Structure of your senior thesis. The front matter. Main matter. Other content. Back matter ..... Degree, Ph.D. dissertation, Beirut Arab University, Lebanon, 2013.
Tips for your Senior thesis Presented by: Madeleine Al- Tahan
Outline • Starting with your research • Structure of your senior thesis • Writing references • Differences between bibliography and references • Citation
• Plagiarism
How do you start with your research? Identify your research topic Determine the types of information you'll need
Do preliminary research Narrow your research focus Access academic sources
Organize your information
Structure of your senior thesis The front matter
Main matter Other content Back matter
• The approval page is not counted, numbered or listed in the Table of Contents. • It follows your title page, unless you have included the optional copyright page, in which case it will follow the copyright page. • The title must be centered. • Each person on your committee must be listed
Dedication(optional)
• Includes the title of your senior thesis
Approval page
Title page
The front matter
• If used, it comes after the approval page. • It is not counted, numbered or listed in the Table of Contents. • It is used to acknowledge those who have supported you during your graduate studies. This is not typically the place to recognize those who assisted you in your academic research, which is done on the required Acknowledgements page.
•A brief (one to four paragraphs), high-level description of the main thrust of your report. You want to explain what the problem is, how you went about solving it, and perhaps have a very brief summation of your solution.
Table of contents
•It is required for all theses and dissertations. It follows the Approval page, unless you have included the optional Dedication page, in which case it follows the Dedication page •Center the term “ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS” •The page number should be Roman numeral "ii"
Abstract
Acknowledgements
The front matter •Center the term “TABLE OF CONTENTS.” •The Table of Contents should only include listings for the Acknowledgements page and any sections following the Table of Contents. •Item page numbers should align at the right margin.
•List of figures •List of tables
The Main Matter As its name suggests, the main matter is where the real content of your report is found. For a report of this significance, we expect to see several chapters dealing with the key elements of your project. The Introduction • You should start with an introductory chapter (usually just called “Introduction”) that explains the problem, talks briefly about previous research, and then sketches out the remainder of your report with references to the in-depth discussions. If at all possible, your introduction should be written using non-technical language. Write for an intended audience of non–math-major HMC seniors, without assuming any specific knowledge of the area of your thesis work.
Other contents Other chapters Conclusion
Future work
•The theoretical background of the problem, previously done related research, and how it applies to your problem •Your theories and approach to solving the problem •How you implemented your solution •The result of applying your solution to the problem •Other related material
•The most important chapter in your thesis is the conclusion. Many readers will only read your introduction and conclusion. Some might even skip the introduction, which means that your conclusion is even more important. Your conclusion shouldn’t be just another summary of the whole process. You need to say what it is that you accomplished over the course of the year, and why what you did was meaningful. You may want to discuss new insights you’ve had into the problem as a result of following the approach that you did. You might even want to include some criticisms of your work in light of what you’ve learned.
•You should talk about some of the possibilities for future research based on the work that you’ve done. For your midyear report, this section will be the place to talk about the work that is currently in progress and where you expect it to lead. For your final thesis, this section might grow to be its own chapter, outlining several possible future approaches to your problem and why they might be worth pursuing.
Back Matter The back matter comprises elements such as your bibliography or references.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Use only initials for first and middle names; there should be a single space between initials. For example Madeleine Ali AlTahan would be M. A. Al-Tahan. The initials for a hyphenated first name such as Jean-Paul should also be hyphenated as J.-P. Capitalize the first and last words in titles and subtitles (of the book) and capitalize all other major words. For example, Linear Algebra: A Modern Introduction; the “a” is capitalized here because it is a major word since it is the first word of the subtitle. Only the first word in the title of an article from a journal is capitalized; with the exception of proper names. For example, Strongly regular relations of arithmetic functions or Sturmian theory for linear Hamiltonian systems without controllability. In the latter “H” in Hamiltonian is capitalized because it is a proper name.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) a character string (a “digital identifier”) used to uniquely identify an electronic document. It is up to the author to include as many DOIs with their references as they can.
If there are two authors we separate them by “and”, if three authors we write first, second, and third. If more than 3, we may write them all or write the first et al.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Journal Article • Author • Title of journal article • Title of journal (this should be in italics) •
Year of publication
• Volume number •
(Issue number)
• Page numbers of the article Example: P. Chhibber, S. Majumdar. Foreign Ownership and Profitability: Property Rights, Control, and the Performance of Firms in Indian Industry. Journal of Law & Economics. 1999;42(1):209–238.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Electronic Journal Article • Author •
Title of journal article
•
Title of journal (this should be in italics)
• Year of publication
• Volume number •
(Issue number)
• Page numbers of the article
• Available from: URL (Include [Date of access]) or DOI (if available) • Example: M. Errami, H. Garner. A Tale of two Citations. Nature. 2008;451(7177): 397–399. Available from:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7177/full/451397a.html[Accessed 20th January 2015]
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Conference proceeding: individual paper •
Author
•
Title of conference paper followed by, In:
•
Editor/Organisation (if it is an editor always put (ed.) after the name)
• Title (this should be in italics) •
Place of publication
•
Publisher
• Year of publication •
Page numbers (use ‘p.’ before single and multiple page numbers)
M. Wittke. Design, Construction, Supervision and Long-Term Behaviour of Tunnels in Swelling Rock. In: Van Cotthem A, Charlier R, Thimus J-F, Tshibangu J-P. (eds.) Eurock 2006: multiphysics coupling and long term behaviour in rock
mechanics: Proceedings of the International Symposium of the International Society for Rock Mechanics, EUROCK 2006, 9–12 May 2006, Liège, Belgium. London: Taylor & Francis; 2006. p.211–216.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Pre-print journal articles It is likely you will find articles available online prior to being submitted to the peer review procedure and published in a journal. These articles are preprints and may be placed in an online repository or on a publisher’s website (but not in a specific journal issue).
