THESIS ON INFORMATICS AND SYSTEM ENGINEERING [number
inserted by printing office]
[NAME OF THE THESIS]
[AUTHOR’S NAME]
TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Faculty of Information Technology
[name of department]
This dissertation was accepted for the defence of the degree of Philosophy
in [choose one: Computer Science/Computer and Systems
Engineering/Electronics and Telecommunication] on [month, date, year.]
Supervisor:
[Title. Name]
[Institute]
Tallinn University of Technology
Tallinn, Estonia
Opponents:
[Prof. Name
Institute
Department
University]
[Prof. Name
Institute
Department
University]
Defence of the thesis: [Month Day, Year, Tallinn]
Declaration:
Hereby I declare that this doctoral thesis, my original investigation and
achievement, submitted for the doctoral degree at Tallinn University of
Technology has not been submitted for any academic degree.
Insert those logos if you have got support from the IT Doctoral
school
Copyright: [Author’s name, year]
ISSN [number, added by publisher]
ISBN [number, added by publisher] (publication)
SBN [number, added by publisher] (PDF)
2
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................ 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (OPTIONAL) ......................................................... 5
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS ................................................................................. 6
OTHER RELATED PUBLICATIONS (OPTIONAL)........................................ 6
AUTHOR’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE PUBLICATIONS (OPTIONAL) ...... 7
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 9
CONTRIBUTION OF THE THESIS (OPTIONAL) ........................................ 10
Abbreviations (optional) ...................................................................................... 8
Terms (optional) .................................................................................................. 8
Symbols (optional) ............................................................................................... 8
1
HEADING 1 (MAIN PART OF THE THESIS) ......................................... 11
1.1.
Background/related work (optional) .................................................... 11
1.2.
Heading 2 (Main Part) ......................................................................... 11
1.2.1.
Heading 3...................................................................................... 12
1.3. Summary/Conclusions ............................................................................ 12
2
HEADING 1 (MAIN PART OF THE THESIS) ......................................... 13
2.1. Most common mistakes .......................................................................... 13
2.2. Notes on Ethical Writing ........................................................................ 14
2.3. Examples................................................................................................. 14
3
HEADING 1 (MAIN PART OF THE THESIS) ......................................... 15
CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................... 16
REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 17
KOKKUVÕTE .................................................................................................. 18
Appendix A ........................................................................................................ 19
Appendix B ........................................................................................................ 20
Appendix C ........................................................................................................ 21
3
ABSTRACT
Abstract is similar to the abstract of a research paper but more thorough
(advisable length is 1-2 pages). It briefly revisits the content of the thesis,
including the motivation for this work, novelty with respect to the previous
work, problem definition, methodology, results and conclusions.
4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (OPTIONAL)
Here you can acknowledge your supervisor, co-workers, family
members, etc. for support. Do not forget also to mention all the funding
agencies that have supported your work.
5
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
The work of this thesis is based on the following publications:
A
B
C
D
[Paper 1]
[Paper 2]
[Paper 3]
[Etc.]
The minimum quality requirement is that your work is based on at least 3
papers, published or in print. You can list as many publications as you consider
relevant but normally the thesis is not based on more than 4-5 publications that
are most significant. The less significant ones, or where you have yourself
contributed less, can be listed under Other Related Publications.
OTHER RELATED PUBLICATIONS
(OPTIONAL)
List of papers that this thesis is not directly based on but where you have
contributed as an author.
6
AUTHOR’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE
PUBLICATIONS
This chapter is not mandatory but advisable. It has to become clear from the
thesis to what extent and how has the author contributed to the listed
publications. The contributions are for example defining the research problem,
defining methodology, building the prototype, developing software, analysing
data, writing the paper, etc.
Contribution to the papers in this thesis are:
A [e.g. developing the model, contributed to experimental design,
performing experiments, co-writing the paper, writing the section 1.2.
of the paper, etc. ]
B []
C []
7
Abbreviations (optional)
Explanations of abbreviations used in the thesis.
Terms (optional)
Explanations of terms used in the thesis.
Symbols (optional)
Explanations of symbols used in the thesis.
List of Figures (optional)
List of Tables (optional)
8
INTRODUCTION
This template of thesis of TUT IT Faculty will help you to get your thesis
written down according to the TUT regulations and IT Faculty’s best practices.
It is based on and already formatted according to [1, 2] which defines the
outline, typeset and structure of theses in TUT1.
