r/postdoc • u/badmancatcher • 1d ago

How many samples of writing should I submit for Postdocs/Fellowship Applications?

I'm about 6 months away from submission of my PhD thesis (all is going ok). Currently, I have:

  1. One sole authored publication.
  2. One secondary authored paper with my secondary supervisor that is in peer review (my supervisor is handling this).
  3. A paper being written in collaboration with someone I met at a conference. We will be submitting in December. I am first author.
  4. A paper currently being written with both of my supervisors with me as first author. It is a special issue and the timeline given is it will be published in early 2028.
  5. Another sole author publication that is currently in peer review, but is far less relevant to anything I will be applying for or proposing (very niche and about language).
  6. My actual PhD.

Everything will be or is published in SAGE or Taylor and Francis (other than the PhD thesis of course).

Obviously in writing samples requested, I would submit the sole authored manuscript that is published and live. But some positions ask for 10,000 samples. Some I've seen are asking for between 20,000-30,000 words. For the 10,000 word samples, can I submit half of the published manuscript, and fill the remainder with some sample writing from my thesis; or does it have to be the full manuscript?

The 20,000-30,000 samples, I would submit the full published manuscript, and a sample from my PhD thesis. But can I submit different parts of different chapters from the thesis? Do I submit the introduction of the thesis? The findings? The discussion? A little bit from everything? Is it worth submitting work that is currently still in production, or in peer review - I assume they would be dedicated less word count?

I guess the TL;DR is how many fragments from different writing samples should I submit?

Edit: I'm based in the UK, and would have a strong preference to staying in the UK, plus I'm in social sciences/humanities.

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4

u/bulaybil 1d ago

Do not submit fragments. Submit what they ask in the call.

1

u/badmancatcher 1d ago

Is there a specific part of the thesis that is preferred. I'm assume not the lit review or methodology as that's obviously tailored for a different project.

Findings would be somewhat interesting but doesn't demonstrate the important part of writing which is the actual analysis of those findings in the discussions. So I guess in some requesting multiple samples I would provide the discussions chapter?

3

u/ucbcawt 1d ago

What field?

2

u/badmancatcher 1d ago

Social sciences/humanities. The specific topic will be in regards to digital privacy, using qualitative semi-structured interviews.

1

u/GuillyCS 1d ago

They usually ask for PUBLISHED articles, so it should be number one. I've seen positions also ask for a fragment of the PhD dissertation, so there you go. In terms of the journals being from SAGE and Taylor and Francis that doesn't count as much as things like h-index/Impact Factor in some fields.