How to Write a PhD Thesis

some notes by
Joe Wolfe
School of Physics
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052 Australia
This guide to thesis writing gives some simple and practical advice on the problems of
getting started, getting organized, dividing the huge task into less formidable pieces and
working on those pieces. It also explains the practicalities of surviving the ordeal. It includes
a suggested structure and a guide to what should go in each section. It was originally written
for graduate students in physics, and most of the specific examples given are taken from that
discipline. Nevertheless, the feedback from users indicates that it has been consulted and
appreciated by graduate students in diverse fields in the sciences and humanities.

Getting started

An outline

Organisation

A timetable

Iterative solution

What is a thesis? For whom is it written? How should it be written?

How much detail?

Make it clear what is yours

Style

Presentation

How many copies?

Personal

Coda

Thesis Structure

How to survive a thesis defence

Getting Started
When you are about to begin, writing a thesis seems a long, difficult task. That is because
it is a long, difficult task. Fortunately, it will seem less daunting once you have a couple

of chapters done. Towards the end, you will even find yourself enjoying it---an enjoyment
based on satisfaction in the achievement, pleasure in the improvement in your technical
writing, and of course the approaching end. Like many tasks, thesis writing usually seems
worst before you begin, so let us look at how you should make a start.

An outline
First make up a thesis outline: several pages containing chapter headings, sub-headings,
some figure titles (to indicate which results go where) and perhaps some other notes and
comments. There is a section on chapter order and thesis structure at the end of this text.
Once you have a list of chapters and, under each chapter heading, a reasonably complete
list of things to be reported or explained, you have struck a great blow against writer's
block. When you sit down to type, your aim is no longer a thesis---a daunting goal---but
something simpler. Your new aim is just to write a paragraph or section about one of your
subheadings. It helps to start with an easy one: this gets you into the habit of writing and
gives you self-confidence. Often the Materials and Methods chapter is the easiest to
write---just write down what you did; carefully, formally and in a logical order.
How do you make an outline of a chapter? For most of them, you might try the method
that I use for writing papers, and which I learned from my thesis adviser: assemble all the
figures that you will use in it and put them in the order that you would use if you were
going to explain to someone what they all meant. You might as well rehearse explaining
it to someone else---after all you will probably give several talks based on your thesis
work. Once you have found the most logical order, note down the the key words of your
explanation. These key words provide a skeleton for much of your chapter outline.
Once you have an outline, discuss it with your adviser. This step is important: s/he will
have useful suggestions, but it also serves notice that s/he can expect a steady flow of
chapter drafts that will make high priority demands on his/her time. Once you and your
adviser have agreed on a logical structure, s/he will need a copy of this outline for
reference when reading the chapters which you will probably present out of order. If you
have a co-adviser, discuss the outline with him/her as well, and present all chapters to
both advisers for comments.

Organisation
It is encouraging and helpful to start a filing system. Open a word-processor file for each
chapter and one for the references. You can put notes in these files, as well as text. While
doing something for Chapter n, you will think "Oh I must refer back to/discuss this in
Chapter m" and so you put a note to do so in the file for Chapter m. Or you may think of
something interesting or relevant for that chapter. When you come to work on Chapter m,
the more such notes you have accumulated, the easier it will be to write.
Make a back-up of these files and do so every day at least (depending on the reliability of
your computer and the age of your disk drive). Do not keep back-up disks close to the
computer in case the hypothetical thief who fancies your computer decides that s/he
could use some disks as well.
A simple way of making a remote back-up is to send it as an email attachment to a
consenting email correspondent, preferably one in a different location. You could even

