phd thesis title page

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Sample Title Pages

A few examples.

• Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine
• Division of the Humanities
• Division of the Physical Sciences
• Division of the Social Sciences
• The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
• The Divinity School
• The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies
• The Law School
• The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
• The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

This is a work in progress. Additional examples are available on request.

The font on your title page should be the same as the font used in the rest of your dissertation. Settings should be the same also: double line spacing, 0 pt spacing before and after paragraphs, one inch margins on all sides, and 12-point font size. Text on the title page should use upper case and should not be bold. The title page counts as page "i" but the number should not be entered on the page.

Use your diploma name on the title page.

The last line on the title page should be the month and year of the end of the quarter you receive your degree and graduate, with no date and no comma. If you will receive your degree this spring, your degree date is JUNE 2024. Your options for the next academic year are:

• AUGUST 2024
• DECEMBER 2024

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The Dissertation Title Page

• By DiscoverPhDs
• August 12, 2020

The title page of your dissertation or thesis conveys all the essential details about your project, including:

• The title of your project
• Your full name (including student number if required)
• Clarification of whether this is a dissertation or thesis document
• The name of your academic department
• The name of your university
• The degree name that the dissertation or thesis has been written for (e.g. Doctor of Philosophy)
• The date (month and year) that you will submit the document
• The name of your supervisor(s)

This page can also be referred to as the dissertation cover page when your degree program is at the undergraduate or Masters level.

Format of the Title Page

Your university will provide you with the exact formatting requirements of your dissertation title page. This will include how to present the above information but also the font size to use, line spacing and the size of margins. For example, a graduate school may require the title to be in all caps, all text to be double-spaced and margins on the binding side to be 4cm. Don’t include the page number and have all text centred. You may also need to include the university logo. The APA style is commonly referred to for guidance on how to format research documents. This guide from University College London on their requirements is also an interesting read.

Example of a Dissertation Title Page

The example below is what a dissertation title page would usually look like for a Masters degree project in the UK. You can use this as a template when writing your own title page. The format presented here is also applicable for a doctoral dissertation or thesis title page.

The title page may be followed by an approval page, signed by the project chair and any other committee members. After this comes your abstract, presented on a separate page and then your table of contents. Some institutions may also require a copyright page to be included. Whilst the title page doesn’t have a page number, pages after this may use Roman numerals with the traditional page number format starting after your table of contents.

The term partial fulfillment means that this research document was one of several requirements for you to obtain your degree. For a Master’s degree, the other requirements will typically include exams and coursework.

Follow the advice in this guide to ensure your title page is in the correct format before final submission of your research project. This will be a normal part of undergraduate and graduate study.

The term monotonic relationship is a statistical definition that is used to describe the link between two variables.

A thesis and dissertation appendix contains additional information which supports your main arguments. Find out what they should include and how to format them.

Learn 10 ways to impress a PhD supervisor for increasing your chances of securing a project, developing a great working relationship and more.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

Browse PhDs Now

Choosing a good PhD supervisor will be paramount to your success as a PhD student, but what qualities should you be looking for? Read our post to find out.

Impostor Syndrome is a common phenomenon amongst PhD students, leading to self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. How can we overcome these feelings?

Fabian’s in the final year of his PhD research at Maastricht University. His project is about how humans learn numbers and how hands might help that process; this is especially useful for children developing their maths skills.

Elmira is in the third year of her PhD program at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, researching the mechanisms of acute myeloid leukemia cells resistance to targeted therapy.

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Formatting Guide

The  PhD Dissertation Formatting Guide  (updated Spring 2023) is the source of all formatting requirements and guidelines for PhD Dissertations. Make sure to follow the guide when writing your dissertation.

Double check your formatting with the  PhD Dissertation Formatting Checklist  before submission.

LaTeX Template

The University provides a standard LaTeX template that complies with all formatting requirements.    

University of Pennsylvania PhD Dissertation Template in LaTeX

Word Templates

The University provides a standard Word template that complies with all formatting requirements.    

Dissertation Template in Word  (updated Spring 2023)

Example PDF of Proper Formatting

Overleaf LaTeX PDF

Note: You may need to activate your UPenn Overleaf account to view this PDF.  Penn Overleaf account page. 

Additional information is available in our  Formatting FAQs . 

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• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation

Dissertation title page

Published on 30 May 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 18 October 2022.

The title page (or cover page) of your thesis, dissertation, or research paper should contain all the key information about your document. It usually includes:

• Dissertation or thesis title
• The type of document (e.g., dissertation, research paper )
• The department and institution
• The degree program (e.g., Master of Arts)
• The date of submission

It sometimes also includes your student number, your supervisor’s name, and your university’s logo.

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Table of contents

Title page format, title page templates, title page example, frequently asked questions about title pages.

Your department will usually tell you exactly what should be included on your title page and how it should be formatted. Be sure to check whether there are specific guidelines for margins, spacing, and font size.

Title pages for APA and MLA Style

The format of your title page can also depend on the citation style you’re using. There may be guidelines in regards to alignment, page numbering, and mandatory elements.

• MLA guidelines for formatting the title page
• APA guidelines for formatting the title page

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We’ve created a few templates to help you design the title page for your thesis, dissertation, or research paper. You can download them in the format of your choice by clicking on the corresponding button.

Research paper Google doc

Dissertation Google doc

Thesis Google doc

A typical example of a thesis title page looks like this:

The title page of your thesis or dissertation should include your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date.

The title page of your thesis or dissertation goes first, before all other content or lists that you may choose to include.

Usually, no title page is needed in an MLA paper . A header is generally included at the top of the first page instead. The exceptions are when:

• Your instructor requires one, or
• Your paper is a group project

In those cases, you should use a title page instead of a header, listing the same information but on a separate page.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, October 18). Dissertation title page. Scribbr. Retrieved 22 April 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/title-page/

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Other students also liked, thesis & dissertation acknowledgements | tips & examples, dissertation table of contents in word | instructions & examples, research paper appendix | example & templates.

Title Page for Ph.D. Dissertation

Main navigation.

All title pages for a Ph.D. Dissertation should follow these three style standards:

Use uppercase letters centered within the margins both vertically and horizontally

No bold type and no pagination on the title page

Date should reflect month and year of submission to the Office of the University Registrar

Sample Title Pages

Browse these sample title pages for a Ph.D. in: 

• A department or program
• The Graduate School of Business 
• The Graduate School of Education
• The School of Law (J.S.D.)
• Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.)

The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

Thesis Title: Examples and Suggestions from a PhD Grad

When you’re faced with writing up a thesis, choosing a title can often fall to the bottom of the priority list. After all, it’s only a few words. How hard can it be?!

In the grand scheme of things I agree that picking your thesis title shouldn’t warrant that much thought, however my own choice is one of the few regrets I have from my PhD . I therefore think there is value in spending some time considering the options available.

In this post I’ll guide you through how to write your own thesis title and share real-world examples. Although my focus is on the PhD thesis, I’ve also included plenty of thesis title examples for bachelor’s and master’s research projects too.

Hopefully by the end of the post you’ll feel ready to start crafting your own!

Why your thesis title is at least somewhat important

It sounds obvious but your thesis title is the first, and often only, interaction people will have with your thesis. For instance, hiring managers for jobs that you may wish to apply for in the future. Therefore you want to give a good sense of what your research involved from the title.

Many people will list the title of their thesis on their CV, at least for a while after graduating. All of the example titles I’ve shared below came from my repository of academic CVs . I’d say roughly 30% of all the academics on that page list their thesis title, which includes academics all the way up to full professor.

Your thesis title could therefore feature on your CV for your whole career, so it is probably worth a bit of thought!

My suggestions for choosing a good thesis title

• Make it descriptive of the research so it’s immediately obvious what it is about! Most universities will publish student theses online ( here’s mine! ) and they’re indexed so can be found via Google Scholar etc. Therefore give your thesis a descriptive title so that interested researchers can find it in the future.
• Don’t get lost in the detail . You want a descriptive title but avoid overly lengthy descriptions of experiments. Unless a certain analytical technique etc was central to your research, I’d suggest by default* to avoid having it in your title. Including certain techniques will make your title, and therefore research, look overly dated, which isn’t ideal for potential job applications after you graduate.
• The title should tie together the chapters of your thesis. A well-phrased title can do a good job of summarising the overall story of your thesis. Think about each of your research chapters and ensure that the title makes sense for each of them.
• Be strategic . Certain parts of your work you want to emphasise? Consider making them more prominent in your title. For instance, if you know you want to pivot to a slightly different research area or career path after your PhD, there may be alternative phrasings which describe your work just as well but could be better understood by those in the field you’re moving into. I utilised this a bit in my own title which we’ll come onto shortly.
• Do your own thing. Having just laid out some suggestions, do make sure you’re personally happy with the title. You get a lot of freedom to choose your title, so use it however you fancy. For example, I’ve known people to use puns in their title, so if that’s what you’re into don’t feel overly constrained.

*This doesn’t always hold true and certainly don’t take my advice if 1) listing something in your title could be a strategic move 2) you love the technique so much that you’re desperate to include it!

Thesis title examples

To help give you some ideas, here are some example thesis titles from Bachelors, Masters and PhD graduates. These all came from the academic CVs listed in my repository here .

