Realbusacad in the other thread on this says PhD by publication is a waste of time.
My perception is one of the reasons it is popular is it enables UK scholars without a PhD, but otherwise well established, to get one; and the reason that they need it is because it is assumed that they will have one in the US in particular.
The person close to orienteer with a PhD (published work) 's early experience when attending US meetings was if you answered the question "where did you do your PhD" with "I don't have one", notwithstanding a good list of publications, there was an almost visible racheting of you down the heirarchy of significance. Now, that person can say "Acmecaster", and move on.
But what if that person applied for a job in the US ?
Their CV would say: PhD, University of Acmecaster, 2005. It wouldn't look any different from somebody who'd done the PhD part-time whilst working as a research assistant. There's no requirement to state that it's a PhD by publication. The point is that, with the exception of Stirling, the universities that allow the PhD by published works only allow them for people who already fulfill all the qualifications for being an academic.
Getting a US search committee to understand where the hell the University of Acmecaster is and why it's actually a better institution than compass point state cow college, where the other candidate got their PhD, now that's the difficult bit.