send it to yourself if your server saves your mail (in some email packages like Eudora
this is an optional setting). In either case, be careful to dispose of superseded versions so
that you don't waste disk space, especially if you have bitmap images or other large files.
You should also have a physical filing system: a collection of folders with chapter
numbers on them. This will make you feel good about getting started and also help clean
up your desk. Your files will contain not just the plots of results and pages of calculations,
but all sorts of old notes, references, calibration curves, suppliers' addresses,
specifications, speculations, letters from colleagues etc., which will suddenly strike you
as relevant to one chapter or other. Stick them in that folder. Then put all the folders in a
box or a filing cabinet. As you write bits and pieces of text, place the hard copy, the
figures etc in these folders as well. Touch them and feel their thickness from time to
time---ah, the thesis is taking shape.
If any of your data exist only on paper, copy them and keep the copy in a different
location. Consider making a copy of your lab book. This has another purpose beyond
security: usually the lab book stays in the lab, but you may want a copy for your own
future use. Further, scientific ethics require you to keep lab books and original data for at
least ten years, and a copy is more likely to be found if two copies exist.
While you are getting organised, you should deal with any university paperwork.
Examiners have to be nominated and they have to agree to serve. Various forms are
required by your department and by the university administration. Make sure that the rate
limiting step is your production of the thesis, and not some minor bureaucratic problem.

A timetable
I strongly recommend sitting down with the adviser and making up a timetable for
writing it: a list of dates for when you will give the first and second drafts of each chapter
to your adviser(s). This structures your time and provides intermediate targets. If you
merely aim "to have the whole thing done by (some distant date)", you can deceive
yourself and procrastinate more easily. If you have told your adviser that you will deliver
a first draft of chapter 3 on Wednesday, it focuses your attention.

Iterative solution
Whenever you sit down to write, it is very important to write something. So write
something, even if it is just a set of notes or a few paragraphs of text that you would
never show to anyone else. It would be nice if clear, precise prose leapt easily from the
keyboard, but it usually does not. Most of us find it easier, however, to improve
something that is already written than to produce text from nothing. So put down a draft
(as rough as you like) for your own purposes, then clean it up for your adviser to read.
Word-processors are wonderful in this regard: in the first draft you do not have to start at
the beginning, you can leave gaps, you can put in little notes to yourself, and then you
can clean it all up later.
Your adviser will expect to read each chapter in draft form. S/he will then return it to you
with suggestions and comments. Do not be upset if a chapter---especially the first one
you write--- returns covered in red ink. Your adviser will want your thesis to be as good
as possible, because his/her reputation as well as yours is affected. Scientific writing is a

difficult art, and it takes a while to learn. As a consequence, there will be many ways in
which your first draft can be improved. So take a positive attitude to all the scribbles with
which your adviser decorates your text: each comment tells you a way in which you can
make your thesis better.
As you write your thesis, your scientific writing is almost certain to improve. Even for
native speakers of English who write very well in other styles, one notices an enormous
improvement in the first drafts from the first to the last chapter written. The process of
writing the thesis is like a course in scientific writing, and in that sense each chapter is
like an assignment in which you are taught, but not assessed. Remember, only the final
draft is assessed: the more comments your adviser adds to first or second draft, the better.
Before you submit a draft to your adviser, run a spell check so that s/he does not waste
time on those. If you have any characteristic grammatical failings, check for them.

What is a thesis? For whom is it written? How should it

be written?
Your thesis is a research report. The report concerns a problem or series of problems in
your area of research and it should describe what was known about it previously, what
you did towards solving it, what you think your results mean, and where or how further
progress in the field can be made. Do not carry over your ideas from undergraduate
assessment: a thesis is not an answer to an assignment question. One important difference
is this: the reader of an assignment is usually the one who has set it. S/he already knows
the answer (or one of the answers), not to mention the background, the literature, the
assumptions and theories and the strengths and weaknesses of them. The readers of a
thesis do not know what the "answer" is. If the thesis is for a PhD, the university requires
that it make an original contribution to human knowledge: your research must discover
something hitherto unknown.
Obviously your examiners will read the thesis. They will be experts in the general field of
your thesis but, on the exact topic of your thesis, you are the world expert. Keep this in
mind: you should write to make the topic clear to a reader who has not spent most of the
last three years thinking about it.
Your thesis will also be used as a scientific report and consulted by future workers in
your laboratory who will want to know, in detail, what you did. Theses are occasionally
consulted by people from other institutions, and the library sends microfilm versions if
requested (yes, still). More and more theses are now stored in an entirely digital form (i.e.
the figures as well as the text are on a disk). A consequence of this is that your thesis can
be consulted much more easily by researchers around the world. Write with these
possibilities in mind.
It is often helpful to have someone other than your adviser(s) read some sections of the
thesis, particularly the introduction and conclusion chapters. It may also be appropriate to
ask other members of staff to read some sections of the thesis which they may find
relevant or of interest, as they may be able to make valuable contributions. In either case,
only give them revised versions, so that they do not waste time correcting your grammar,
spelling, poor construction or presentation.