Bachelor’s thesis title examples

Hysteresis and Avalanches Paul Jager , 2014 – Medical Imaging – DKFZ Head of ML Research Group –  direct link to Paul’s machine learning academic CV

The bioenergetics of a marine ciliate, Mesodinium rubrum Holly Moeller , 2008 – Ecology & Marine Biology – UC Santa Barbara Assistant Professor –  direct link to Holly’s marine biology academic CV

Functional syntactic analysis of prepositional and causal constructions for a grammatical parser of Russian Ekaterina Kochmar , 2008 – Computer Science – University of Bath Lecturer Assistant Prof –  direct link to Ekaterina’s computer science academic CV

Master’s thesis title examples

Creation of an autonomous impulse response measurement system for rooms and transducers with different methods Guy-Bart Stan , 2000 – Bioengineering – Imperial Professor –  direct link to Guy-Bart’s bioengineering academic CV

Segmentation of Nerve Bundles and Ganglia in Spine MRI using Particle Filters Adrian Vasile Dalca , 2012 – Machine Learning for healthcare – Harvard Assistant Professor & MIT Research Scientist –  direct link to Adrian’s machine learning academic CV

The detection of oil under ice by remote mode conversion of ultrasound Eric Yeatman , 1986 – Electronics – Imperial Professor and Head of Department –  direct link to Eric’s electronics academic CV

Ensemble-Based Learning for Morphological Analysis of German Ekaterina Kochmar , 2010 – Computer Science – University of Bath Lecturer Assistant Prof –  direct link to Ekaterina’s computer science academic CV

VARiD: A Variation Detection Framework for Color-Space and Letter-Space Platforms Adrian Vasile Dalca , 2010 – Machine Learning for healthcare – Harvard Assistant Professor & MIT Research Scientist –  direct link to Adrian’s machine learning academic CV

Identification of a Writer’s Native Language by Error Analysis Ekaterina Kochmar , 2011 – Computer Science – University of Bath Lecturer Assistant Prof –  direct link to Ekaterina’s computer science academic CV

On the economic optimality of marine reserves when fishing damages habitat Holly Moeller , 2010 – Ecology & Marine Biology – UC Santa Barbara Assistant Professor –  direct link to Holly’s marine biology academic CV

Sensitivity Studies for the Time-Dependent CP Violation Measurement in B 0 → K S K S K S at the Belle II-Experiment Paul Jager , 2016 – Medical Imaging – DKFZ Head of ML Research Group –  direct link to Paul’s machine learning academic CV

PhD thesis title examples

Spatio-temporal analysis of three-dimensional real-time ultrasound for quantification of ventricular function Esla Angelini  – Medicine – Imperial Senior Data Scientist –  direct link to Elsa’s medicine academic CV

The role and maintenance of diversity in a multi-partner mutualism: Trees and Ectomycorrhizal Fungi Holly Moeller , 2015 – Ecology & Marine Biology – UC Santa Barbara Assistant Professor –  direct link to Holly’s marine biology academic CV

Bayesian Gaussian processes for sequential prediction, optimisation and quadrature Michael Osborne , 2010 – Machine Learning – Oxford Full Professor –  direct link to Michael’s machine learning academic CV

Global analysis and synthesis of oscillations: a dissipativity approach Guy-Bart Stan , 2005 – Bioengineering – Imperial Professor –  direct link to Guy-Bart’s bioengineering academic CV

Coarse-grained modelling of DNA and DNA self-assembly Thomas Ouldridge , 2011– Bioengineering – Imperial College London Senior Lecturer / Associate Prof –  direct link to Thomas’ bioengineering academic CV

4D tomographic image reconstruction and parametric maps estimation: a model-based strategy for algorithm design using Bayesian inference in Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM) Michele Scipioni , 2018– Biomedical Engineer – Harvard Postdoctoral Research Fellow –  direct link to Michele’s biomedical engineer academic CV

Error Detection in Content Word Combinations Ekaterina Kochmar , 2016 – Computer Science – University of Bath Lecturer Assistant Prof –  direct link to Ekaterina’s computer science academic CV

Genetic, Clinical and Population Priors for Brain Images Adrian Vasile Dalca , 2016 – Machine Learning for healthcare – Harvard Assistant Professor & MIT Research Scientist –  direct link to Adrian’s machine learning academic CV

Challenges and Opportunities of End-to-End Learning in Medical Image Classification Paul Jager , 2020 – Medical Imaging – DKFZ Head of ML Research Group –  direct link to Paul’s machine learning academic CV

K 2 NiF 4  materials as cathodes for intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells Ainara Aguadero , 2006 – Materials Science – Imperial Reader –  direct link to Ainara’s materials science academic CV

Applications of surface plasmons – microscopy and spatial light modulation Eric Yeatman , 1989 – Electronics – Imperial Professor and Head of Department –  direct link to Eric’s electronics academic CV

Geometric Algorithms for Objects in Motion Sorelle Friedler , 2010 – Computer science – Haverford College Associate Professor –  direct link to Sorelle’s computer science academic CV .

Geometrical models, constraints design, information extraction for pathological and healthy medical image Esla Angelini  – Medicine – Imperial Senior Data Scientist –  direct link to Elsa’s medicine academic CV

Why I regret my own choice of PhD thesis title

I should say from the outset that I assembled my thesis in quite a short space of time compared to most people. So I didn’t really spend particularly long on any one section, including the title.

However, my main supervisor even spelled out for me that once the title was submitted to the university it would be permanent. In other words: think wisely about your title.

What I started with

Initially I drafted the title as something like: Three dimensional correlative imaging for cartilage regeneration . Which I thought was nice, catchy and descriptive.

I decided to go for “correlative imaging” because, not only did it describe the experiments well, but it also sounded kind of technical and fitting of a potential pivot into AI. I’m pleased with that bit of the title.

What I ended up with

Before submitting the title to the university (required ahead of the viva), I asked my supervisors for their thoughts.

One of my well intentioned supervisors suggested that, given that my project didn’t involve verifying regenerative quality, I probably shouldn’t state cartilage regeneration . Instead, they suggested, I should state what I was experimenting on (the materials) rather than the overall goal of the research (aid cartilage regeneration efforts).

With this advice I dialled back my choice of wording and the thesis title I went with was:

Three dimensional correlative imaging for measurement of strain in cartilage and cartilage replacement materials

Reading it back now I’m reminder about how less I like it than my initial idea!

I put up basically no resistance to the supervisor’s choice, even though the title sounds so much more boring in my opinion. I just didn’t think much of it at the time. Furthermore, most of my PhD was actually in a technique which is four dimensional (looking at a series of 3D scans over time, hence 4D) which would have sounded way more sciency and fitting of a PhD.

What I wish I’d gone with

If I had the choice again, I’d have gone with:

Four-dimensional correlative imaging for cartilage regeneration

Which, would you believe it, is exactly what it states on my CV…

Does the thesis title really matter?

In all honesty, your choice of thesis title isn’t that important. If you come to regret it, as I do, it’s not the end of the world. There are much more important things in life to worry about.

If you decide at a later stage that you don’t like it you can always describe it in a way that you prefer. For instance, in my CV I describe my PhD as I’d have liked the title to be. I make no claim that it’s actually the title so consider it a bit of creative license.

Given that as your career progresses you may not even refer back to your thesis much, it’s really not worth stressing over. However, if you’re yet to finalise your thesis title I do still think it is worth a bit of thought and hopefully this article has provided some insights into how to choose a good thesis title.

My advice for developing a thesis title

• Draft the title early. Drafting it early can help give clarity for the overall message of your research. For instance, while you’re assembling the rest of your thesis you can check that the title encompasses the research chapters you’re included, and likewise that the research experiments you’re including fall within what the title describes. Drafting it early also gives more time you to think it over. As with everything: having a first draft is really important to iterate on.
• Look at some example titles . Such as those featured above!
• If you’re not sure about your title, ask a few other people what they think . But remember that you have the final say!

I hope this post has been useful for those of you are finalising your thesis and need to decide on a thesis title. If you’ve enjoyed this article and would like to hear about future content (and gain access to my free resource library!) you can subscribe for free here:

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Dissertation Title Page – Guide And Examples

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The dissertation title page serves as the first impression of your academic paper. It is a standalone page that contains essential information such as the title of the dissertation , the author’s name, the institutional affiliation, and the date of submission. Readers should get an overview of the constituents of your paper, and it should be formatted according to the appropriate academic writing style of the respective academic institution. Learn more in this article.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• 1 Dissertation Title Page — In a Nutshell
• 2 Definition: Dissertation title page
• 3 Dissertation title page formatting
• 4 Dissertation title page example

Dissertation Title Page — In a Nutshell

• The dissertation title page is the introductory page to your readers, which entails details of the project.
• Researchers should ensure the title featured on the dissertation title page captures the readers’ attention.
• The dissertation title page generally includes the author’s name, course information, and institutional affiliation.
• The dissertation title page makes up one of the most crucial parts of the preliminaries of a research proposal.
• It should be formatted according to the guidelines of the dominant writing style adopted by a researcher.

Definition: Dissertation title page

The dissertation title page refers to the introductory page of a research document. Here the researcher mentions key details about the research project.

These include:

• The names of the authors
• The title of the research project
• The name of the instructor
• Among other details

The dissertation title page can be formatted in several ways depending on the instructions provided and the level of research, i.e. student or professional reports.

Dissertation title page formatting

Formatting the dissertation title page often depends on specific instructions from your department or professor. While they may vary from one department to another, there is a base format that includes similar details.

You can format the dissertation title page in various ways according to the primary academic writing styles , as follows:

MLA title page

The MLA style is commonly used in:

• Literary studies
• Media studies

There are some guidelines for writing the dissertation title page if you have specific directions for using MLA style in your research project.

Note: A title page is not required in MLA style; however, in cases where your department implicitly requires you to include it or when presenting a group project, ensure you have a dissertation title page.

After a few blank lines:

• Mention the paper’s title in the title case centered midway through the page.
• Use double-spacing and keep the font consistent throughout the document.

However, most MLA papers use a header instead of a dissertation title page.

The header is written on the same page as the introductory paragraphs rather than on its own page, like the dissertation title page.

The header is:

• Left-aligned
• Includes your name, the instructor’s name, the course
• Submission date

APA title page

The APA style version of the dissertation title page includes the following details:

Chicago title page

The dissertation title page in Chicago style is not mandatory, unless otherwise stated in the project requirements.

The text on the dissertation title page should use:

• Double-spacing
• Center-aligned
• Same font as the research body

The title should be capitalized and should appear just above the mid-section of the page. After the title, indicate:

• Student number
• Course code

Dissertation title page example

How do you properly format your dissertation title page?

The appropriate method of formatting the title page depends on the academic style to be used to present the argument and the evidence to support the claims by the researcher.

However, the title should be capitalized, and the same font should be used on the title page and the rest of the research paper.

Do you need a dissertation title page for your research project?

Including a title page in your thesis or dissertation may be optional.

However, this is subject to the instructions given to the researcher or student; if required, use the guidelines stipulated in the academic style handbooks.

Is there any difference between a title page and a cover page?

The title page:

• Appears at the beginning of your work
• the names of the people involved
• the institution that oversaw the work

A cover page, where included, comes after the title page, and the researcher can use it to give a brief description of the project.