A PhD thesis in IT Faculty is a novel and independent scientific work in the
area of information and communication technologies. With a thesis you should
demonstrate that as the result of your PhD studies you have became an
independent researcher, capable of doing scientific work on your own, having a
good knowledge of the state of the art, trends, methods and publications
practices in your area of expertise, along with the ability to think critically and
self-assess your own work.
There are 3 options for structuring your thesis:
1. Monograph style. Most conventional is representing the thesis as a
monolithic text, logically structured with opening sections, review of
the field, methodology, experimental findings, conclusions and
discussion. Notice that in this case you can also include unpublished
material you consider relevant, for example unpublished experimental
results, thorough descriptions of prototypes, etc. In TUT it is still
required that the publications that the thesis is based on are added in
Appendices.
2. Thesis by publications. The publications published or in print are
preceded by an overview article that ties the publications together in a
logical structure, provides the wider context of the thesis and
emphasizes the main findings. The basic difference with the previous
option is that the methodology, experiments and results, found in papers
are not repeated in the overview part. It is recommended to use this
structure of the thesis if the thesis is based on strong publications with
major contributions from the author in each and the publications can
well be tied together in a logical structure. The publications should be
detailed enough so that the reader will find the technical details about
methodology, results, analysis, etc. there.
3. Peer-reviewed monograph, which is independently published as a
book in international press. This option is very seldom used in
engineering if ever.
The introduction of thesis should present the wider context of your work, stating
its significance and novelty as opposed to previous works, define the research
problem, and the technical approach (methodology).
1
TUT Press accepts .docx files but also .pdf files. If you are writing in LaTex, convert your
manuscript to .pdf before sending.
9
You should define the goals and/or claims of your work. Later on, in
Conclusions you refer back to your problem statement so it can be verified if
your goals got reached/ problem solved/system verified according to your initial
problem statement.
You should demonstrate that you have a good overview of your research field,
therefore it is expected the thesis to contain a large number of citations to
previous work. A different option of the thesis structure would be to keep the
introduction rather short and general, and give the thorough overview of
background in the opening (sub)sections of your main body text.
A good self-check is to ask yourself if the introduction can be read as a separate
document and still be understood what the thesis is about.
Theses should be written in English, both UK and US styles are acceptable but
only one style has to be used throughout the thesis. It is highly recommended to
use a language editor to proofread your thesis. The faculty’s quality assurance
committee sends most of theses back to the authors with the request for
language correction.
CONTRIBUTION OF THE THESIS (OPTIONAL)
This section is optional but highly recommended. Clearly state the contributions
of your thesis as a list of items, e.g.:
1.
2.
3.
4.
a novel method of solving an old problem
a new problem statement
a new conclusion from data analysis
etc, etc.
Alternatively, this list of contributions can be presented in Introduction, if it
better suits with the structure of the thesis.
The most common mistake of why the quality assurance committee of IT
Faculty sends the draft back to the candidate is, that we cannot make sense what
the novel contributions of the thesis are.
10
1
HEADING 1 (MAIN PART OF THE THESIS)
If you are structuring your thesis as the collection of publications (Option 2),
these parts of the thesis can be omitted and followed instead immediately by
conclusions and other mandatory parts of the thesis.
If you are using Option 1, here starts the main part of your thesis, which is
structured in a logical way comprising several sections. There are several ways
of structuring the main part:
1.
Each section can be devoted to one separate publication, thoroughly
describing the problem definition, methodology, result, analysis and all other
relevant parts of this paper. If you are using this option, state in the introductory
part “this section describes/is based on the work in Publication A” or something
similar.
2.
Each section can describe one aspect of your scientific work: e.g.
methodology is described in one section and all the results are represented in
another. Each section then quite closely corresponds to the sections of a
conventional research paper.
3.
Any other logical structure that makes your thesis easy to follow.
Every section of the main part should start with an introductory paragraph that
briefly describes what the reader expects to find in this section.
1.1.
Background/related work (optional)
Some authors prefer to give a thorough literature review in the main body of the
thesis instead of the Introduction and keep the Introduction rather general
instead. In this case it is advisable to title the first subsection as Background,
Overview, Related Work or something similar. Also, once you have given the
overview of the related work, state clearly the novelty and significance of your
own contribution. You can easily also have a separate subsection titled:
Contributions, Novel findings, etc. Bringing out your contributions as a list of
bullet points is always a good idea.