How much detail?

The short answer is: rather more than for a scientific paper. Once your thesis has been
assessed and your friends have read the first three pages, the only further readers are
likely to be people who are seriously doing research in just that area. For example, a
future research student might be pursuing the same research and be interested to find out
exactly what you did. ("Why doesn't the widget that Bloggs built for her project work any
more? Where's the circuit diagram? I'll look up her thesis." "Blow's subroutine doesn't
converge in my parameter space! I'll have to look up his thesis." "How did that group in
Sydney manage to get that technique to work? I'll order a microfilm of that thesis they
cited in their paper.") For important parts of apparatus, you should include workshop
drawings, circuit diagrams and computer programs, usually as appendices. (By the way,
the intelligible annotation of programs is about as frequent as porcine aviation, but it is
far more desirable. You wrote that line of code for a reason: at the end of the line explain
what the reason is.) You have probably read the theses of previous students in the lab
where you are now working, so you probably know the advantages of a clearly explained,
explicit thesis and/or the disadvantages of a vague one.

Make it clear what is yours

If you use a result, observation or generalisation that is not your own, you must usually
state where in the scientific literature that result is reported. The only exceptions are cases
where every researcher in the field already knows it: dynamics equations need not be
followed by a citation of Newton, circuit analysis does not need a reference to Kirchoff.
The importance of this practice in science is that it allows the reader to verify your
starting position. Physics in particular is said to be a vertical science: results are built
upon results which in turn are built upon results etc. Good referencing allows us to check
the foundations of your additions to the structure of knowledge in the discipline, or at
least to trace them back to a level which we judge to be reliable. Good referencing also
tells the reader which parts of the thesis are descriptions of previous knowledge and
which parts are your additions to that knowledge. In a thesis, written for the general
reader who has little familiarity with the literature of the field, this should be especially
clear. It may seem tempting to leave out a reference in the hope that a reader will think
that a nice idea or an nice bit of analysis is yours. I advise against this gamble. The reader
will probably think: "What a nice idea---I wonder if it's original?". The reader can
probably find out via the library, the net or even just from a phone call.
If you are writing in the passive voice, you must be more careful about attribution than if
you are writing in the active voice. "The sample was prepared by heating yttrium..." does
not make it clear whether you did this or whether Acme Yttrium did it. "I prepared the
sample..." is clear.

Style
The text must be clear. Good grammar and thoughtful writing will make the thesis easier
to read. Scientific writing has to be a little formal---more formal than this text. Native
English speakers should remember that scientific English is an international language.
Slang and informal writing will be harder for a non-native speaker to understand.

