Exploring Originality in Postgraduate Education in Context: A Decade of Academic Excellence

Originality in postgraduate education is essential because it serves as a foundation for excellence and innovation. Completing a thesis is a requirement for graduating from any academic institution. For a thesis to be accepted, it must make a valuable contribution to the existing body of knowledge. However, many PhD candidates encounter challenges in writing sound theses that demonstrate academic integrity and a high level of originality. Originality can involve generating new insights, theories, or connections between previously unrelated sources. Using qualitative content analysis of 84 PhD theses in Information Studies at an academic institution in Africa, this study explored how originality is defined and articulated in that context. The findings show that the theses reviewed demonstrate a high degree of originality, highlighting their cognitive excellence. It is recommended that PhD-level research should demonstrate a high degree of originality, achieving more than fifty per cent in all attributes that reflect originality as outlined by various scholars and the conceptual framework that guided this study. Although the findings from this study cannot be generalised to all PhD studies and disciplines, it forms a sound theoretical basis for understanding the subject of originality in postgraduate education. The discussion and checklist for originality will benefit postgraduates, supervisors, and examiners of research theses.