This is an interesting question and one that early career researchers commonly ask. You’ve worked long and hard on your PhD thesis and achieved your doctorate. Congratulations! Your thesis is deposited in your institution’s open access repository and the findings are published and freely available worldwide. Can you work on your open access thesis to write a journal article or develop it into a book? Will your target publisher object to publishing work that’s already been published?

Luckily, there’s a list that can help answer these questions. The list contains publisher policies about publishing journal articles developed from a PhD thesis that’s freely available online. It’s called the Thesis prior publication and embargoes publisher policies and attitudes and is available on the UKCoRR website.