Short, simple phrases and words are often better than long ones. Some politicians use "at
this point in time" instead of "now" precisely because it takes longer to convey the same
meaning. They do not care about elegance or efficient communication. You should. On
the other hand, there will be times when you need a complicated sentence because the
idea is complicated. If your primary statement requires several qualifications, each of
these may need a subordinate clause: "When [qualification], and where [proviso], and if
[condition] then [statement]". Some lengthy technical words will also be necessary in
many theses, particularly in fields like biochemistry. Do not sacrifice accuracy for the
sake of brevity. "Black is white" is simple and catchy. An advertising copy writer would
love it. "Objects of very different albedo may be illuminated differently so as to produce
similar reflected spectra" is longer and uses less common words, but, compared to the
former example, it has the advantage of being true. The longer example would be fine in
a physics thesis because English speaking physicists will not have trouble with the words.
(A physicist who did not know all of those words would probably be glad to remedy the
lacuna either from the context or by consulting a dictionary.)
Sometimes it is easier to present information and arguments as a series of numbered
points, rather than as one or more long and awkward paragraphs. A list of points is
usually easier to write. You should be careful not to use this presentation too much: your
thesis must be a connected, convincing argument, not just a list of facts and observations.
One important stylistic choice is between the active voice and passive voice. The active
voice ("I measured the frequency...") is simpler, and it makes clear what you did and what
was done by others. The passive voice ("The frequency was measured...") makes it easier
to write ungrammatical or awkward sentences. If you use the passive voice, be especially
wary of dangling participles. For example, the sentence "After considering all of these
possible materials, plutonium was selected" implicitly attributes consciousness to
plutonium. This choice is a question of taste: I prefer the active because it is clearer, more
logical and makes attribution simple. The only arguments I have ever heard for avoiding
the active voice in a thesis are (i) many theses are written in the passive voice, and (ii)
some very polite people find the use of "I" immodest. Use the first person singular, not
plural, when reporting work that you did yourself: the editorial 'we' may suggest that you
had help beyond that listed in your aknowledgements, or it may suggest that you are
trying to share any blame. On the other hand, retain plural verbs for "data": "data" is the
plural of "datum", and lots of scientists like to preserve the distinction. Just say to
yourself "one datum is ..", "these data are.." several times. An excellent and widely used
reference for English grammar and style is A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by
H.W. Fowler.

Presentation
There is no need for a thesis to be a masterpiece of desk-top publishing. Your time can be
more productively spent improving the content than the appearance.
In many cases, a reasonably neat diagram can be drawn by hand faster than with a
graphics package. Either is usually satisfactory. The computer-generated figure has the
advantage that it can be stored in the text and transmitted electronically, but this
advantage disappears if you are not going to store your thesis as a file for transmission.
You can scan a hand drawn figure. As a one bit, moderate resolution graphic, it will
probably not be huge, but it will still be bigger than a line drawing generated on a
graphics package.

In general, students spend too much time on diagrams---time that could have been spent
on examining the arguments, making the explanations clearer, thinking more about the
significance and checking for errors in the algebra. The reason, of course, is that drawing
is easier than thinking.
I do not think that there is a strong correlation (either way) between length and quality.
There is no need to leave big gaps to make the thesis thicker. Readers will not appreciate
large amounts of vague or unnecessary text.

Approaching the end

A deadline is very useful in some ways. You must hand in the thesis, even if you think
that you need one more draft of that chapter, or someone else's comments on this section,
or some other refinement. If you do not have a deadline, or if you are thinking about
postponing it, please take note of this: A thesis is a very large work. It cannot be made
perfect in a finite time. There will inevitably be things in it that you could have done
better. There will be inevitably be some typos. Indeed, by some law related to Murphy's,
you will discover one when you first flip open the bound copy. No matter how much you
reflect and how many times you proof read it, there will be some things that could be
improved. There is no point hoping that the examiners will not notice: many examiners
feel obliged to find some examples of improvements (if not outright errors) just to show
how thoroughly they have read it. So set yourself a deadline and stick to it. Make it as
good as you can in that time, and then hand it in! (In retrospect, there was an advantage in
writing a thesis in the days before word processors, spelling checkers and typing
programs. Nearly all students paid a typist to produce the final draft and we could only
afford to do that once.)

How many copies?

Talk to your adviser about this. As well as those for the examiners, the university libraries
and yourself, you should make some distribution copies. These copies should be sent to
other researchers who are working in your field so that:

they can discover what marvellous work you have been doing before it appears in
journals;

they can look up the fine details of methods and results that will or have been
published more briefly elsewhere;

they can realise what an excellent researcher you are. This realisation could be
useful if a post- doctoral position were available in their labs. soon after your
submission, or if they were reviewers of your research/post-doctoral proposal.
Even having your name in their bookcases might be an advantage.