•
Author/s
•
Title of journal article
•
Submitted to/To be published in (if this information is with the article)
•
Title of journal (in italics)
•
Name of repository (in italics)
•
[Preprint]
•
Year of writing
•
Available from: URL (Include [Date of access]) or DOI (if available)
•
Example: V. Montano, T. Jombart . An Eigenvalue Test for Spatial Principal Component Analysis. Arxiv [Preprint] 2017. Available from: doi.org/10.1101/151639[Accessed 23rd November 2017].
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Book: online/electronic •
Author/Editor (if it is an editor always put (ed.) after the name)
•
Title (this should be in italics)
•
Series title and number (if part of a series)
•
Edition (if not the first edition)
•
Place of publication (if there is more than one place listed, use the first named)
•
Publisher
•
Year of publication
•
Available from: URL
•
[Date of access]
Example: E. Grech. ABC of Interventional Cardiology. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley blackwell; 2011 Available from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/imperial/detail.action?docID=822522 [Accessed 6th July 2017].
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Book: print • Author/Editor (if it is an editor always put (ed.) after the name) • Title (this should be in italics) • Series title and number (if part of a series) • Edition (if not the first edition)
• Place of publication (if there is more than one place listed, use the first named) • Publisher •
Year of publication
Example: N. Simon, B. Menzies, M. Matthews. A Short Course in Soil and Rock Slope Engineering. London: Thomas Telford Publishing; 2001.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Email: personal
• Personal emails should be referenced as personal communication, unless you have permission from the sender and receiver to include their details in your reference list. • Sender • Email sent to • Name of receiver • Date, month and year of communication Example: M. Al- Tahan Email sent to: B. Davvaz. 13th May 2015.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Personal communication • Name of practitioner • Occupation • Personal communication • Date when the information was provided
Example: S. Mad. Engineering consultant. Personal communication. 26th March 2014.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Lecture/presentation • Name of lecturer/presenter • Title of lecture/presentation (this should be in italics)
• [Lecture/Presentation] • Title of module/degree course (if appropriate) • Name of institution or location
• Date of lecture/presentation Example: M. Al- Tahan. Tips for Writing a Thesis Senior. [Lecture] Lebanese International University. 14th November 2018.
How do you write your Bibliography/References? Web page/Website • Author/Editor (use the corporate author if no individual author or editor is named)
• Title (this should be in italics) • Available from: URL • [Date of access] Example: European Space Agency. Rosetta: Rendezvous with a Comet. Available from: http://rosetta.esa.int [Accessed 15th June 2015].
How do you write your Bibliography/References? • Math World citation E. Weisstein, Fibonacci Numbers—From MathWorld, A Wolfram Web Resource, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FibonacciNumber.html.
• Wikipedia citation Wikipedia contributors, Zeckendorf's theorem, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeckendorf's_theorem.
• Ph.D Dissertation or Master’s Thesis M. Al- Tahan, Braid Group Representations with High Degree, Ph.D. dissertation, Beirut Arab University, Lebanon, 2013.
What are the differences between References and Bibliography? References •
References usually come at the end of a text (essay or research report) and should contain only those works cited within the text. So, use the term 'References' to cover works cited, and 'Additional Bibliography' to refer to works read as general background.
• Bibliography is listing all the materials that have been consulted while writing an essay or a book. References, on the other hand, are those that have been referenced in your article or book. • Bibliography is not directly included in the text. References are those that are directly included in your actual text. • Both bibliography and references are arranged alphabetically. But a Reference list can also be arranged in Numeric style.
How do you cite? When you use another person’s work in your own work, either by referring to their ideas, or by including a direct quotation, you must acknowledge this in the text of your work. This acknowledgement is called a citation. Each piece of work which is cited in your text should have a unique number, assigned in the order of citation. If, in your text, you cite a piece of work more than once, the same citation number should be used. You can write the number in square brackets ([]). Example: Recent research [1] indicates that …. If you want to cite more than one piece of work at the same time, you will need to include the citation number for each piece of work. A hyphen should be used to link numbers which are inclusive, and a comma used where numbers are not consecutive. Example: For more details about topological groups, the reader may refer to [6, 7, 8, 9, 13] or For more details about topological groups, the reader may refer to [6- 9, 13].
Plagiarism Plagiarism is a form of scientific misconduct defined as authoring ideas or words produced by someone else or from one’s own previous publications and attempting to publish such work without properly citing the original author and publication. Plagiarism is easy for writers to avoid by simply not copying any printed sources and by writing original text in one’s own words, and, if paraphrasing, citing the source.
How do you avoid Plagiarism?
Ask permission
When you are in doubt, cite Write in your own words Don’t copy
Don’t recycle images, figures, tables or text from one of your own previously published papers without citing