What should be included in a dissertation title page?

This information should appear on the title page:

• Names of the author
• The name of the institution

These details are formatted according to the rules of academic writing that define spacing, fonts, and other elements.

When can I include an image on a dissertation title page?

Some title pages may feature an image on the title page. This is provided for in the guidelines of image citation as a source used in research.

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Thesis/Dissertation

To graduate with a master’s (thesis program) or doctoral (dissertation program) degree, students are required to submit an Electronic Thesis/Dissertation (ETD) and a Committee Approval Form to the Graduate School through the  UW ETD Administrator Site . ETDs are distributed by ProQuest/UMI Dissertation Publishing and made available on an open access basis through UW Libraries  ResearchWorks Service .

The Graduate School partners with the UW Libraries to provide comprehensive resources for students as they write, submit, and publish academic theses or dissertations. These pages outline information and policies related to preparing your thesis/dissertation, including formatting, deadlines, copyright and distribution decisions, and, ultimately, graduation. We also encourage you to review the  ETD Library Guide  for additional information.

For comprehensive information on preparing to graduate, please refer to our graduation requirements information page .

Writing Your Thesis or Dissertation

Etd resources.

As a starting point, students submitting an ETD are encouraged to review the below resources:

• Hacking the Academy: UW Theses & Dissertations (Recording of July 29, 2020 event) This session helps students think through their options for how and when to share their work, including the copyright and publishing considerations they may need to take into account.
• Electronic Theses & Dissertations with the UW Libraries The University Libraries welcomes you to this self-guided course on electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) at the UW. In this five-part learning experience, you will learn a lot about the ETD process including how the submission process works, how to give and receive recognition for your work, how to find and interpret publisher policies and how to read and inspect publishing contracts.

Formatting Guidelines

After you submit your ETD, the Graduate School will review your document as part of the graduation process at the end of each quarter. We will review for information accuracy, consistency, and to ensure your ETD meets the formatting requirements described below. There are three required sections (pages) that must be included at the beginning of your manuscript: 1) Title Page, 2) Copyright Page, 3) Abstract. Templates for these sections are provided below.

Apart from these first three pages, the Graduate School does not adhere to any specific formatting or publishing requirements unless explicitly stated by the ProQuest Author Guide: Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission (provided below). You should refer to the citation, formatting, and style specifications of your discipline and the guidance of your supervisory committee.  Note: theses and dissertations must be submitted in PDF format.

For a complete overview of the graduation process, please review  Preparing to Graduate .

Required Sections:

• Must include all items listed in the sample title page and placed in the same order
• May be the first or second page of your document
• Title of document
• Author’s Full Name
• Name of degree as it will appear on your diploma
• Year of graduation
• Names of chair/committee members (do not include signatures or professional titles, e.g. Dr. or PhD, before/after faculty names)
• Program authorized to offer degree (school or department)
• Name and year must match title pages
• List the year of graduation
• Place abstract after copyright and title page

Master’s Thesis Approval Form:

You are required to upload a completed and signed Master’s Thesis Approval Form into the UW ETD Administrator (ProQuest) site; the Approval Form is part of your ETD submission. This Approval Form is a separate PDF and should not be included as a page in the thesis or dissertation itself.

• Master’s Thesis Approval Form

Electronic Doctoral Dissertation Approval:

Final Exams scheduled after March 3, 2020 include a link for Reading Committee Members to approve the dissertation online at MyGrad Committee View.

ETD Formatting Resources:

• Thesis/Dissertation Formatting Checklist  – a quick reference guide of the formatting do’s and don’ts provided below.
• ProQuest Dissertation Publishing — Author Guide: Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission
• ProQuest Online Submission FAQs
• Master’s Thesis Title Page – Fillable PDF Template 
• Doctoral Dissertation Title Page – Fillable PDF Template
• Word Templates  – Alex Mamishev, Professor in Electrical Engineering maintains a Word file that other students may find useful when formatting their document.

Common ETD Formatting Revisions Requested

To ensure timely graduating, take some time before you submit to review this information and ProQuest’s document formatting guidelines. These are all common errors and revisions the Graduate School will request when reviewing ETD formatting. You will be required to resubmit if revisions are needed. Be precise, and consistent as you format your document.  Many formatting errors result from following a fellow or former student’s example, so it’s important to review the most current templates and guidelines.

Title Page, Copyright Page, Abstract

Language requirement.

Your document must be written in English ( policy 1.1.4.3 ). If you need to write your document in another language to accommodate the main audience, you must get prior approval to do so by  submitting a petition the dean via MyGrad . If the petition is approved, the required sections (title page, copyright page, abstract) must still be written in English.

Plagiarism is using words, ideas, diagrams, and other content from publicly available work without appropriately acknowledging the sources of these materials. This definition constitutes plagiarism whether it is intentional or unintentional and whether it is the work of another or your own, previously published work.

Plagiarism is a very serious offense that the University of Washington does not tolerate. Evidence of plagiarism may prevent granting of your degree.

Submitting and Publishing

Submitting for dissemination and access.

The Graduate School and the Libraries require that all UW theses and dissertations be submitted electronically for management efficiency, cost control, ease of dissemination, and long-term preservation reasons. In addition, your ETD must eventually be made available openly on the web. Your ETD will be hosted in both UW’s institutional repository,  ResearchWorks , and in  ProQuest’s ETD Database .  Consequently, you will need to indicate your choices in two sections about how your ETD is made available. Most students choose to make their work available immediately, but you can choose to limit access  temporarily  before making it available openly.

Students may restrict access to their theses and dissertations…

• while seeking to publish journal articles or books based on them,
• to protect intellectual property during the patent application process, or
• to prevent the disclosure of sensitive or classified information.

During the submission process, you will select ProQuest and ResearchWorks (Institutional Repository, or IR) publication options. The options are summarized on a table below, followed by selected scenarios to assist you in making your decisions.

IMPORTANT: The metadata describing your ETD, including the citation and abstract, is openly available  immediately— regardless of the embargo or restriction status. This information is searchable by Google, Bing and other search engines, so take care that neither the descriptive information nor the text contain confidential or sensitive information.

Selecting Access Options

Selected etd access scenarios.

The UW Libraries and the Graduate School are committed to the goal of sharing graduate students’ research as soon and as widely as possible, while allowing students to temporarily limit access to their theses and dissertations for such reasons as to support formal publication in journal article or book form or to allow time for filing patents. Below are some examples of how students may wish to use these options to support their publishing or intellectual property-protection goals.

Discussion of Scenarios

• Journal Article Publishing. In recent years graduate students – especially in scientific, medical and technical fields — have increasingly been publishing results of their research in journals.
• The “Research Article” Dissertation. In some disciplines students may be expected to publish 2 or more journal articles during the course of their studies and submit them as the core of their thesis or dissertation — along with an introduction, literature review, and conclusions. Because this has become so common, most journals now permit authors to immediately republish their articles within their theses or dissertations as long as they provide the full article citation and a statement that an article is being “reprinted with permission” of the journal. However, some other journals allow the practice but require that an article not appear on an open access basis before a delay of 6 or 12 months. The Libraries strongly suggests that students become familiar with the policies in place at the journals in which they would like to publish their work, and choose appropriate access restrictions if needed when they submit their ETD’s.
• Book Publishing. Some students in such humanities and social science disciplines as history and political science may hope to publish a revised version of their dissertation as their first book. As they consider that possibility they may be concerned they might undermine their prospects by making their dissertations widely available via ProQuest and/or on an open access basis.Before deciding whether or for how long to limit access to their work based on these concerns, The Libraries recommends students become familiar with the arguments and evidence put forward on these issues. For example, Cirasella and Thistlethwaite 3 and Courtney and Kilcer 4 provide excellent discussions of issues and review recent literature, while William Germano’s classic From Dissertation to Book 5 and Beth Luey’s Revising Your Dissertation 6 offer important insight into what might be involved during the dissertation revision process. While the Libraries recommends that most students hoping to publish their dissertations as books make them widely available while they work toward that goal, they should feel free to consider choosing otherwise, such as “Immediate Access” for ProQuest and limiting to UW for five years – at the end of which students may request additional time.
• Patent Protection Strategies. Students whose theses or dissertations describe work for which patent protection might be appropriate should contact Jesse Kindra at CoMotion ( [email protected] or 206 616-9658) prior to submitting their work to ProQuest and choosing access restrictions. Depending on the circumstances, a student may choose to completely withhold access for one year, but should recognize that doing so will prevent anyone else at the UW from having access to it during the restricted access period. To exercise this option, students should delay releasing their work to ProQuest for 1 or 2 years, and then choose “No access for 1 year, then make Open Access” from the Institutional Repository (IR) Publishing Options menu for the UW copy. In unusual circumstances, requests for access to be withheld an additional year may be considered. To make such a request, students should describe the reason(s) for it in an email to [email protected] prior to expiration of the original embargo period.

1 Marisa L. Ramirez, Joan T. Dalton, Gail McMillan, Max Read and Nancy H. Seamans, “Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities,” College and Research Libraries 74 (July 2013): 368‐80, http://crl.acrl.org/content/74/4/368.full.pdf+html .

2 Marisa Ramirez, Gail McMillan, Joan T. Dalton, Ann Hanlon, Heather S. Smith and Chelsea Kern, “Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?” College and Research Libraries 75 (November 2014): 808-21, http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/6/808.full.pdf+html .

3 Jill Cirasella and Polly Thistlethwaite, “Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual,” pp. 203-224 in Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication: Implementation (Kevin L. Smith and Katherine A. Dickson, eds.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/286/ .

4 Kyle K. Courtney and Emily Kilcer, “From Apprehension to Comprehension: Addressing Anxieties about Open Access to ETD’s,” pp. 225-244 in Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication: Implementation (Kevin L. Smith and Katherine A. Dickson, eds.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).

5 William Germano. 2013. From Dissertation to Book, 2d. ed. : University of Chicago Press.

6 Beth Luey (ed.). 2008. Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors. University of California Press.

Publishing Agreements

When you submit your ETD for review and publication, you will be required to read and accept two separate publishing agreements. You will also have to decide whether to publish your work right away or to delay its release. Additional pages within this section will outline all the considerations to keep in mind, when deciding how to make your work available to the scholarly community.