1.2.
Heading 2 (Main Part)
The further substructures of your sections depend on how is it most convenient
to present your work in an understandable manner. For the better overview of
your thesis, partitioning every section to subsections is advisable.
11
Sample
1
Sample
2
Sample
3
Figure 1.1 Example chart, figure, graph, picture etc. – title below the figure
Table 1.1 Example of a table – title above the table
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
45
34
53
23
43
12
53
1.2.1. Heading 3
Sample text Sample text Sample text Sample text Sample text Sample text
Highlighted text example
1.3. Summary/Conclusions
It is advisable to conclude each section with conclusions or summary about the
current section, e.g. the main findings of the work presented in this section (ask
yourself: what should the reader understand or remember of what was told in
this section).
12
2
HEADING 1 (MAIN PART OF THE THESIS)
2.1. Most common mistakes
Most of the theses in IT Faculty are sent back by the quality assurance
committee of the faculty for major or minor revision. The most common
reasons are the following:
The contribution of the thesis is not clear. From the thesis text it is
not evident what is the scientific contribution of this work to science and
technology. It can either reflect the fact that the contribution is too small and
therefore does not warrant a PhD degree or that the author cannot bring it out. In
the latter case it is unfortunately also a sign of the lack of scientific thinking of
the candidate. Therefore pay attention to the Contributions section of the Thesis
and make sure you clearly bring out the novelty of your work.
The author’s contribution is not clear. Usually, publications in IT
Faculty are co-authored by several researchers, including the supervisor.
However, a thesis is your own personal intellectual contribution to the body of
knowledge, and therefore it has to be clear how and to what extent you have
contributed yourself and if this is sufficient to demonstrate the ability to conduct
independent research. Therefore pay attention to the section Author’s
Contribution to the Publications so that your own personal commitment
becomes clear.
The Introduction is too specific. The introduction should put your
work in a wider context of science and technology development and maybe also
societal and economic needs. It should become clear why this work was worth
undertaking and what important problems would it solve.
The novelty with respect to the related work is not clear. Sometimes
author’s make claims of novelty but do not appropriately cite the previous work
to substantiate their claims. Often the thesis gets sent back to the candidate with
the request to elaborate the Related Work section. Moreover, as the PhD
candidate, you should also demonstrate that you have sufficient knowledge in
your area of research. It is hard to give an estimate of the number of citations
but usually it is a 3-digit figure that persuades the opponents that you are
familiar with your research area and therefore can claim the novelty with
respect to other works.
Conclusions do not conclude. Often the Conclusions section is
actually a Summary or Abstract. Instead, Conclusions should be your own
substantiated judgement of the process and the results of the work that also
reflects your ability of critical thinking.
13
Structuring of the thesis is not clearly understandable. Sometimes
the structure of the thesis makes it hard to follow. Therefore it is advisable to
start every Section of your main body text with the introductory paragraph,
explaining what is this section about and end with a Summary or Conclusions.
The partitioning of the thesis should make it easy to follow.
English needs to be improved. Most of the theses are sent back for
language revision. It is highly recommended to proofread your thesis by a
native speaker or a language editor. If you are not a native speaker, do not
expect to be able to correct your own mistakes by proofreading your text by
yourself as you are probably unaware of the mistakes you make.
2.2. Notes on Ethical Writing
As the PhD candidate we assume you are aware of the commonly accepted
principles of scientific writing, authorship policies, plagiarism and selfplagiarism. We therefore assume that the contribution you claim really are your
own, you have appropriately cited all the text and ideas of other authors,
acknowledged the contributions of other people to your work, have asked
permissions from other authors or publishers to re-use their figures in your
thesis, etc. More information about authorship policies and ethical writing can
be found on IT Faculty’s web pages for doctoral studies.
