most importantly – whether the would-be “Dr” was the driving force behind the project, then maybe the title should remain.

But there needs to be transparency about how co-authors have contributed to such cumulative PhDs. Without this candour and clarity the prestige of the PhD – arguably Germany’s most enduring academic export – will surely start to fade.

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Brian Bloch is a journalist, academic editor and lecturer in English for academic research at the University of Münster.