Whatever the University's policy on single or double-sided copies, the distribution copies
could be double-sided so that forests and postage accounts are not excessively depleted
by the exercise. Your adviser could help you to make up a list of interested and/or
potentially useful people for such a mailing list. Your adviser might also help by funding
the copies and postage if they are not covered by your scholarship.
The following comment comes from Marilyn Ball of the Australian National University
in Canberra: "When I finished writing my thesis, a postdoc wisely told me to give a copy
to my parents. I would never have thought of doing that as I just couldn't imagine what
they would do with it. I'm very glad to have taken that advice as my parents really

appreciated receiving a copy and proudly displayed it for years. (My mother never
finished high school and my father worked with trucks - he fixed 'em, built 'em, drove
'em, sold 'em and junked 'em. Nevertheless, they enjoyed having a copy of my thesis.)"

Personal
In the ideal situation, you will be able to spend a large part---perhaps a majority---of your
time writing your thesis. This may be bad for your physical and mental health.
Typing
Set up your chair and computer properly. The Health Service, professional keyboard
users or perhaps even the school safety officer will be able to supply charts showing
recommended relative heights, healthy postures and also exercises that you should do
if you spend a lot of time at the keyboard. These last are worthwhile insurance: you
do not want the extra hassle of back or neck pain. Try to intersperse long sessions of
typing with other tasks, such as reading, drawing, calculating, thinking or doing
research.
If you do not touch type, you should learn to do so for the sake of your neck as well
as for productivity. There are several good software packages that teach touch typing
interactively. If you use one for say 30 minutes a day for a couple of weeks, you will
be able to touch type. By the time you finish the thesis, you will be able to touch type
quickly and accurately and your six hour investment will have paid for itself. Be
careful not to use the typing exercises as a displacement activity.
Exercise
Do not give up exercise for the interim. Lack of exercise makes you feel bad, and you
do not need anything else making you feel bad while writing a thesis. 30-60 minutes
of exercise per day is probably not time lost from your thesis: I find that if I do not
get regular exercise, I sleep less soundly and longer. How about walking to work and
home again? (Walk part of the way if your home is distant.) Many people opine that a
walk helps them think, or clears the head. You may find that an occasional stroll
improves your productivity.
Food
Do not forget to eat, and make an effort to eat healthy food. You should not lose
fitness or risk illness at this critical time. Exercise is good for keeping you appetite at
a healthy level. I know that you have little time for cooking, but keep a supply of
fresh fruit, vegetables and bread. It takes less time to make a sandwich than to go to
the local fast food outlet, and you will feel better afterwards.
Drugs
Thesis writers have a long tradition of using coffee as a stimulant and alcohol or
marijuana as relaxants. (Use of alcohol and coffee is legal, use of marijuana is not.)
Used in moderation, they do not seem to have ill effects on the quality of thesis
produced. Excesses, however, are obviously counter-productive: several expressi and
you will be buzzing too much to sit down and work; several drinks at night will slow
you down next day.

Others
Other people will be sympathetic, but do not take them for granted. Spouses, lovers,
family and friends should not be undervalued. Spend some time with them and, when
you do, have a good time. Do not spend your time together complaining about your
thesis: they already resent the thesis because it is keeping you away from them. If you
can find another student writing a thesis, then you may find it therapeutic to complain
to each other about advisers and difficulties. S/he need not be in the same discipline
as you are.

