I am a very enthusiastic person academically and I love to gather new (sometimes irrelevant but useful) knowledge about my field in my free time. I am now at the point where I would like to start writing a paper on something in my field of interest and based on my own research.
If my paper is credible, contributes to my field and fulfills the standards that apply to any PhD thesis, would I be awarded a doctorate if I applied for the degree and publish the paper?
As an undergraduate, I don't know much about a PhD program. From what I know, it's simply you and your research that counts. I understand that, in the last analysis, it is the contribution to your field that counts. Am I missing anything?
Answer
Just write your paper, as long as the writing does not distract you from your undergrad studies. If the paper has merit, you may be able to present it at a colloquium of your university, at a workshop, or even at a conference. If you put some more work into it and are lucky, you might eventually be able to publish it in a journal. Certainly, your paper will open up more questions than it answers. Now you have a research trajectory that you can follow up and that may lead to a PhD thesis, based on but surely not limited to your first paper.
In other words: There is no reason why you should not start to work on your PhD topic already as an undergraduate, but it seems to me that you underestimate the time and work it takes to finish the PhD. And since PhDs require a lot of work, there are PhD programs, which facilitate the process and in which most PhDs are actually produced. In that sense, writing your PhD outside of the designated framework is a bit like digging a well with a spoon. It can be done, but it is not too efficient. On top of that (as others have said already), at many institutions, the written thesis is only one requirement among others to be awarded a title.
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