China’s experimenting with a no-thesis PhD, where the focus will instead be on an end product. The objective is to curb papermills. Although such approaches are often associated with engineering and technology disciplines, we can think of “products” for humanities disciplines in terms of policy frameworks, intervention programmes, public humanities initiatives, archival systems, social impact projects, educational tools, or governance models.
This raises an important rhetorical question: if such a model were adopted more broadly across higher education systems, what would it mean for academic editors?
Rather than simply resulting in fewer theses to edit, this move may fundamentally reshape what scholarly communication looks like, who it is written for, and what kinds of expertise editors are expected to possess.
Traditional academic writing, often disseminated through journal articles, is directed primarily toward disciplinary peers. Product- or project-oriented research, however, requires communication to multiple stakeholder groups simultaneously.
Consequently, a single doctoral project may generate multiple distinct forms of writing, each catering to audience groups with different expectations, expertise levels, or communication needs; these forms may include project proposals, ethics applications, and technical documentation, among others.
As a case study, consider a hypothetical doctoral project involving the development of a microfinance platform for rural women entrepreneurs. The way the project is described may differ substantially depending on the intended audience.
Policymaker-Facing Communication:
This project piloted a community-based microfinance platform designed to improve credit access for women-led small enterprises in rural districts. Over a 12-month period, participants demonstrated a 35% increase in business reinvestment rates and a measurable reduction in reliance on informal lending networks. These outcomes suggest that locally mediated credit systems, when paired with financial literacy training, can serve as scalable interventions for inclusive economic development. Policy support is therefore recommended in the form of regulatory flexibility for community lenders and targeted subsidies for digital infrastructure in underserved regions.
End User-Facing Communication:
Through this program, women running small businesses can apply for low-interest loans using a mobile phone or local community centre without needing traditional bank collateral. Participants also receive training on budgeting, repayment planning, and business growth. The goal is to make borrowing safer, faster, and easier for women who may not have access to formal banking services. Local support workers are available to help users complete applications and answer questions throughout the process.
Funder-Facing Communication:
The pilot phase enrolled 500 women entrepreneurs across three rural districts, achieving a 92% repayment rate within the first lending cycle. Early indicators show increased household income stability and improved business continuity among participating enterprises. With additional funding, the platform can expand its digital infrastructure, extend financial literacy training, and scale operations to five additional districts within two years. The project’s blended model of local facilitation and mobile-based lending positions it as a cost-effective and scalable intervention for financial inclusion initiatives.
Although each paragraph describes the same project, the rhetorical priorities differ substantially. The policymaker version emphasizes scalability and economic impact; the user-facing version prioritizes accessibility and trust; the funder-oriented version foregrounds metrics, sustainability, and growth potential. In such an ecosystem, academic editors are no longer refining a single scholarly narrative. Instead, they may increasingly operate across an interconnected communication network with different target readers, expanding their scope and roles.
Another major shift in a product-oriented doctoral ecosystem is that writing becomes distributed across the lifecycle of a project rather than concentrated within a final thesis. To understand this shift more clearly, it is useful to examine how writing (and therefore editorial) practices change across different stages of said lifecycle.
Pre-Project Writing:
This form of writing must address why the project is needed, who benefits from it, what problem it solves, and why institutions, funders, or communities should support it. While this may appear similar to traditional grant writing, it differs in a crucial respect: rather than primarily justifying the significance of proposed research, pre-project writing in a product-oriented doctorate must also anticipate design, delivery, usability, implementation, and post-research adoption. In other words, the doctoral researcher is not only arguing that a question deserves investigation but also demonstrating that a tangible product, intervention, or system can be developed, operationalised, and sustained within real institutional, social, or public contexts.
Let’s take a look at an example of pre-project writing before editorial intervention.
Women in rural areas do not get enough loans from banks and this causes many problems in development. Our platform will solve this issue by providing digital loans and helping women improve businesses and income generation. The project is innovative and will help many people while also improving financial inclusion and empowerment in underserved communities.
An editor reviewing this proposal may identify vague claims, unsupported promises, and insufficient specificity, suggesting the following enhancements (after seeking inputs from authors about specific claims):
Limited access to formal credit remains a major barrier for women-owned small enterprises in rural districts, where traditional banking systems often require collateral unavailable to first-time borrowers. This project proposes a mobile-based microfinance platform combined with community-led financial literacy workshops to support women entrepreneurs operating informal or home-based businesses. The pilot phase will focus on three districts with documented gaps in banking access, with outcomes evaluated through repayment rates, business continuity, and participant income stability over a 12-month period.
Post-Project Writing:
This may include implementation reports, impact assessments, user manuals, evaluation studies, and public-facing documentation.
Now, let’s take a look at a post-project excerpt before editorial intervention.
The platform worked successfully and many women benefited from the loans. Users found the app easy to use and businesses improved after the project. Some technical problems happened in the beginning but they were later fixed. The project should therefore be expanded to more regions because it has positive impacts.
After editorial intervention, the excerpt may look as follows (based on author inputs provided in response to editor questions):
During the 12-month pilot phase, 417 participants received microloans through the platform, with an overall repayment rate of 89%. User surveys indicated that most participants found the mobile interface accessible after initial onboarding sessions, although early implementation revealed connectivity challenges in low-bandwidth areas. These technical limitations were partially addressed through offline application support and local facilitator assistance. Preliminary findings suggest improved business continuity among participating enterprises; however, longer-term assessment is required before broader regional expansion can be recommended.
In both cases, editorial work remains just as essential as it has always been in traditional thesis writing.
The importance of cross-disciplinary expertise is paramount here. In product- and project-oriented environments, editors may increasingly operate between technical specialists, policymakers, designers, social scientists, businesses, and end users. For example, a design researcher studying accessibility needs may need to communicate those findings effectively to engineers developing a platform. Likewise, an engineering-focused project may require translation into policy or community-facing language understandable to non-technical stakeholders.
Editors may therefore play a growing role in translating domain-specific language across disciplines, identifying gaps between technical outputs and user expectations, ensuring coherence across stakeholder communication, and facilitating meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration.
Discussions around product-oriented doctoral models respond to wider concerns around publication-driven academic cultures, where pressure to maximise publication output can weaken intellectual rigor and meaningful contribution. Product-based evaluation models can therefore be interpreted as attempts to shift emphasis away from publication accumulation and toward demonstrable impact. Some universities would naturally hesitate to eliminate theses or long-form academic writing altogether, as the dissertation continues to support theoretical engagement, methodological transparency, sustained argumentation, and disciplinary training. The more immediate challenge, therefore, is not the disappearance of academic writing, but the protection of research quality and integrity.
