Beyond the Monograph: A Quality Assurance Framework for PhD by Publication and PhD by Published Work in African Higher Education

Publication-based doctoral formats are expanding internationally, but their terminology, eligibility, authorship, synthesis and examination rules remain heterogeneous. This creates a governance problem for African systems seeking to expand doctoral capacity without weakening the doctorate. Through comparative analysis of 11 current regulatory and institutional sources and a bounded scholarly evidence map of 30 core records from 43 unique screened records, this study develops an evidence-informed quality-assurance architecture for PhD by Publication and PhD by Published Work. The evidence-map flow uses PRISMA-ScR-informed reporting without claiming an exhaustive database scoping review. Cross-case analysis identifies four models: prospective publication-based doctorates, retrospective published-work doctorates, publication-inclusive hybrid theses, and higher doctorates by works. Across procedural variation, credible systems converge on original contribution, coherent synthesis, auditable candidate contribution, research integrity, researcher formation and independent whole-portfolio examination. The article therefore advances equivalence without uniformity and proposes the African Publication-Based Doctoral Quality Assurance Framework (APD-QAF), organised around four gates: pathway legitimacy and eligibility, portfolio integrity and candidate ownership, integrative scholarship and researcher formation, and independent equivalent examination. The framework separates invariant doctoral outcomes from context-sensitive implementation. For African regulators and universities, including Rwanda as its postgraduate research framework develops, publication counts, journal status and prior peer review cannot substitute for evidence of an integrated, original and independently examinable doctoral contribution.