Thesis and dissertation
Academic integrity
This guidance supports planning and revision of your own work. It does not offer ghostwriting, invented sources, or a guarantee that a journal will publish a manuscript.
Treat the thesis as a sequence of decisions a reader can follow: the question, the field you are speaking to, the design, the material, the reading of that material, and the limits. Chapters that exist only because a template listed them should be cut or given a job.
Keep a working table of contents that states each chapter's claim, not only its topic. When a section grows, ask whether it still serves the question. Your institution's format rules matter, and they are not a substitute for the argument.
A practical sequence
- Write the contents as claims.
- Map each chapter to a question in the introduction.
- Draft the conclusion from the chapters you have, not from the hope you started with.
- Check citations before you admire the prose.
Examples
- Chapter title: “How the three teachers talked about errors” is more informative than “Data analysis”.