All students writing a thesis or dissertation should review the UW Libraries Copyright Research Guide . Understanding copyright law is another critical aspect as you write your thesis or dissertation.  As you compose your work, ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you referenced others’ work? If so, you either need to get explicit permission from the rights holder or to determine that your use is Fair.
• Have you previously published any part of the work? If you’ve signed your copyright over to your publisher, you will need permission to use your material in your thesis.

Ordering Paper Copies

There are no required fees , although you have the option to register your copyright via ProQuest for a fee. If you want to order bound (paper) copies of your document, you may do so through the UW Copy Centers or through ProQuest. Questions should be directed to the UW Copy Centers or to ProQuest at 1.800.521.0600 ext. 77020 — available 8 a.m.–5 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday (excluding U.S. holidays).

Frequently Asked Questions

I created an account in the etd administrator site, but i’m not ready to submit my etd. can i come back to my account later.

Yes. If you need to finish your submission later (for instance, if you need to update your PDF file before uploading it), you can save your information and come back to finish. No information will be lost.

I submitted my ETD but would like to make an edit to the document. How can I edit my submission?

Once your thesis/dissertation is submitted, no additional changes to the document are allowed with the exception of a major data error in the document. In this circumstance, a letter outlining the necessary changes is required from your supervisory committee chair.

What will the Graduate School be reviewing after I submit my ETD?

Submissions are reviewed by GEMS advisors for formatting requirements for the three required sections — title page, copyright page, abstract — before they are delivered to ProQuest for publication. We are checking for accuracy and consistency. Refer to the Formatting Guidelines section on this page for detailed information.

I submitted my ETD and haven't heard anything yet. When will it be reviewed?

We try to review all ETDs as they are received, but if you submit early in the quarter it may not be acted on immediately. If you need to confirm completion of your degree requirements to an external agency or employer, please access the request for letter of certification in the forms section of our Additional Resources page (once your degree has posted to your UW transcript, we can no longer issue this letter). In general, ETDs are reviewed in the last two to three weeks before the quarter ends and after the last day of the quarter. When your submission has been accepted by a GEMS advisor, you will receive email confirmation.

How can I tell if my ETD was submitted and received by the Graduate School?

When your ETD is successfully submitted and pending review, the status will read “submission in review.”

When will my ETD be made available for access?

This depends on the type of access restrictions you selected when creating your account. However, your submission will be delivered to ProQuest for publishing four to six weeks after graduation and you will receive email confirmation when this has occurred. It should be available in UW ResearchWorks around the same time.

When will the printed dissertation / thesis copies I ordered from ProQuest be ready?

After you receive the email confirmation that UW has “delivered” your submission (ETD) to ProQuest, you should please refer to the ProQuest customer service guidelines for the expected delivery date of your order.

What if I am missing a faculty signature for my thesis or dissertation, or I have encountered difficulties in uploading my ETD? Must I pay the graduate registration waiver fee and graduate in the following quarter?

If you encounter these types of situations, contact Graduate Enrollment Management Services (206.685.2630 or  [email protected] ) as early as possible and no later than the last day of the quarter in which you intend to graduate.

Additional Resources

• Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) Guide  (start here!)
• Copyright and Fair Use
• Open Access
• Scholarly Publishing
• ProQuest/UMI Agreement — Traditional Publishing Agreement
• University Agreement — UW Libraries Thesis and Dissertation Submission Agreement
• UW Human Subjects Division (HSD)
• UW CoMotion

The Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Templates and examples.

Please download a title page template in order to correctly format your master's or doctoral title page and refer to the additional instructions below. You can also consult the master's or doctoral title page example as you format your title page.

Master's Title Page Template

Master's Title Page Example

Doctoral Title Page Template

Doctoral Title Page Example

Title Page with Minor or Concentration Example

Requirements

• All margins should be 1 inch and must be consistent on all sides of the page.
• All font should be the same size and should be set to either 10 pt. or 12 pt.
• Do not display a page number anywhere on the page.
• Do not use boldface type on the title page.
• Capitalize the title, BY, your name, and either THESIS (for master's thesis) or DISSERTATION (for doctoral dissertations).
• Your name on your title page should match what appears in the University's system.
• The text block beneath THESIS or DISSERTATION should appear as follows:
• Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
• for the degree of <add earned degree> in <add major>
• with a concentration in <add concentration>
• with a minor in <add minor>
• in the Graduate College of the
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, <add year of degree conferral>
• The major must fit entirely onto line 2 of the text block.
• Most students will not include lines 3 or 4. There are very few campus-approved graduate concentrations and graduate minors. (The list of campus-approved graduate minors can be found  here .) If a concentration or minor cannot be verified by the University’s records, it will not be allowed on the title page.
• The year in line 6 of the text block must be the year of the degree conferral period for which the student will deposit (e.g., if a student deposits in December 2015 for the May 2016 graduation period, the year in the text block should be 2016).
• Master’s students will use the heading “Adviser:”, "Advisers:", or “Master’s Committee:”, depending on which is applicable or preferred.
• Doctoral students will use the heading “Doctoral Committee:” to list the final examination committee.
• For committees, the committee chair should be listed first, and the director of research (adviser) should be listed second; all other committee members may be listed in the order preferred by the student or the student’s adviser.
• The committee chair should be indicated by adding a comma and the word “Chair” after the chair’s name. The director of research (if different from chair) should be indicated by adding a comma and the phrase “Director of Research” after the director’s name.
• “Co-Chair” and “Co-Director of Research” designations may be used when applicable.
• Faculty members should be listed with their professorial title (i.e., Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, etc.). The professorial title should be spelled in full (do not abbreviate) and listed before the faculty member’s name.
• Affiliations should be listed only for committee members who are not University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty (i.e., departmental affiliations should not be listed).

PhD Thesis Guide

This phd thesis guide will guide you step-by-step through the thesis process, from your initial letter of intent to submission of the final document..

All associated forms are conveniently consolidated in the section at the end.

Deadlines & Requirements

Students should register for HST.ThG during any term in which they are conducting research towards their thesis. Regardless of year in program students registered for HST.ThG in a regular term (fall or spring) must meet with their research advisor and complete the  Semi-Annual PhD Student Progress Review Form to receive credit.

Years 1 - 2

• Students participating in lab rotations during year 1, may use the optional MEMP Rotation Registration Form , to formalize the arrangement and can earn academic credit by enrolling in HST.599. 
• A first letter of intent ( LOI-1 ) proposing a general area of thesis research and research advisor is required by April 30th of the second year of registration.
• A second letter of intent ( LOI-2 ) proposing a thesis committee membership and providing a more detailed description of the thesis research is required by April 30th of the third year of registration for approval by the HST-IMES Committee on Academic Programs (HICAP).

Year 4 

• Beginning in year 4, (or after the LOI-2 is approved) the student must meet with their thesis committee at least once per semester.
• Students must formally defend their proposal before the approved thesis committee, and submit their committee approved proposal to HICAP  by April 30 of the forth year of registration.
• Meetings with the thesis committee must be held at least once per semester. 

HST has developed these policies to help keep students on track as they progress through their PhD program. Experience shows that students make more rapid progress towards graduation when they interact regularly with a faculty committee and complete their thesis proposal by the deadline.

Getting Started

Check out these resources  for finding a research lab.

The Thesis Committee: Roles and Responsibilities

Students perform doctoral thesis work under the guidance of a thesis committee consisting of at least three faculty members from Harvard and MIT (including a chair and a research advisor) who will help guide the research. Students are encouraged to form their thesis committee early in the course of the research and in any case by the end of the third year of registration. The HST IMES Committee on Academic Programs (HICAP) approves the composition of the thesis committee via the letter of intent and the thesis proposal (described below). 

Research Advisor

The research advisor is responsible for overseeing the student's thesis project. The research advisor is expected to:

• oversee the research and mentor the student;
• provide a supportive research environment, facilities, and financial support;
• discuss expectations, progress, and milestones with the student and complete the  Semi-Annual PhD Student Progress Review Form each semester;
• assist the student to prepare for the oral qualifying exam;
• guide the student in selecting the other members of the thesis committee;
• help the student prepare for, and attend, meetings of the full thesis committee, to be held at least once per semester;
• help the student prepare for, and attend, the thesis defense;
• evaluate the final thesis document.

The research advisor is chosen by the student and must be a faculty member of MIT* or Harvard University and needs no further approval.  HICAP may approve other individuals as research advisor on a student-by-student basis. Students are advised to request approval of non-faculty research advisors as soon as possible.  In order to avoid conflicts of interest, the research advisor may not also be the student's academic advisor. In the event that an academic advisor becomes the research advisor, a new academic advisor will be assigned.

The student and their research advisor must complete the Semi-Annual PhD Student Progress Review during each regular term in order to receive academic credit for research.  Download Semi Annual Review Form

*MIT Senior Research Staff are considered equivalent to faculty members for the purposes of research advising. No additional approval is required.

Thesis Committee Chair

Each HST PhD thesis committee is headed administratively by a chair, chosen by the student in consultation with the research advisor. The thesis committee chair is expected to:

• provide advice and guidance concerning the thesis research; 
• oversee meetings of the full thesis committee, to be held at least once per semester;
• preside at the thesis defense; 
• review and evaluate the final thesis document.

The thesis committee chair must be well acquainted with the academic policies and procedures of the institution granting the student's degree and be familiar with the student's area of research. The research advisor may not simultaneously serve as thesis committee chair.

For HST PhD students earning degrees through MIT, the thesis committee chair must be an MIT faculty member. A select group of HST program faculty without primary appointments at MIT have been pre-approved by HICAP to chair PhD theses awarded by HST at MIT in cases where the MIT research advisor is an MIT faculty member.**

HST PhD students earning their degree through Harvard follow thesis committee requirements set by the unit granting their degree - either the Biophysics Program or the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

** List of non-MIT HST faculty approved to chair MIT thesis proposals when the research advisor is an MIT faculty member.

In addition to the research advisor and the thesis committee chair, the thesis committee must include one or more readers. Readers are expected to:

• attend meetings of the full thesis committee, to be held at least once per semester;
• attend the thesis defense; 

Faculty members with relevant expertise from outside of Harvard/MIT may serve as readers, but they may only be counted toward the required three if approved by HICAP.

