The challenge of supervising students who are doing a Phd by Published Work

I have observed that while many colleagues who are supervisors are clear about the requirements and the role for supervising a student via a traditional PhD route, they admit they are working in the dark with their students on the PW route and have a poor understanding of the process and the different supervisory skills required. Contributing to this confusion is the lack of consistent training available in universities to support building the skills and knowledge for the supervisors of this PW route. As a result, potential candidates are put off, existing candidates are confused and procedural muddle occurs. In fact, I argue that ‘supervising’ is the wrong word (maybe ‘facilitator’ or ‘mentor’ or even ‘PhD life/ research coach’ would work better!). After all, unlike the traditional, typical PhD supervisor the PW supervisor is not ‘keeping an eye on’ their students to check they are safe and competent researchers before they are let loose on the wider community – many PW students are already established, well published researchers in their own right and have all been safely ‘on the loose’ for years. PhD by PW supervisors do not, unlike the traditional PhD route supervisor, need to ensure their students are producing quality research or ensure their methodology is sound – this has already been done and dusted by the peer reviewers for the journals where the work is submitted. It should also be ironed out early at the Confirmation of Registration stage (and very often this is not the case). From my experience, the supervisory skills required by someone who has a PW candidate should focus on something slightly different:

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