Tips on writing - How to write a thesis - Other topics in scientific communication

How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Tips on writing
How to write a thesis
Other topics in scientific communication

Few rules exist for writing a thesis, except those that may prevail in your own institution. Check whether your institution has a thesis manual or other set of instructions. If it does, obtain it and follow it carefully. Otherwise, your graduation may be delayed because of failure to use the required thesis format. If you do not have rules to follow (or even if you do), go to your departmental library—or, increasingly, your institutional library’s online collection of theses—and examine the theses submitted by previous graduates of the department, especially those who have gone on to fame and fortune. Perhaps you will be able to detect a common flavor. Whatever ploys worked in the past for others are likely to work for you now.

Theses typically consist of several chapters. Sometimes the chapters correspond to the parts of an IMRAD scientific paper: introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Or, if a thesis reports a number of studies, the central part may include a chapter about each study. As already noted, sometimes a thesis consists mainly of a set of published papers. In addition to chapters, common components of theses include a title page, acknowledgments, an abstract, a table of contents, a list of figures and tables, a list of abbreviations, and appendixes.

A thesis also should contain a substantial reference list, helping to demonstrate your familiarity with the literature in your field. In this regard, a thesis can resemble a review paper. Indeed, the introduction or a separate literature-review chapter generally should present a thorough review of previous work to which yours is related. Further, it is often desirable to go back into the history of your subject. You might thus compile a valuable review of the literature of your field, while at the same time learning something about the history of science, which could turn out to be a valuable part of your education.

Start with and work from carefully prepared outlines. Be careful about what goes in what section. If you have one or several results sections, the content must be your results, not a mixture of your results with those of others. If you need to present results of others, to show how they confirm or contrast with your own, you should do this within a discussion section. Otherwise, confusion may result, or, worse, you could be charged with lifting data from the published literature.

Give special attention to the introduction in your thesis for two reasons. First, for your own benefit, you need to clarify what problem you attacked, how and why you chose that problem, how you attacked it, and what you learned during your studies. The rest of the thesis should then flow easily and logically from the introduction. Second, first impressions are important, and you would not want to lose your readers in a cloud of obfuscation right at the outset.

Writing a thesis is a good chance to develop your skill in scientific writing. If a committee of faculty members is supervising your thesis research, seek feedback on one or more drafts of your thesis from committee members, especially the committee chair. (If you can choose the committee members, try to include someone who writes very well and is willing to help others with writing.) Seek feedback early from the committee chair and others, to help prevent the need for extensive revisions at the end.

Universities keep copies of theses so that those interested can read them. Commonly, they require electronic copies for this purpose. Use of electronic rather than paper copies saves space in libraries, can make theses easier for readers to obtain, and can let you include materials, such as videos or animations, that are difficult or impossible to provide in a bound thesis. Be sure to find out how your institution requires you to submit your thesis and what the instructions are.