Coda
Keep going---you're nearly there! Most PhDs will admit that there were times when we
thought about reasons for not finishing. But it would be crazy to give up at the writing
stage, after years of work on the research, and it would be something to regret for a long
time.
Writing a thesis is tough work. One anonymous post doctoral researcher told me: "You
should tell everyone that it's going to be unpleasant, that it will mess up their lives, that
they will have to give up their friends and their social lives for a while. It's a tough period
for almost every student." She's right: it is certainly hard work, it will be probably be
stressful and you will have to adapt your rhythm to it. It is also an important rite of
passage and the satisfaction you will feel afterwards is wonderful. On behalf of scholars
everywhere, I wish you good luck!

A suggested thesis structure

The list of contents and chapter headings below is appropriate for some theses. In some
cases, one or two of them may be irrelevant. Results and Discussion are usually
combined in several chapters of a thesis. Think about the plan of chapters and decide
what is best to report your work. Then make a list, in point form, of what will go in each
chapter. Try to make this rather detailed, so that you end up with a list of points that
corresponds to subsections or even to the paragraphs of your thesis. At this stage, think
hard about the logic of the presentation: within chapters, it is often possible to present the
ideas in different order, and not all arrangements will be equally easy to follow. If you
make a plan of each chapter and section before you sit down to write, the result will
probably be clearer and easier to read. It will also be easier to write.
Copyright waiver
Your institution may have a form for this (UNSW does). In any case, this standard
page gives the university library the right to publish the work, possibly by microfilm
or some other medium. (At UNSW, the Postgraduate Student Office will give you a
thesis pack with various guide-lines and rules about thesis format. Make sure that you
consult that for its formal requirements, as well as this rather informal guide.)
Declaration
Check the wording required by your institution, and whether there is a standard form.

Many universities require something like: "I hereby declare that this submission is my
own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material
previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial
extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of the
university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement
has been made in the text. (signature/name/date)"
Title page
This may vary among institutions, but as an example: Title/author/"A thesis submitted
for the the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Science/The University
of New South Wales"/date.
Abstract
Of all your thesis, this part will be the most widely published and most read because
it will be published in Dissertation Abstracts International. It is best written towards
the end, but not at the very last minute because you will probably need several drafts.
It should be a distillation of the thesis: a concise description of the problem(s)
addressed, your method of solving it/them, your results and conclusions. An abstract
must be self-contained. Usually they do not contain references. When a reference is
necessary, its details should be included in the text of the abstract. Check the word
limit.
Acknowledgements
Most thesis authors put in a page of thanks to those who have helped them in matters
scientific, and also indirectly by providing such essentials as food, education, genes,
money, help, advice, friendship etc. If any of your work is collaborative, you should
make it quite clear who did which sections.
Table of contents
The introduction starts on page 1, the earlier pages should have roman numerals. It
helps to have the subheadings of each chapter, as well as the chapter titles. Remember
that the thesis may be used as a reference in the lab, so it helps to be able to find
things easily.
Introduction
What is the topic and why is it important? State the problem(s) as simply as you can.
Remember that you have been working on this project for a few years, so you will be
very close to it. Try to step back mentally and take a broader view of the problem.
How does it fit into the broader world of your discipline?
Especially in the introduction, do not overestimate the reader's familiarity with your
topic. You are writing for researchers in the general area, but not all of them need be
specialists in your particular topic. It may help to imagine such a person---think of
some researcher whom you might have met at a conference for your subject, but who
was working in a different area. S/he is intelligent, has the same general background,
but knows little of the literature or tricks that apply to your particular topic.
The introduction should be interesting. If you bore the reader here, then you are
unlikely to revive his/her interest in the materials and methods section. For the first
paragraph or two, tradition permits prose that is less dry than the scientific norm. If