2.3. Examples
Here are some examples of theses defended in IT Faculty:
Anton Tšepurov, “Hardware modeling for design verification and debug”, [3],
available online at: http://digi.lib.ttu.ee/i/?913
Kairit Sirts, “Parametric Bayesian Models for Computational Morphology”, [4],
available online at http://digi.lib.ttu.ee/i/?2447
Taavi Salumäe, “Flow-sensitive robotic fish: from concept to experiments”[5],
available online at http://digi.lib.ttu.ee/i/?2447
Helena Kruus, “Optimization of Built-In Self-Test in Digital Systems” [6],
available online at http://digi.lib.ttu.ee/i/?615
Gunnar Piho, “Archetypes Based Techniques for Development of Domains,
Requirements and Software”, [7], available online at http://digi.lib.ttu.ee/i/?636
14
3
HEADING 1 (MAIN PART OF THE THESIS)
15
CONCLUSIONS
This section should again summarise the main findings of the thesis and present
conclusions drawn about the work. Make sure you understand what is the
difference between Abstract/Summary and Conclusions. Summary is a brief
statement of the main points of your work and its results, whereas Conclusions2
are your own logically substantiated interpretations of those results that should
also reflect your ability of critical thinking. It usually explains whether the
defined problem got successfully solved, if the research hypothesis got
proven/rejected, if the developed software/hardware prototype got successfully
verified or to what extent it did. All those claims of your results should be
substantiated. Therefore it is a bad idea just to write that “the results show that
this work was successful” or “the results are very good”. The main purpose of
this chapter is to reflect your own ability of critical thinking (as a prerequisite of
you becoming an independent researcher).
You may also name this chapter “Conclusions and Discussion” or add a
separate chapter of Discussions, where you can reflect upon the process of the
development, appropriateness of the chosen methods, possible direction of
future research etc.
2
Conclusions: a judgment or decision reached by reasoning
16
REFERENCES
References are usually in IEEE style but this is not mandatory if a different
citation style suits you better. If you use numbered references, they should
prefarably be listed in the order of appearance. It is advisable to use some
citation tool, such as EndNote, Mendeley or BibTex for LaTex users because
arranging the citations manually is very laborous with a large number of
references.
[1]
Doktoritööde vormistamise kord, Tallinna Tehnikaülikool Rektori
käskkiri nr. 101., 2014.
[2]
Procedure for Writing Doctoral Thesis, Tallinn University of
Technology, Rector's directive No. 101, 2014.
[3]
A. Tšepurov, "Hardware modeling for design verification and debug,"
PhD PhD thesis, IT Faculty, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, 2013
[4]
K. Sirts, "Parametric Bayesian Models for Computational
Morphology.," PhD PhD thesis, IT Faculty, Tallinn University of Technology,
Tallinn, 2015.
[5]
T. Salumäe, "Flow-sensitive robotic fish: from concept to experiments,"
PhD PhD thesis, IT Faculty, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, 2015.
[6]
H. Kruus, "Optimization of Built-In Self-Test in Digital Systems," PhD
PhD thesis, IT Faculty, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn 2011.
[7]
G. Piho, "Archetypes Based Techniques for Development of Domains,
Requirements and Software," PhD PhD, IT Faculty, Tallinn University of
Technology, Tallinn, 2011.
17
KOKKUVÕTE
Thesis summary in Estonian, it can be the translation of Abstract to Estonian.
18
Appendix A
Article A (the published version). Do not copy it into the thesis file but send to
the publishing office as a separate document.
Notice that you also need a permission from the publisher of your paper to
reprint it in thesis. The copyright agreement you have signed with the publisher
may already include the exception that permits reprinting the paper for a
doctoral thesis. If not, you need to contact your publisher and ask for
permission. Open Access publication naturally can be reproduced without
permission.
19
Appendix B
Appendices can be also used to attach relevant technical information, such as
test results, source code, questionnaires used for surveys, etc. etc. Send to the
publishing office as a separate document.
20
Appendix C
PhD thesis submission and defense in IT Faculty.
21
CURRICULUM VITAE
Personal data
Name:
Date of birth:
Place of birth:
Citizenship:
Contact data
Address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Education
20.. – 20.. Tallinn University of Technology PhD
20.. – 20.. MSC,
20.. – 20.. BSc
19.. – 20.. Highschool
Language competence
English Fluent
Professional employment
2000 -…
22
ELULOOKIRJELDUS
Isikuandmed
Nimi:
Sünniaeg:
Sünnikoht:
Kodakondsus:
Kontaktandmed
Aadress:
Telefon:
E-mail:
Hariduskäik
20.. – 20.. Tallinna Tehnikaülikool PhD
20.. – 20.. MSC
20.. – 20.. BSc
19.. – 20.. Keskharidus
Keelteoskus
Inglise keel Kõrgtase
Teenistuskäik
2000 -…
23
DISSERTATIONS DEFENDED AT
TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY ON
…
List of dissertation received from TUT publishing house. This will be added by
the publishing office when the thesis gets printed.
24