All papers are to be written with spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation consistent with Standard American Edited English for academic audiences, except for foreign-language citations/quotations and theses within the Department of World Languages and Cultures, which may be partially or wholly in the language appropriate to the degree.
The default documentation style of the Graduate School is the current edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), but the Graduate School does not specify a particular manual of style because different disciplines follow different practices. A department may designate a style appropriate to its scholarly literature, for example:
In cases where the department’s preferred style differs in its format requirements (i.e., margins, pagination, line spacing) from the Graduate School guidelines, Graduate School requirements take precedence. In either case, the student is required to be consistent in the use of the style adopted. The student must also follow the most current edition of any style manual.
Theses and dissertations may be presented in any form that reflects the professional standards of publication and ethics in its discipline, subject to departmental policies and approval of the advisory faculty. Document components must be in PDF; all other media components (if any) must be durable and accessible.
Post-defense theses and dissertations must be submitted electronically via the links provided on the Thesis and Dissertation Office website. Even nonmonographic works must include a document component in PDF, at minimum a title page and an abstract.
Audio, video, and multimedia material (if any) must be uploaded separately as supplementary files to accompany the PDF document component. A description of each file (or set of files, if more appropriate) must be presented in the abstract. Students undertaking a wholly nonmonographic or hybrid dissertation should contact the Thesis and Dissertation Office for additional specifications and assistance.
Under federal law, the author of a thesis or dissertation automatically has ownership rights and copyright protection for that paper. A student who wishes to declare this should insert a copyright notice on the title page, for example:
© 2030 Chris Student
Additional legal protection may be secured by registering the dissertation with the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, but the Graduate School does not require copyright registration.
If your dissertation includes materials that are themselves protected by copyright, for example, artworks, graphics, musical scores, lyrics, test instruments, etc., you must obtain permission to include them in your dissertation. Each copyright holder will need to be contacted for permission, and the subsequent permission must be granted in writing, although it may be an e-mail or another electronic medium. Permissions must be in hand before the paper is defended.
Previously published work and manuscripts submitted for publication may be included in a thesis or dissertation fulfilling the requirements for graduate degree programs, subject to individual department and faculty approval. These may include chapters, sections of chapters, data, or the entire document authored by the degree candidate; however, the research, writing, and publication of the work must be wholly undertaken and completed while at 麻豆精品 during the course of graduate study for the degree to which the thesis or dissertation is submitted. The research, writing, and publication must have been performed under the supervision of a qualifying member of the graduate faculty from the major department.
Previously published material is subject to copyright restrictions. Students are responsible for understanding the copyright law and securing written permission to reproduce previously published work in the thesis or dissertation and must upload these permissions during submission or include them as appendices in the document. Previously published material must be reformatted to conform to the requirements of the Graduate School and be stylistically and organizationally coherent with the thesis or dissertation as a whole.
A work containing previously published material must contain a single overarching abstract, a single integrative introduction, and a single unifying conclusion.
In addition, the student must:
The author must acknowledge previously published material in a footnote on the first page of the appropriate chapter or section or on a special page in the front matter. It is also good scholarly practice to acknowledge in this same way material that has been submitted or is currently under review.
Sometimes the exact language of the permission will be stipulated by the publisher. Otherwise, use a statement similar to the following: “This [or ‘Parts of this . . . ,’ as appropriate] chapter [or section, as appropriate] was [or ‘were,’ as appropriate] previously published as [full citation as per the APA, current edition]. It is reprinted by permission of [copyright holder’s name].”
The dissertation may be presented in any form that reflects the professional standards of publication and ethics in its discipline (subject to departmental policies and approval of the advisory faculty), including as a collection of publication-quality articles related by a central subject-matter theme or research problem. This type of dissertation is called a “three-paper” dissertation. The individual papers are considered to be chapter divisions of the dissertation as a whole and must be formatted according to the Graduate School requirements.
Additionally, the three-paper dissertation must include a single overarching abstract, a single integrative introduction, and a single unifying conclusion. The individual manuscripts may be previously published or under review for publication but are not required to be so. For content previously published or under review, see Policy on Previously Published Material.
The bibliography or reference list of a three-paper dissertation may be treated as sections of the individual chapters or combined in a single list at the end of the text. The decision should be based on the similarity among the lists. If every chapter has many of the same references, then a single combined list would make sense. If the individual chapters are not very similar in documentation, then the reference lists may appear at the end of each chapter. A single, consistent documentation style (APA, MLA, etc.) should be applied throughout the dissertation in either case.
In the case of an artistic work produced as an MA artistry thesis, following a successful defense, both the work and its written component (at minimum a title page and an abstract) must be submitted via the submission link on the Thesis and Dissertation Office website. The artistic component of the thesis is uploaded as a supplemental file during the submission process. Contact the Thesis and Dissertation Office for file types and size requirements. The abstract must include a description of the type of supplemental file(s).
If the primary language of the thesis is not English, an additional copy of the abstract in English must be included with the document.
As a courtesy to students, the Graduate School maintains a list of freelancers who have indicated their availability and interest in formatting documents for a fee. This list is found on the Thesis and Dissertation Office website. Hiring a professional freelancer does not absolve students of the responsibility to ensure the paper meets the standards and requirements of the Graduate School. Likewise, the Graduate School cannot assume responsibility for the quality of work done by a freelancer.
The Thesis and Dissertation Office recommends that students confer with freelancers about rates, schedules, and details of the particular manuscript before work begins so that both parties have a firm understanding about the work to be performed and the charges to be paid. Graduate School deadlines are firm and will not be waived because the student has failed to allow sufficient time for the freelancer to complete the work.