want to wax lyrical about your topic, here is the place to do it. Try to make the reader
want to read the kilogram of A4 that has arrived uninvited on his/her desk. Go to the
library and read several thesis introductions. Did any make you want to read on?
Which ones were boring?
This section might go through several drafts to make it read well and logically, while
keeping it short. For this section, I think that it is a good idea to ask someone who is
not a specialist to read it and to comment. Is it an adequate introduction? Is it easy to
follow? There is an argument for writing this section---or least making a major
revision of it---towards the end of the thesis writing. Your introduction should tell
where the thesis is going, and this may become clearer during the writing.
Literature review
Where did the problem come from? What is already known about this problem? What
other methods have been tried to solve it?
Ideally, you will already have much of the hard work done, if you have been keeping
up with the literature as you vowed to do three years ago, and if you have made notes
about important papers over the years. If you have summarised those papers, then you
have some good starting points for the review.
How many papers? How relevant do they have to be before you include them? Well,
that is a matter of judgement. On the order of a hundred is reasonable, but it will
depend on the field. You are the world expert on the (narrow) topic of your thesis: you
must demonstrate this.
A political point: make sure that you do not omit relevant papers by researchers who
are like to be your examiners, or by potential employers to whom you might be
sending the thesis in the next year or two.

Middle chapters
In some theses, the middle chapters are the journal articles of which the student was
major author. There are several disadvantages to this format.
One is that a thesis is both allowed and expected to have more detail than a journal
article. For journal articles, one usually has to reduce the number of figures. In many
cases, all of the interesting and relevant data can go in the thesis, and not just those
which appeared in the journal. The degree of experimental detail is usually greater in
a thesis. Relatively often a researcher requests a thesis in order to obtain more detail
about how a study was performed.
Another disadvantage is that your journal articles may have some common material in
the introduction and the "Materials and Methods" sections.
The exact structure in the middle chapters will vary among theses. In some theses, it
is necessary to establish some theory, to describe the experimental techniques, then to
report what was done on several different problems or different stages of the problem,
and then finally to present a model or a new theory based on the new work. For such
a thesis, the chapter headings might be: Theory, Materials and Methods, {first
problem}, {second problem}, {third problem}, {proposed theory/model} and then the
conclusion chapter. For other theses, it might be appropriate to discuss different
techniques in different chapters, rather than to have a single Materials and Methods
chapter.

Here follow some comments on the elements Materials and Methods, Theory, Results
and discussion which may or may not correspond to thesis chapters.
Materials and Methods
This varies enormously from thesis to thesis, and may be absent in theoretical theses.
It should be possible for a competent researcher to reproduce exactly what you have
done by following your description. There is a good chance that this test will be
applied: sometime after you have left, another researcher will want to do a similar
experiment either with your gear, or on a new set-up in a foreign country. Please write
for the benefit of that researcher.
In some theses, particularly multi-disciplinary or developmental ones, there may be
more than one such chapter. In this case, the different disciplines should be indicated
in the chapter titles.
Theory
When you are reporting theoretical work that is not original, you will usually need to
include sufficient material to allow the reader to understand the arguments used and
their physical bases. Sometimes you will be able to present the theory ab initio, but
you should not reproduce two pages of algebra that the reader could find in a standard
text. Do not include theory that you are not going to relate to the work you have done.
When writing this section, concentrate at least as much on the physical arguments as
on the equations. What do the equations mean? What are the important cases?
When you are reporting your own theoretical work, you must include rather more
detail, but you should consider moving lengthy derivations to appendices. Think too
about the order and style of presentation: the order in which you did the work may not
be the clearest presentation.
Suspense is not necessary in reporting science: you should tell the reader where you
are going before you start.
Results and discussion
The results and discussion are very often combined in theses. This is sensible because
of the length of a thesis: you may have several chapters of results and, if you wait till
they are all presented before you begin discussion, the reader may have difficulty
remembering what you are talking about. The division of Results and Discussion
material into chapters is usually best done according to subject matter.
Make sure that you have described the conditions which obtained for each set of
results. What was held constant? What were the other relevant parameters? Make sure
too that you have used appropriate statistical analyses. Where applicable, show
measurement errors and standard errors on the graphs. Use appropriate statistical
tests.
Take care plotting graphs. The origin and intercepts are often important so, unless the
ranges of your data make it impractical, the zeros of one or both scales should usually
appear on the graph. You should show error bars on the data, unless the errors are
very small. For single measurements, the bars should be your best estimate of the
experimental errors in each coordinate. For multiple measurements these should
include the standard error in the data. The errors in different data are often different,

