PhD thesis structure

A typical structure includes: – Table of contents – Acknowledgements – Summary (in English) – Introduction – Chapters made up of manuscripts, either published or ready for publication. Each chapter should be formatted in a unified style. Additional chapters can be added as “working papers” if these will not lead to publication. – Discussion providing a unifying theme through the work and touching upon points not found in the chapter discussions. – Conclusions – List of references* (references can also be included at the end of each chapter) – Appendices – A brief curriculum vitae

Look at recent examples of Swiss TPH theses in the Institute’s library.

*Towards more unified bibliometric referencing in Swiss TPH MSc and PhD theses Using reference manager software (e.g. Zotero, EndNote, etc) allows for one single list of all cited references at the end of the thesis (not each chapter) and thus avoids much redundancy from repeating references common across many chapters and saves pages in the final print versions.

The preferred referencing style of in text citations is Harvard Style, which names first authors and the year in the text, and lists all bibliographic references in alphabetic order in a single list at the end of the thesis including all authors (no et al). This makes it easier for examiners to appreciate whether appropriate literature has been cited in the appropriate places without constantly checking numbered lists in the manuscript into different bibliographies in the thesis.

For reference managers to assemble a single bibliography at the end of the thesis requires a single manuscript of the thesis. Ideally the MSc and PhD dissertation manuscript should apply internally consistent and continuous page numbering and chapter numbering linked to a detailed Table of Contents. This is easiest done using the original manuscripts of the chapters or published papers concatenated into a single word processed document using section breaks for chapters and unique chapter headers. For the PhD dissertation where some chapters will have been already published as papers, this could include the final word processed manuscript as submitted but also incorporate where advantageous any professional graphics from any of the published versions. This allows the automated Table of Contents and Table of Figures to be complete. Such chapters have a facing page indicating the citation of the published paper.