The members of the thesis committee should have complementary expertise that collectively covers the areas needed to advise a student's thesis research. The committee should also be diverse, so that members are able to offer different perspectives on the student's research. When forming a thesis committee, it is helpful to consider the following questions: 

• Do the individuals on the committee collectively have the appropriate expertise for the project?
• Does the committee include at least one individual who can offer different perspectives on the student's research?  The committee should include at least one person who is not closely affiliated with the student's primary lab. Frequent collaborators are acceptable in this capacity if their work exhibits intellectual independence from the research advisor.
• If the research has a near-term clinical application, does the committee include someone who can add a translational or clinical perspective?  
• Does the committee conform to HST policies in terms of number, academic appointments, and affiliations of the committee members, research advisor, and thesis committee chair as described elsewhere on this page?

[Friendly advice: Although there is no maximum committee size, three or four is considered optimal. Committees of five members are possible, but more than five is unwieldy.]

Thesis Committee Meetings

Students must meet with their thesis committee at least once each semester beginning in the fourth year of registration. It is the student's responsibility to schedule these meetings; students who encounter difficulties in arranging regular committee meetings can contact Julie Greenberg at jgreenbe [at] mit.edu (jgreenbe[at]mit[dot]edu) .

The format of the thesis committee meeting is at the discretion of the thesis committee chair. In some cases, the following sequence may be helpful:

• The thesis committee chair, research advisor, and readers meet briefly without the student in the room;
• The thesis committee chair and readers meet briefly with the student, without the advisor in the room;
• The student presents their research progress, answers questions, and seeks guidance from the members of the thesis committee;

Please note that thesis committee meetings provide an important opportunity for students to present their research and respond to questions. Therefore, it is in the student's best interest for the research advisor to refrain from defending the research in this setting.

Letters of Intent

Students must submit two letters of intent ( LOI-1 and LOI-2 ) with applicable signatures. 

In LOI-1, students identify a research advisor and a general area of thesis research, described in 100 words or less. It should include the area of expertise of the research advisor and indicate whether IRB approval (Institutional Review Board; for research involving human subjects) and/or IACUC approval (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee; for research involving vertebrate animals) will be required and, if so, from which institutions. LOI-1 is due by April 30 of the second year of registration and and should be submitted to HICAP, c/o Traci Anderson in E25-518. 

In LOI-2, students provide a description of the thesis research, describing the Background and Significance of the research and making a preliminary statement of Specific Aims (up to 400 words total). In LOI-2, a student also proposes the membership of their thesis committee. In addition to the research advisor, the proposed thesis committee must include a chair and one or more readers, all selected to meet the specified criteria . LOI-2 is due by April 30th of the third year of registration and should be submitted to HICAP, c/o Traci Anderson in E25-518.

LOI-2 is reviewed by the HST-IMES Committee on Academic Programs (HICAP) to determine if the proposed committee meets the specified criteria and if the committee members collectively have the complementary expertise needed to advise the student in executing the proposed research. If HICAP requests any changes to the proposed committee, the student must submit a revised LOI-2 for HICAP review by September 30th of the fourth year of registration. HICAP must approve LOI-2 before the student can proceed to presenting and submitting their thesis proposal. Any changes to the thesis committee membership following HICAP approval of LOI-2 and prior to defense of the thesis proposal must be reported by submitting a revised LOI-2 form to HICAP, c/o tanderso [at] mit.edu (Traci Anderson) . After final HICAP approval of LOI-2, which confirms the thesis committee membership, the student may proceed to present their thesis proposal to the approved thesis committee, as described in the next section.

Students are strongly encouraged to identify tentative thesis committee members and begin meeting with them as early as possible to inform the direction of their research. Following submission of LOI-2, students are required to hold at least one thesis committee meeting per semester. Students must document these meetings via the Semi- Annual PhD Student Progress Review form in order to receive a grade reflecting satisfactory progress in HST.ThG.

Thesis Proposal and Proposal Presentation

For MEMP students receiving their degrees through MIT, successful completion of the Oral Qualifying Exam is a prerequisite for the thesis proposal presentation. For MEMP students receiving their degrees through Harvard, the oral qualifying exam satisfies the proposal presentation requirement.

Proposal Document

Each student must present a thesis proposal to a thesis committee that has been approved by HICAP via the LOI-2 and then submit a full proposal package to HICAP by April 30th of the fourth year of registration. The only exception is for students who substantially change their research focus after the fall term of their third year; in those cases the thesis proposal must be submitted within three semesters of joining a new lab. Students registering for thesis research (HST.THG) who have not met this deadline may be administratively assigned a grade of "U" (unsatisfactory) and receive an academic warning.

The written proposal should be no longer than 4500 words, excluding references. This is intended to help students develop their proposal-writing skills by gaining experience composing a practical proposal; the length is comparable to that required for proposals to the NIH R03 Small Research Grant Program. The proposal should clearly define the research problem, describe the proposed research plan, and defend the significance of the work. Preliminary results are not required. If the proposal consists of multiple aims, with the accomplishment of later aims based on the success of earlier ones, then the proposal should describe a contingency plan in case the early results are not as expected.

Proposal Presentation

The student must formally defend the thesis proposal before the full thesis committee that has been approved by HICAP.

Students should schedule the meeting and reserve a conference room and any audio visual equipment they may require for their presentation. To book a conference room in E25, please contact Joseph Stein ( jrstein [at] mit.edu (jrstein[at]mit[dot]edu) ).

Following the proposal presentation, students should make any requested modifications to the proposal for the committee members to review. Once the committee approves the proposal, the student should obtain the signatures of the committee members on the forms described below as part of the proposal submission package.

[Friendly advice: As a professional courtesy, be sure your committee members have a complete version of your thesis proposal at least one week in advance of the proposal presentation.]

Submission of Proposal Package

When the thesis committee has approved the proposal, the student submits the proposal package to HICAP, c/o Traci Anderson in E25-518, for final approval. HICAP may reject a thesis proposal if it has been defended before a committee that was not previously approved via the LOI-2.

The proposal package includes the following: 

• the proposal document
• a brief description of the project background and significance that explains why the work is important;
• the specific aims of the proposal, including a contingency plan if needed; and
• an indication of the methods to be used to accomplish the specific aims.
• signed research advisor agreement form(s);
• signed chair agreement form (which confirms a successful proposal defense);
• signed reader agreement form(s).

Thesis Proposal Forms

• SAMPLE Title Page (doc)
• Research Advisor Agreement Form (pdf)
• Chair Agreement Form (pdf)
• Reader Agreement Form (pdf)

Thesis Defense and Final Thesis Document

When the thesis is substantially complete and fully acceptable to the thesis committee, a public thesis defense is scheduled for the student to present his/her work to the thesis committee and other members of the community. The thesis defense is the last formal examination required for receipt of a doctoral degree. To be considered "public", a defense must be announced to the community at least five working days in advance. At the defense, the thesis committee determines if the research presented is sufficient for granting a doctoral degree. Following a satisfactory thesis defense, the student submits the final thesis document, approved by the research advisor, to Traci Anderson via email (see instructions below).

[Friendly advice: Contact jrstein [at] mit.edu (Joseph Stein) at least two weeks before your scheduled date to arrange for advertising via email and posters. A defense can be canceled for insufficient public notice.]

Before the Thesis Defense 

Committee Approves Student to Defend: The thesis committee, working with the student and reviewing thesis drafts, concludes that the doctoral work is complete. The student should discuss the structure of the defense (general guidelines below) with the thesis committee chair and the research advisor. 

Schedule the Defense: The student schedules a defense at a time when all members of the thesis committee will be physical present. Any exceptions must be approved in advance by the IMES/HST Academic Office.

Reserve Room: It is the student's responsibility to reserve a room and any necessary equipment. Please contact imes-reservation [at] mit.edu (subject: E25%20Room%20Reservation) (IMES Reservation) to  reserve rooms E25-140, E25-141, E25-119/121, E25-521. 

Final Draft: A complete draft of the thesis document is due to the thesis committee two weeks prior to the thesis defense to allow time for review.  The thesis should be written as a single cohesive document; it may include content from published papers (see libraries website on " Use of Previously Published Material in a Thesis ") but it may not be a simple compilation of previously published materials.

Publicize the Defense:   The IMES/HST Academic Office invites the community to attend the defense via email and a notice on the HST website. This requires that the student email a thesis abstract and supplemental information to  jrstein [at] mit.edu (Joseph Stein)  two weeks prior to the thesis defense. The following information should be included: Date and time, Location, (Zoom invitation with password, if offering a hybrid option), Thesis Title, Names of committee members, with academic and professional titles and institutional affiliations. The abstract is limited to 250 words for the poster, but students may optionally submit a second, longer abstract for the email announcement.

Thesis Defense Guidelines

Public Defense: The student should prepare a presentation of 45-60 minutes in length, to be followed by a public question and answer period of 15–30 minutes at discretion of the chair.

Committee Discussion:  Immediately following the public thesis presentation, the student meets privately with the thesis committee and any other faculty members present to explore additional questions at the discretion of the faculty. Then the thesis committee meets in executive session and determines whether the thesis defense was satisfactory. The committee may suggest additions or editorial changes to the thesis document at this point.

Chair Confirms Pass: After the defense, the thesis committee chair should inform Traci Anderson of the outcome via email to tanderso [at] mit.edu (tanderso[at]mit[dot]edu) .

Submitting the Final Thesis Document

Please refer to the MIT libraries  thesis formatting guidelines .

Title page notes. Sample title page  from the MIT Libraries.

Program line : should read, "Submitted to the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, in partial fulfillment of the the requirements for the degree of ... "

Copyright : Starting with the June 2023 degree period and as reflected in the  MIT Thesis Specifications , all students retain the copyright of their thesis.  Please review this section for how to list on your title page Signature Page: On the "signed" version, only the student and research advisor should sign. Thesis committee members are not required to sign. On the " Accepted by " line, please list: Collin M. Stultz, MD, PhD/Director, Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology/ Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor in Medical Engineering and Science/Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

The Academic Office will obtain Professor Stultz's signature.

