A Practical Guide to Converting an Undergraduate Thesis to a Scientific Article

Parlindungan Pardede
Universitas Kristen Indonesia Jakarta
parlpard2010@gmail.com

Introduction

Scientific articles are the ‘storehouses’ of scientific researches results plus the procedures used to make those researches, and undergraduate thesis, thesis, and dissertation are great sources of scientific article. Scientific articles are written to provide a means for researchers, scholars, and practitioners to share each other about the results of their researches. This sharing will make it possible for the readers to make further researches (and thus, accelerate scientific progress) or to put the findings into products. Therefore, the publication of scientific articles is valuable contributions to the discourse in every field of inquiry and to the culture of all creative fields.

Your research results reported in your undergraduate thesis is essentially a contribution to ELT field. However, since most undergraduate theses are merely kept in the library, it is accessible only to limited readers. By converting it into a scientific article and publishing it in a journal, more and more readers can get advantages from it, and increases the impact of your contribution to your field.

Besides contributing to ELT progress, publishing your scientific article will also help you augment a brand for yourself that can shape your image, increase your curriculum vitae value by adding the publication into to your CV (academic resume), improve your self-confidence, push your credibility index higher as a subject matter expert, and help you become known in your field. These advantages give you a competitive edge that is hard to match when you apply for a new job or seek that promotion that you have been dreaming about.

Guidelines for Converting an Undergraduate Thesis into an Article.
Turning an undergraduate thesis into a publishable manuscript requires only three steps: (1) familiarize yourself with the ways in which undergraduate theses differ from journal articles, (2) adapt the undergraduate thesis into a manuscript by following the guidelines for submission of the target journal, and (3) proofread and edit the draft. By paying attention to these three steps, you will increase the chance of having your manuscript accepted for publication.

To help you fulfill the steps, in the following segments the main differences between an undergraduate theses differ from a journal article and tips for adapting the former to the latter are discussed. Since you are to submit your scientific article to Journal of English Teaching (JET) published by the English Teaching Study Program of UKI Jakarta, all journal article criteria used in this guidelines are based on JET’s Guidelines for Submission (see figure 1).

To download the full guidelines, click here.

To do download the “Manuscript Review Form” you need to attach to your manuscript anytime you submit it to the assigned reviewer, click here.

To do download the “Manuscript Acceptance Form” to be signed by JET’s chief editor/editor and be attached to your accepted manuscript before submitting it to the undergraduate thesis examination committee, click here.