Publish or perish: Challenges and opportunities of supervision of PhD theses

The belief that if one does not publish, then one perishes is widely held in academia. The PhD supervisor should publish papers and assist their candidate to publish as well. So, the PhD supervision and publication journey is often not a rosy one although the results, when the journey is successfully completed, are sweet. This study investigates the challenges and opportunities of PhD research supervision of 20 purposively selected supervisors in the researcher’s sampling frame which included international conference emailing lists. The supervisors were contacted by email. Data were collected by means of semi-structured and unstructured questionnaires which had been tested for validity and reliability through ‘peer and expert checking.’ The Delphi technique with two rounds was used to collect the data which was then analysed thematically. Findings showed that most supervisors had challenges of clash of supervision roles, little collaboration with others, supervising students with little research knowledge but keen on plagiarism, among others. Learning through observation and experience, promotion, collaboration, networking and publishing together were cited as benefits and opportunities of supervising PhD candidates. The results of this study may help to inform policy and practice in post graduate supervision, especially of research and in the African context, and maybe even beyond.