PhD Journey: Week 16

Papers vs PhD

The paper I mentioned wanting to get started on last week is the one that I presented to the pre-submission workshop pre-Christmas. The feedback on that was largely favourable, so with my supervisors I made the decision to press on with gathering the data and writing the paper. When I started planning the paper in more detail though, it very quickly became apparent that the scale of it was perhaps a bit more than I’d anticipated. I identified a sample size of 90–100, and it seems likely that each subject will have on average 5 data sources that are relevant to me. That means a rough estimate of 450–500 interviews that need coding, many of which are in audio format so also need transcribing. The deadline for submission is a month away…

Losing that week to illness suddenly looks even worse. On the positive side, the experience of finding and analysing data through qualitative data analysis is directly relevant to my PhD process, so even if I miss the deadline then the exercise is likely to be worthwhile. My supervisors agree (and also note that the completed paper could always be submitted to another journal, or a later issue), so I’m parking my PhD for a month whilst I focus all my effort on getting this paper written.

It will only be in the long run that I’ll know if this balance was correct, but it feels right for now.