so, where this is the case, regressions and fits should be weighted (i.e. they should
minimize the sum of squares of the differences weighted inversely as the size of the
errors.) (A common failing in many simple software packages that draw graphs and
do regressions is that they do not treat errors adequately. UNSW student Mike
Johnston has written a plotting routine that plots data with error bars and performs
weighted least square regressions. It is at
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/3rdyearlab/graphing/graph.html)
In most cases, your results need discussion. What do they mean? How do they fit into
the existing body of knowledge? Are they consistent with current theories? Do they
give new insights? Do they suggest new theories or mechanisms?
Try to distance yourself from your usual perspective and look at your work. Do not
just ask yourself what it means in terms of the orthodoxy of your own research group,
but also how other people in the field might see it. Does it have any implications that
do not relate to the questions that you set out to answer?

Final chapter, references and appendices

Conclusions and suggestions for further work
Your abstract should include your conclusions in very brief form, because it must also
include some other material. A summary of conclusions is usually longer than the
final section of the abstract, and you have the space to be more explicit and more
careful with qualifications. You might find it helpful to put your conclusions in point
form.
It is often the case with scientific investigations that more questions than answers are
produced. Does your work suggest any interesting further avenues? Are there ways in
which your work could be improved by future workers? What are the practical
implications of your work?
This chapter should usually be reasonably short---a few pages perhaps. As with the
introduction, I think that it is a good idea to ask someone who is not a specialist to
read this section and to comment.
References (See also under literature review)
It is tempting to omit the titles of the articles cited, and the university allows this, but
think of all the times when you have seen a reference in a paper and gone to look it up
only to find that it was not helpful after all.
Appendices
If there is material that should be in the thesis but which would break up the flow or
bore the reader unbearably, include it as an appendix. Some things which are typically
included in appendices are: important and original computer programs, data files that
are too large to be represented simply in the results chapters, pictures or diagrams of
results which are not important enough to keep in the main text.

Distribution
If you have found these documents useful, please feel free to pass the address or a hard
copy to any other thesis writers or graduate student organisations. Please do not sell them,

or use any of the contents without acknowledgement.

Suggestions, thanks and caveats
This document will be updated occasionally. If you have suggestions for inclusions,
amendments or other improvements, please send them. Do so after you have submitted
the thesis---do not use this invitation as a displacement activity. I thank Marilyn Ball,
Gary Bryant and Bill Whiten, whose suggestions have been incorporated in this version.
Substantial contributions will be acknowledged in future versions. I also take this
opportunity to thank my own thesis advisers, Stjepan Marcelja and Jacob Israelachvili,
for their help and friendship, and to thank the graduate students to whom I have had the
pleasure to be an adviser, a colleague and a friend. Opinions expressed in these notes are
mine and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the University of New South Wales or of
the School of Physics.

Joe Wolfe / [email protected]/ 61-2-9385 4954 (UT + 10, +11 Oct-Mar) Joe's music
site
School of Physics / The University of New South Wales

Some sites with related material

How to survive a thesis defence
Research resources and links supplied by Deakin University
'Writing and presenting your thesis or dissertation' by Joseph Levine at Michigan State
University, USA
Postgraduate Student Resources supplied by University of Canberra
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/UNSWO.htmlThe National Association of Graduate Professional Students (USA)
Some relevant texts
Stevens, K. and Asmar, C (1999) 'Doing postgraduate research in Australia'. Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne ISBN 0 522 84880 X.
Phillips, E.M and Pugh, D.S. (1994) 'How to get a PhD : a handbook for students and
their supervisors'. Open University Press, Buckingham, England
Tufte, E.R. (1983) 'The visual display of quantitative information'. Graphics Press,
Cheshire, Conn.
Tufte, E.R. (1990) 'Envisioning information' Graphics Press, Cheshire, Conn.