Instead, the candidate proves the past publication of several quality articles in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals which, in the opinion of the degree-granting university, represent an original contribution to human knowledge equal to that which would be demonstrated by a dissertation.
Notwithstanding many PhD by Publication programs require a viva voce, and the submission of a formal thesis.
Like conventional doctoral students, the candidate must present an oral defense of his or her work before a committee of examiners.
[4] In the United Kingdom, PhD by publication was officially first adopted by the University of Cambridge in 1966, but in fact it was informally practiced much earlier: for example, Florence Nightingale David was awarded a doctorate for four papers in 1938, while Ludwig Wittgenstein was awarded one for his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1929.
[7] It was also practiced in Japan, where an example of such a PhD was 2014 Nobel laureate Shuji Nakamura, awarded doctorate in 1994 by the University of Tokushima.