Hi everyone,
I’m finishing my master’s without a research or thesis option because the university I chose (an online one) didn’t offer it — it was my only affordable choice.
I’ve always loved research but studied in programs focused only on practice.
I’m in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis and want to build a path toward a PhD to finally pursue my passion for research.
I work full-time in clinical practice, but my true passion is investigating. I read a lot of papers and have so many questions.
Is it possible to publish at least a systematic review on my own and become a strong PhD candidate?
Any advice? How does someone publish solo?
Comments
You don’t need published research to apply for a PhD. There are many programs that don’t require that.
But yes, of course you could. It is just hard an probably easier done as part of a PhD program or in conjunction with an already published scholar.
It is generally discouraged to conduct systematic reviews solo – this is primarily due to minimizing the introduction of researcher bias in the development of your research questions, protocol, selection/extraction/inclusion/exclusion of articles, and of course in your interpretation. They are also very time-intensive and many PhD students will include a systematic review as one of their papers in the dissertation. I think you would find it easier to publish a literature review as a solo researcher, but even then it would be more robust if you had authors included in the process to minimize bias in your interpretation. As the other commenter said, you don’t necessarily need publications to get into a PhD program, but if you want to be competitive it may help for you to work on a research team for a year or two to get experience. Good luck