So you’ve got this mountain of “stuff” that keeps revealing new secrets every time you look at it. Or maybe you’re doing a PhD by publication and panicking about how to sort out the articles you need. Either way, you’re probably wondering whether you can write multiple journal articles from the same data without looking like you’re desperate for publications.

Short answer: Absolutely. Long answer: Here’s a few clues about how to do it without your supervisors, examiners, or peer reviewers giving you the side-eye.

When do you write multiple articles?

First, let’s get real. Multiple articles are the norm. Complex research rarely fits neatly into one 8,000-word article. If you’ve got a year’s worth of data – or more – you’re probably dealing with way more insights than any single publication can handle. Trying to cram everything into one paper can either result in a superficial treatment of important themes or interesting findings buried in supplementary materials that nobody reads.

And researchers often have a “FFS, I found more stuff” moment. Yes this often happens – and it’s meant to. You’re not sitting at your desk from day one planning a perfectly orchestrated series of articles. More likely, you’re deep into analysis when you realise there’s a whole other dimension to your data that you hadn’t fully appreciated. Maybe you’ve found patterns that only became visible after your initial analysis or you stumbled across new theoretical frameworks at a conference. Or your conference presentation or supervisor feedback led to unexpected findings that deserve more space than a brief mention. Or perhaps you have noticed different participant groups showing distinct experiences within your sample, temporal patterns in longitudinal data that warrant separate analysis. These all warrant a separate publication.

For PhD by publication, choosing what and how to publish serially is very strategic. Instead of having three/four disjointed papers or three/four that seem repetitive, you need a coherent body of work that systematically builds understanding. When everything connects, your examiners will appreciate the depth of your contribution and you’ll have a much easier time writing your thesis introduction and conclusion. But you can plan a strategy ahead of time. You can  think about your series strategically. It’s important to create a narrative arc across your papers. You need to think beyond your research questions and think early in the data analysis stage about how the articles could work together in your final thesis. What story will they tell collectively? This thinking should influence how you frame each individual piece. You also need to plan your authorship carefully. If you’re collaborating with supervisors or other researchers, be clear about your expectations for each article in the series from the beginning.

People working with large datasets have unique opportunities and challenges. Your dataset might show patterns at different scales, across different variables, or through different analytical approaches. Yippee! You have a series of articles where you can focus each article on different aspects of your research questions and/or use different analytical techniques matched to specific inquiries and/or address different audiences or theoretical communities. You just need to make sure that each article is driven by genuine research questions not the fact that there is more data you could analyse. (There’s always more data.)

Writing the second, third and fourth article

People sometimes get stuck after they’ve written their first paper. How should the next one deal with the one is already written?

When you’re writing your second /third/fourth paper, you need to show readers and reviewers that you’re not just writing because you have to. There are three common steps to take in your paper which show you are building not replicating:

You very often take these three steps in the introduction of the second paper. It is an important part of your rationale and warrant. But there are two more things that are important too.

Don’t just copy and paste your methods section. It’s important not to get lazy when you explain your methods. Yes, you’re using the same dataset as before and some of the research design detail will be the same. But you’re not doing an identical analysis. Your methods section needs to reflect what’s actually different this time around. Maybe you are using different aspects of the data or a different theoretical lens. Perhaps you are examining different time periods or participant subgroups. Or you have a different research question that you are asking of the same material. Be explicit about the differences. Reviewers appreciate transparency and they will look for detail about your analytical choices.

Avoid “salami slicing” You don’t want reviewers to think you’re just chopping up results that should have been one paper. So you need to:

• Make sure each paper’s focus and contribution is genuinely distinct. If your second analysis feels like it could have been three more rows in your first article’s findings table, you’ve probably sliced too thin.
• Use the “elevator pitch”. Can you explain to a non-academic friend why you needed two separate articles? If your explanation sounds even remotely like “Well, I needed more publications,” go back to the drawing board.
• Ensure each article can stand alone. Someone should be able to read your second article without having read the first and still get a complete, valuable piece of research.

It’s important to keep track of your papers and how they build up to a seriously good contribution. It helps if you can write rough abstracts for each paper at the same time. Yes even before you start on the first one. That way you know what goes in each paper, which needs to come first and how to minimise overlap and maximise cumulative understandings. And each abstract should make its unique contribution obvious within 30 seconds of reading. And you can of course modify these abstracts as you go along. But it’s soooo helpful to have a go at seeing how your papers are different and complementary when you’re near done with analysing. And yes of course there might be a FFS moment or a conference or whatever. That’s OK. These early abstracts are thinking tools. They’re not written in stone.

You also need to consider journal fit. Different articles in your series might belong in different journals, reaching different audiences and theoretical traditions.

As you are writing the series, it’s also helpful to keep a detailed analysis log. Document what you analysed, how and why. This helps with writing methods sections and avoiding accidental duplication. It also helps you to track how you cross-reference strategically. You need to mention your other work, but not make readers feel like they need to have read everything you’ve published to understand this piece.

Above all, be confident

Academic publishing is hard enough. You don’t want to be second-guessing yourself about whether your multiple paper approach is legit. If you have rich data that can contribute to knowledge in multiple ways, use it. Your job as a researcher is to generate insights and share them with the world, not to ritually limit yourself to one publication per dataset because you think that’s what’s right and proper.

Just make sure you’re being honest about your contributions, transparent about your methods, and advancing understandings with each piece. Do that, and your series of articles will be a strength not a weakness to defend.