Thesis Submission Components.  As of 4/2021, the MIT libraries have changed their thesis submissions guidelines and are no longer accepting hard copy theses submissions. For most recent guidance from the libraries:  https://libguides.mit.edu/mit-thesis-faq/instructions  

Submit to the Academic Office, via email ( tanderso [at] mit.edu (tanderso[at]mit[dot]edu) )

pdf/A-1 of the final thesis should include an UNSIGNED title page

A separate file with a SIGNED title page by the student and advisor, the Academic Office will get Dr. Collin Stultz's signature.

For the MIT Library thesis processing, fill out the "Thesis Information" here:  https://thesis-submit.mit.edu/

File Naming Information:  https://libguides.mit.edu/

Survey of Earned Doctorates.  The University Provost’s Office will contact all doctoral candidates via email with instructions for completing this survey.

Links to All Forms in This Guide

• MEMP Rotation Form (optional)
• Semi-Annual Progress Review Form
• Letter of Intent One
• Letter of Intent Two

Final Thesis

• HST Sample thesis title page  (signed and unsigned)
• Sample thesis title page  (MIT Libraries)

• Formatting Your Dissertation
• Introduction

Harvard Griffin GSAS strives to provide students with timely, accurate, and clear information. If you need help understanding a specific policy, please contact the office that administers that policy.

• Application for Degree
• Credit for Completed Graduate Work
• Ad Hoc Degree Programs
• Acknowledging the Work of Others
• Advanced Planning
• Dissertation Submission Checklist
• Publishing Options
• Submitting Your Dissertation
• English Language Proficiency
• PhD Program Requirements
• Secondary Fields
• Year of Graduate Study (G-Year)
• Master's Degrees
• Grade and Examination Requirements
• Conduct and Safety
• Financial Aid
• Non-Resident Students
• Registration

On this page:

Language of the Dissertation

Page and text requirements, body of text, tables, figures, and captions, dissertation acceptance certificate, copyright statement.

• Table of Contents

Front and Back Matter

Supplemental material, dissertations comprising previously published works, top ten formatting errors, further questions.

• Related Contacts and Forms

When preparing the dissertation for submission, students must follow strict formatting requirements. Any deviation from these requirements may lead to rejection of the dissertation and delay in the conferral of the degree.

The language of the dissertation is ordinarily English, although some departments whose subject matter involves foreign languages may accept a dissertation written in a language other than English.

Most dissertations are 100 to 300 pages in length. All dissertations should be divided into appropriate sections, and long dissertations may need chapters, main divisions, and subdivisions.

• 8½ x 11 inches, unless a musical score is included
• At least 1 inch for all margins
• Body of text: double spacing
• Block quotations, footnotes, and bibliographies: single spacing within each entry but double spacing between each entry
• Table of contents, list of tables, list of figures or illustrations, and lengthy tables: single spacing may be used

Fonts and Point Size

Use 10-12 point size. Fonts must be embedded in the PDF file to ensure all characters display correctly. 

Recommended Fonts

If you are unsure whether your chosen font will display correctly, use one of the following fonts: 

If fonts are not embedded, non-English characters may not appear as intended. Fonts embedded improperly will be published to DASH as-is. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that fonts are embedded properly prior to submission. 

Instructions for Embedding Fonts

To embed your fonts in recent versions of Word, follow these instructions from Microsoft:

• Click the File tab and then click Options .
• In the left column, select the Save tab.
• Clear the Do not embed common system fonts check box.

For reference, below are some instructions from ProQuest UMI for embedding fonts in older file formats:

To embed your fonts in Microsoft Word 2010:

• In the File pull-down menu click on Options .
• Choose Save on the left sidebar.
• Check the box next to Embed fonts in the file.
• Click the OK button.
• Save the document.

Note that when saving as a PDF, make sure to go to “more options” and save as “PDF/A compliant”

To embed your fonts in Microsoft Word 2007:

• Click the circular Office button in the upper left corner of Microsoft Word.
• A new window will display. In the bottom right corner select Word Options . 
• Choose Save from the left sidebar.

Using Microsoft Word on a Mac:

Microsoft Word 2008 on a Mac OS X computer will automatically embed your fonts while converting your document to a PDF file.

If you are converting to PDF using Acrobat Professional (instructions courtesy of the Graduate Thesis Office at Iowa State University):  

• Open your document in Microsoft Word. 
• Click on the Adobe PDF tab at the top. Select "Change Conversion Settings." 
• Click on Advanced Settings. 
• Click on the Fonts folder on the left side of the new window. In the lower box on the right, delete any fonts that appear in the "Never Embed" box. Then click "OK." 
• If prompted to save these new settings, save them as "Embed all fonts." 
• Now the Change Conversion Settings window should show "embed all fonts" in the Conversion Settings drop-down list and it should be selected. Click "OK" again. 
• Click on the Adobe PDF link at the top again. This time select Convert to Adobe PDF. Depending on the size of your document and the speed of your computer, this process can take 1-15 minutes. 
• After your document is converted, select the "File" tab at the top of the page. Then select "Document Properties." 
• Click on the "Fonts" tab. Carefully check all of your fonts. They should all show "(Embedded Subset)" after the font name. 
•  If you see "(Embedded Subset)" after all fonts, you have succeeded.

The font used in the body of the text must also be used in headers, page numbers, and footnotes. Exceptions are made only for tables and figures created with different software and inserted into the document.

Tables and figures must be placed as close as possible to their first mention in the text. They may be placed on a page with no text above or below, or they may be placed directly into the text. If a table or a figure is alone on a page (with no narrative), it should be centered within the margins on the page. Tables may take up more than one page as long as they obey all rules about margins. Tables and figures referred to in the text may not be placed at the end of the chapter or at the end of the dissertation.

• Given the standards of the discipline, dissertations in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Department of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning often place illustrations at the end of the dissertation.

Figure and table numbering must be continuous throughout the dissertation or by chapter (e.g., 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, etc.). Two figures or tables cannot be designated with the same number. If you have repeating images that you need to cite more than once, label them with their number and A, B, etc. 

Headings should be placed at the top of tables. While no specific rules for the format of table headings and figure captions are required, a consistent format must be used throughout the dissertation (contact your department for style manuals appropriate to the field).

Captions should appear at the bottom of any figures. If the figure takes up the entire page, the caption should be placed alone on the preceding page, centered vertically and horizontally within the margins.

Each page receives a separate page number. When a figure or table title is on a preceding page, the second and subsequent pages of the figure or table should say, for example, “Figure 5 (Continued).” In such an instance, the list of figures or tables will list the page number containing the title. The word “figure” should be written in full (not abbreviated), and the “F” should be capitalized (e.g., Figure 5). In instances where the caption continues on a second page, the “(Continued)” notation should appear on the second and any subsequent page. The figure/table and the caption are viewed as one entity and the numbering should show correlation between all pages. Each page must include a header.

Landscape orientation figures and tables must be positioned correctly and bound at the top so that the top of the figure or table will be at the left margin. Figure and table headings/captions are placed with the same orientation as the figure or table when on the same page. When on a separate page, headings/captions are always placed in portrait orientation, regardless of the orientation of the figure or table. Page numbers are always placed as if the figure were vertical on the page.

If a graphic artist does the figures, Harvard Griffin GSAS will accept lettering done by the artist only within the figure. Figures done with software are acceptable if the figures are clear and legible. Legends and titles done by the same process as the figures will be accepted if they too are clear, legible, and run at least 10 or 12 characters per inch. Otherwise, legends and captions should be printed with the same font used in the text.

Original illustrations, photographs, and fine arts prints may be scanned and included, centered between the margins on a page with no text above or below.

Use of Third-Party Content

In addition to the student's own writing, dissertations often contain third-party content or in-copyright content owned by parties other than you, the student who authored the dissertation. The Office for Scholarly Communication recommends consulting the information below about fair use, which allows individuals to use in-copyright content, on a limited basis and for specific purposes, without seeking permission from copyright holders.

Because your dissertation will be made available for online distribution through DASH , Harvard's open-access repository, it is important that any third-party content in it may be made available in this way.

Fair Use and Copyright 

What is fair use?

Fair use is a provision in copyright law that allows the use of a certain amount of copyrighted material without seeking permission. Fair use is format- and media-agnostic. This means fair use may apply to images (including photographs, illustrations, and paintings), quoting at length from literature, videos, and music regardless of the format. 

How do I determine whether my use of an image or other third-party content in my dissertation is fair use?  

There are four factors you will need to consider when making a fair use claim.

1) For what purpose is your work going to be used?

• Nonprofit, educational, scholarly, or research use favors fair use. Commercial, non-educational uses, often do not favor fair use.
• A transformative use (repurposing or recontextualizing the in-copyright material) favors fair use. Examining, analyzing, and explicating the material in a meaningful way, so as to enhance a reader's understanding, strengthens your fair use argument. In other words, can you make the point in the thesis without using, for instance, an in-copyright image? Is that image necessary to your dissertation? If not, perhaps, for copyright reasons, you should not include the image.  

2) What is the nature of the work to be used?

• Published, fact-based content favors fair use and includes scholarly analysis in published academic venues. 
• Creative works, including artistic images, are afforded more protection under copyright, and depending on your use in light of the other factors, may be less likely to favor fair use; however, this does not preclude considerations of fair use for creative content altogether.

3) How much of the work is going to be used?  

• Small, or less significant, amounts favor fair use. A good rule of thumb is to use only as much of the in-copyright content as necessary to serve your purpose. Can you use a thumbnail rather than a full-resolution image? Can you use a black-and-white photo instead of color? Can you quote select passages instead of including several pages of the content? These simple changes bolster your fair use of the material.

4) What potential effect on the market for that work may your use have?

• If there is a market for licensing this exact use or type of educational material, then this weighs against fair use. If however, there would likely be no effect on the potential commercial market, or if it is not possible to obtain permission to use the work, then this favors fair use. 

For further assistance with fair use, consult the Office for Scholarly Communication's guide, Fair Use: Made for the Harvard Community and the Office of the General Counsel's Copyright and Fair Use: A Guide for the Harvard Community .

What are my options if I don’t have a strong fair use claim? 

Consider the following options if you find you cannot reasonably make a fair use claim for the content you wish to incorporate:

• Seek permission from the copyright holder. 
• Use openly licensed content as an alternative to the original third-party content you intended to use. Openly-licensed content grants permission up-front for reuse of in-copyright content, provided your use meets the terms of the open license.
• Use content in the public domain, as this content is not in-copyright and is therefore free of all copyright restrictions. Whereas third-party content is owned by parties other than you, no one owns content in the public domain; everyone, therefore, has the right to use it.

For use of images in your dissertation, please consult this guide to Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media , which is a great resource for finding images without copyright restrictions. 

Who can help me with questions about copyright and fair use?

Contact your Copyright First Responder . Please note, Copyright First Responders assist with questions concerning copyright and fair use, but do not assist with the process of obtaining permission from copyright holders.

Pages should be assigned a number except for the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate . Preliminary pages (abstract, table of contents, list of tables, graphs, illustrations, and preface) should use small Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.). All pages must contain text or images.  

Count the title page as page i and the copyright page as page ii, but do not print page numbers on either page .

For the body of text, use Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) starting with page 1 on the first page of text. Page numbers must be centered throughout the manuscript at the top or bottom. Every numbered page must be consecutively ordered, including tables, graphs, illustrations, and bibliography/index (if included); letter suffixes (such as 10a, 10b, etc.) are not allowed. It is customary not to have a page number on the page containing a chapter heading.

• Check pagination carefully. Account for all pages.

A copy of the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (DAC) should appear as the first page. This page should not be counted or numbered. The DAC will appear in the online version of the published dissertation. The author name and date on the DAC and title page should be the same. 

The dissertation begins with the title page; the title should be as concise as possible and should provide an accurate description of the dissertation. The author name and date on the DAC and title page should be the same. 

• Do not print a page number on the title page. It is understood to be page  i  for counting purposes only.

A copyright notice should appear on a separate page immediately following the title page and include the copyright symbol ©, the year of first publication of the work, and the name of the author:

© [ year ] [ Author’s Name ] All rights reserved.

Alternatively, students may choose to license their work openly under a  Creative Commons  license. The author remains the copyright holder while at the same time granting up-front permission to others to read, share, and (depending on the license) adapt the work, so long as proper attribution is given. (By default, under copyright law, the author reserves all rights; under a Creative Commons license, the author reserves some rights.)

• Do  not  print a page number on the copyright page. It is understood to be page  ii  for counting purposes only.

An abstract, numbered as page  iii , should immediately follow the copyright page and should state the problem, describe the methods and procedures used, and give the main results or conclusions of the research. The abstract will appear in the online and bound versions of the dissertation and will be published by ProQuest. There is no maximum word count for the abstract. 

• double-spaced
• left-justified
• indented on the first line of each paragraph
• The author’s name, right justified
• The words “Dissertation Advisor:” followed by the advisor’s name, left-justified (a maximum of two advisors is allowed)
• Title of the dissertation, centered, several lines below author and advisor

Dissertations divided into sections must contain a table of contents that lists, at minimum, the major headings in the following order:

• Front Matter
• Body of Text
• Back Matter

Front matter includes (if applicable):

• acknowledgements of help or encouragement from individuals or institutions
• a dedication
• a list of illustrations or tables
• a glossary of terms
• one or more epigraphs.

Back matter includes (if applicable):

• bibliography
• supplemental materials, including figures and tables
• an index (in rare instances).

Supplemental figures and tables must be placed at the end of the dissertation in an appendix, not within or at the end of a chapter. If additional digital information (including audio, video, image, or datasets) will accompany the main body of the dissertation, it should be uploaded as a supplemental file through ProQuest ETD . Supplemental material will be available in DASH and ProQuest and preserved digitally in the Harvard University Archives.

As a matter of copyright, dissertations comprising the student's previously published works must be authorized for distribution from DASH. The guidelines in this section pertain to any previously published material that requires permission from publishers or other rightsholders before it may be distributed from DASH. Please note:

• Authors whose publishing agreements grant the publisher exclusive rights to display, distribute, and create derivative works will need to seek the publisher's permission for nonexclusive use of the underlying works before the dissertation may be distributed from DASH.
• Authors whose publishing agreements indicate the authors have retained the relevant nonexclusive rights to the original materials for display, distribution, and the creation of derivative works may distribute the dissertation as a whole from DASH without need for further permissions.

It is recommended that authors consult their publishing agreements directly to determine whether and to what extent they may have transferred exclusive rights under copyright. The Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) is available to help the author determine whether she has retained the necessary rights or requires permission. Please note, however, the Office of Scholarly Communication is not able to assist with the permissions process itself.

• Missing Dissertation Acceptance Certificate.  The first page of the PDF dissertation file should be a scanned copy of the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (DAC). This page should not be counted or numbered as a part of the dissertation pagination.
• Conflicts Between the DAC and the Title Page.  The DAC and the dissertation title page must match exactly, meaning that the author name and the title on the title page must match that on the DAC. If you use your full middle name or just an initial on one document, it must be the same on the other document.  
• Abstract Formatting Errors. The advisor name should be left-justified, and the author's name should be right-justified. Up to two advisor names are allowed. The Abstract should be double spaced and include the page title “Abstract,” as well as the page number “iii.” There is no maximum word count for the abstract. 
•  The front matter should be numbered using Roman numerals (iii, iv, v, …). The title page and the copyright page should be counted but not numbered. The first printed page number should appear on the Abstract page (iii). 
• The body of the dissertation should be numbered using Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, …). The first page of the body of the text should begin with page 1. Pagination may not continue from the front matter. 
• All page numbers should be centered either at the top or the bottom of the page.
• Figures and tables Figures and tables must be placed within the text, as close to their first mention as possible. Figures and tables that span more than one page must be labeled on each page. Any second and subsequent page of the figure/table must include the “(Continued)” notation. This applies to figure captions as well as images. Each page of a figure/table must be accounted for and appropriately labeled. All figures/tables must have a unique number. They may not repeat within the dissertation.
• Any figures/tables placed in a horizontal orientation must be placed with the top of the figure/ table on the left-hand side. The top of the figure/table should be aligned with the spine of the dissertation when it is bound. 
• Page numbers must be placed in the same location on all pages of the dissertation, centered, at the bottom or top of the page. Page numbers may not appear under the table/ figure.
• Supplemental Figures and Tables. Supplemental figures and tables must be placed at the back of the dissertation in an appendix. They should not be placed at the back of the chapter. 
• Permission Letters Copyright. permission letters must be uploaded as a supplemental file, titled ‘do_not_publish_permission_letters,” within the dissertation submission tool.
•  DAC Attachment. The signed Dissertation Acceptance Certificate must additionally be uploaded as a document in the "Administrative Documents" section when submitting in Proquest ETD . Dissertation submission is not complete until all documents have been received and accepted.
• Overall Formatting. The entire document should be checked after all revisions, and before submitting online, to spot any inconsistencies or PDF conversion glitches.
• You can view dissertations successfully published from your department in DASH . This is a great place to check for specific formatting and area-specific conventions.
• Contact the  Office of Student Affairs  with further questions.

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PhD thesis formatting

There is no official pre-made departmental or University-wide style template for PhD theses. Some argue that learning (and advancing!) the art of beautifully typesetting a thesis is a crucial part of getting a PhD.

Here are some practical recommendations, examples, and useful starting points.

Most PhD authors in the Computer Laboratory prefer LaTeX as their typesetting system (under both Linux or Windows), mainly because of its

• excellent and yet unmatched support for mathematical formulae;
• good support for managing bibliographic references;
• good support for high-quality typography;
• easy integration with software-engineering tools (make, revision control, etc.);
• very safe and robust handling of large documents;
• long-term stability;
• comprehensive free tool support.

A common approach is to use the report style, with a suitable title page added, margins changed to make good use of the A4 format, and various other changes to suit submission requirements and individual tastes (e.g., other fonts).

For preparing publication-quality diagrams, some of the most powerful and popular tools used include:

• PGF/TikZ – the probably most sophisticated drawing package for LaTeX
• matplotlib – Matlab-style function plotting in Python

Official requirements

There used to be detailed Student Registry PhD format requirements , regarding font sizes and line spacing, but most Degree Committees have dropped these, recognizing that they were mainly motivated by past typewriter conventions. The rules left are now mainly about the word count .

In particular, it is no longer necessary for dissertations to be printed single sided or in “one-and-a-half spaced type”. If you still like to increase the line spacing, for easier proofreading, you can achieve this in LaTeX by placing into the preamble the line “ \usepackage{setspace}\onehalfspacing ”.

Recommendations

One Cambridge thesis-binding company, J.S. Wilson & Son , recommend on their web page to leave 30 mm margin on the spine and 20 mm on the other three sides of the A4 pages sent to them. About a centimetre of the left margin is lost when the binder stitches the pages together.

Write your thesis title and section headings in “sentence case”, that is use the same capitalization that you would have used in normal sentences (capitalize only the first word, proper nouns and abbreviations). Avoid the US-style “title case” that some conference-proceedings publishers require.

• Sentence case is normal typographic practice in the UK (see any UK-published newspaper, magazine, journals such as Nature , etc.).
• The catalogues of both the University Library thesis collection and our departmental Technical Report series record titles this way, and you don't want the cataloguers mess with your title capitalization when your thesis finally reaches them.
• It preserves useful information about the correct capitalization of any names or technical terms used.

Page numbers

Use a single page-number sequence for all pages in your thesis, i.e. do not use a separate sequence of Roman numerals for front-matter (title page, abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents, table of figure). In LaTeX that means using the report style, not the book style.

• PDF viewers number pages continuously starting from 1, and using anything else as printed page numbers causes confusion.
• This will save you some reformatting when submitting your thesis as a techreport .

Bibliographic references

If you use purely-numeric bibliographic references, do not forget to still mention authors’ surnames, as a courtesy to both the authors and your readers. Also, try to add the exact page number on which the quoted point is found in the reference; LaTeX supports this really well. (“suggested by Crowcroft and Kuhn [42,p107]”)

Technical Report submission

After a thesis has been approved by the examiners, the author normally submits it for publication as a Computer Laboratory Technical Report .

It is a good idea to read early on the submission guidelines for technical reports , as this may reduce the need to change the formatting later.

If you want to minimize any changes needed between your submitted thesis and the corresponding technical report version, then – in addition to applying all the above advice – you can

• make page 1 the title page,
• make page 2 the required declaration of originality,
• make page 3 the summary, and
• choose a layout suitable for double-sided printing (required for techreport, since 2010 also allowed for final PhD submission).

This way, there is a very high chance that turning your thesis into a techreport could be as simple as replacing pages 1 and 2 with the standard Technical Report title page (which the techreport editor can do for you).

More information

• The Computer Laboratory house style page explains where to find the University identifier that many put on the title page of their thesis.
• Markus Kuhn’s simple PhD thesis template ( snapshot ) is just one possible starting point.
• The cam-thesis LaTeX class is a collaborative effort to maintain a Cambridge PhD thesis template for Computer Laboratory research students, initiated by Jean Martina, Rok Strniša, and Matej Urbas.
• Effective scientific electronic publishing – Markus Kuhn’s notes on putting scientific publications onto the web, especially for LaTeX/LNCS users.
• International Standard ISO 7144 Presentation of theses and similar documents (1986) contains also some general guidelines for formatting dissertations that may be of use.
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Prepare your thesis

Throughout your research candidature you will work toward producing your final thesis. There are some key points to keep in mind when you start this process.

Your thesis must be a coherent and cohesive whole. You can submit a thesis including publications but we don't accept thesis by publication. Refer to the relevant Thesis and Examination policy (pdf, 392KB) and discuss this with your supervisor.

There are also certain formatting and referencing requirements that are outlined below.

You can also find more general information on research skills, planning and writing your thesis in the research skills for HDR students page. This includes literature reviews, writing up results and theses including publications.

Proofreading and editing

You can use an editor to prepare your thesis for submission. Make sure you discuss your plans with your supervisor and provide your editor with a copy of the University’s Thesis Submission and Examination Procedures (pdf, 180KB) .

When you use an editor:

• include the editor’s name and a brief description of the service provided in your list of acknowledgements at the front of your thesis. For creative work, make sure this information is included when it's presented for examination.
• you need to state the editor’s current or former area of academic specialisation if this is similar to your own.

Composition

You will find information on word limits in the below policies and procedures, or in your faculty or school handbook.

Word limits include footnotes and all material in the main body of the thesis. Bibliographies and appendices are not included in the overall word count.

• University of Sydney (Higher Degree by Research) Rule (pdf, 877KB)
• Thesis and Examination of Higher Degrees by Research Policy (pdf, 194KB)
• Thesis and Examination of Higher Degrees by Research Procedures (pdf, 180KB)

If you have questions about formatting, you can speak to your supervisor or postgraduate coordinator.

Thesis frontispiece sections

The frontispiece includes the parts of your thesis before the main content.

Thesis title and abstract

The following upper limits apply to your title and abstract content submitted on RECS for the final lodgement:

• thesis title: maximum 250 characters including spaces, in title case not uppercase.
• thesis abstract: maximum 2000 characters including spaces.

Login to Sydney Student (go to ‘My studies’, then 'Research details') to update and maintain your thesis title and thesis abstract.

Note that there are no characters limits for the title and abstract in the actual pdf of the thesis. 

Your thesis title page should state:

• title of the thesis
• faculty name
• the University’s full name – The University of Sydney
• for theses only: A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor/Master of Philosophy (or other higher degree by research)
• for theses with a creative component: A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor/Master of Philosophy (or other higher degree by research).
• a statement if you have been in receipt of a Research Training Program scholarship: "This research reported in this thesis was supported by the award of a Research Training Program scholarship to the PhD Candidate."

Statement of originality

You need to include a statement of originality, usually placed after the title page, for example:

This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes.

I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged.

Signature* Name

*you should only include the signature in the copy you submit for examination, not the library copy.

Authorship attribution statement

If your thesis contains material you have previously published, you need to discuss an authorship attribution statement with your supervisor and submit this statement as part of your final thesis submission. It should indicate the name and publication details of the published work, as well as specify your contribution.

Such a statement typically appears in the frontispiece of your thesis.

If the publication in which your work has previously appeared has a convention about author order, then you need to include this information after each relevant attribution statement (for example,  Journal of XXXX  requires that the lead author must be corresponding author).

This only applies where you have made a substantial contribution to the paper. You cannot present minor contributions to published works in the main body of your thesis – these can only be included as appendices.

Example: Chapters published as papers/edited book chapters

Chapter x of this thesis is published as [citation]. I designed the study, analysed the data and wrote the drafts of the MS.

Chapter y of this thesis is published as [citation]. I designed the study, extracted the data and wrote the drafts of the MS.

Chapter z of this thesis is published as [citation]. I co-designed the study with the co-authors, interpreted the analysis done by A.N. Other and wrote the drafts of the MS.

Example: Published material distributed through the thesis

This thesis contains material published in [citation]. This is section x.y; figure s.t, and pages p-q of section y.z. I did... [describe your role].

Attesting your authorship attribution statement

You and your supervisor need to attest to an authorship attribution statement under the  Thesis and Examination Policy and Procedures (pdf, 185KB) . The following are suggested:

In addition to the statements above, in cases where I am not the corresponding author of a published item, permission to include the published material has been granted by the corresponding author.

Student Name, Signature, Date

As supervisor for the candidature upon which this thesis is based, I can confirm that the authorship attribution statements above are correct.

Supervisor Name, Signature, Date

You should refer to the Thesis and Examination of Higher Degrees by Research Procedures (pdf, 180KB) for information about the inclusion of published material you wrote, or contributed to as an author. This includes use of citations and quotations.

If your thesis contains material you have previously published, an authorship attribution statement, outlined above, may be included.

More information can be found in the Thesis and Examination of Higher Degrees by Research Policy (pdf, 194KB) and the University of Sydney (Higher Degree by Research) Rule (pdf, 877KB) .

The responsibilities of all researchers, academic staff and students are outlined in our Research Code of Conduct (pdf, 484KB) . This defines research misconduct and breaches of the Code related to plagiarism.

File type for submission

You need to submit your thesis as a pdf file. This is the required format for us to submit your thesis into Turnitin for similarity detection. If we receive a file in another format, then the conversion to pdf will not be controlled by you and may result in unacceptable or undesirable formatting changes. Be aware, once a thesis file is submitted for examination, it is not possible to withdraw it for revisions unless under the provisions of the Thesis and Examination of Higher Degree by Research Students Policy .

Related links

• Thesis submission
• Research skills for HDR students
• Research progress
• Research supervision
• Academic integrity

Higher Degree by Research Administration Centre

• +61 2 8627 4343

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because LaTeX matters

Template for latex phd thesis title page.

Often universities provide official LaTeX templates for PhD theses. If your university doesn’t, here is a template. The template includes the most common elements of a thesis title page:

• University’s or institute’s logo
• Thesis title
• Author’s name
• Degree the thesis is submitted for
• Submission date

A few remarks

The template may have to be adapted, as it most likely won’t fulfil your university’s or institute’s official thesis guidelines.

If the official guidelines do not explicitly state it, do not use more than two different font sizes. In the template, I used the same font size throughout the title page ( \Large ).

To center content of the title page and still use twoside -margins for the thesis, use the geometry package :

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22 comments.

13. May 2014 at 19:21

Tom, do you know how I can make the page numbers in an index to be hyperlinks please? I haven’t found any way of doing it online.

14. May 2014 at 7:35

Just use the linktoc=all option when you load the hyperref package .

14. May 2014 at 11:07

I’ve tried it but it didn’t work, FYI this is the relevant part of my file header –

There is no change at all in the index page, unfortunately! 🙁

14. May 2014 at 11:18

You load the hyperref package twice with different options. Use this instead:

Also, hyperref has to be the last package loaded ( exceptions ).

Finally, always typeset twice for changes to appear in the TOC.

14. May 2014 at 11:22

sorted by using

14. May 2014 at 11:26

Great to hear, thanks!

19. May 2014 at 9:44

Hello Tom, I like how your template looks so clean and simple. Do you think it is wise to use the “titlepage” environment for a title? It is used in the Wikibook about LaTeX ( https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Title_Creation ).

19. May 2014 at 10:28

Thanks for the positive feedback! Personally, I’ve never used the titlepage environment, \maketitle has done the job so far. You may want to take a look at the discussion on the topic here to decide what’s your best choice…

3. September 2014 at 9:55

I have really liked the templete. Can you please tell me where should I put the logo if I also want to mention the name of the university in the title page?

5. September 2014 at 2:59

Personally, I’d place the university name right before the year and keep the logo on top. There might be guidelines of your school defining the order.

11. September 2014 at 2:50

Hi Tom, Thanks for the template! It seems that newgeometry does not work with version 4 of the geometry package. Is there another possibility to get the twoside margins?

12. September 2014 at 4:25

Interesting question. You could either update your version of geometry, \newgeometry was introduced in version 5, or use the gmeometric package instead.

18. September 2014 at 15:49

Nice, simple, clean template. Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, when I use this, it adds page numbers (which I do not want) and also includes a blank first page.

I have to use this as my preamble.

If I do not comment out the first line, it does no compile

How can I remove the page numbers and the blank first page.

20. September 2014 at 16:36

To switch pages number off, use:

5. February 2015 at 17:51

Hi Tom Is it possible to have two logos side by side on the cover page (joint phd and both univversities’ logos must appear). Any idea how I can implement this?

14. February 2015 at 5:50

Hi Michael,

Try the minipage environment as shown below. If this doesn’t work, please provide a minimal working example. Thanks, Tom.

11. May 2015 at 18:45

Thanks Tom for the Template

10. August 2015 at 17:54

If the titlepage has different margin settings, which is quite often the case, i tend to recommend to include the titlepage as a standalone document with includepdf from pdfpages. A titlepage doesn’t change every few minutes and is quite static. Clompetely avoiding the newgeometry stuff.

11. August 2015 at 12:15

Thanks for your comment. I agree, that’s a neat way of keeping the titlepage separated from the rest of the document. Best, Tom.

8. May 2016 at 9:23

Sir Please tell me how to write 4 to 5 authors in title page of a report?

10. May 2016 at 10:58

You can use the author macro as shown in the minimal working example below.

10. May 2016 at 18:14

Depending on how you want your complete author section output, there might be better ways. In some cases, it is even more painless to do the titlepage by hand.

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