How to write a good PhD thesis? - (Dec/06/2007 )

I am writing up my thesis.

I am wondering...

1. the tips of writing a good PhD thesis
2. things not to put in a thesis
3. things need to put in a thesis
4. how to write a good results section


Thanks in advance.

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i was going to post the same topic waiting with you

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Ah-ha! I am glad that you are almost there. There are many dissertations you can freely access nowadays. After you have read a few, you will find that they all look alike in style.

Basically, You tell people a story about your work. First a few pages are just formality. You start with an introduction chapter in a form of a most thorough review that you can write on the background information, significance of these studies, what have been done, what have not, various subjects related to all your works, about the model systems that have been used so far, and how did you approach these problems. This is followed by several of your published papers glue together with some transition sentences, such as why did you do that, so on and so forth. You finish it up with a summery chapter that highlights all the work that you have done and gives a general future direction that you think it should be done. Then you thank the whole world for making this possible, (dont forget about some of us, by the way ;-)). Lastly attach your CV.
Remember you need to have a central theme and do best you can to get several separated works look cohesive and consistent to each other.
Find ways to present your data in most clear, concise way that you can. This is less problematic if all the data is published or at least in the manuscript form, because others have worked on that as well, the work load for this part is not as much.
Even with all my works written, it still took me more half a year to complete. I am a slow writer. Good luck!

Put a stop on your temptation to do more experiment, that could take you forever to finish it up.

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Thank you genehunter-1 for the tips.

Of course, I will put the members of the Bioforum in the acknowledgement and a photo of me (minnie mouse wearing a lab gown) holding an electronic pipette.

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speaking of PhD thesis's... how's Fred's thesis coming along?

V

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Hi Minnie,

I might not be the best person for advise on thesis, as I took a shortcut to write my thesis.


Have the introduction clear like why are you doing this project. Make sure its easy to read. Give headings and subheadings in the topic. Also you are not writing a review so take care about that in the introduction.

Discuss the results i.e. the interpretation, don't repeat what you wrote in the results section. Discuss how your results and other published data might correlate.

these are just few suggestions.

Good Luck !!!

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I don't think I can help much on type of content as I think your thesis is a different style to mine.
However here's my advice- if there are guidelines on the format of your thesis as in margin sizes, page number etc. Format your word document before you start- trust me....it saves a lot of time when it comes to the final editing part and what not. It was the best piece of advice I was given for thesis writing.

Good Luck to all those writing up! remember there is a world out there away from your desk, take a walk when it all gets too much.

Lost

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it strongly depends on your data/results; are you at the end of your thesis work? do you have a good story which means does your results explain a biological context? is there some novelity? did you really show what you like to maintain?

discriminate important and less important data; most important are the discussion, and the summary; so be careful in these sections;

for yourself, try to draft your findings in only a few (2 or 3) sentences!

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well considering my own manuscript, i wrote a 2 chapter introduction as my research covered RNAi and polymerase III transcription.
In general, i consider that each original reference is better than reviews. Of course i referred some reviews to help the referees and future students to find relevant reviews on the topics. Surprisingly, friends who wrote their thesis in same time told me that the number of references should be limited to 300. More than this may be considered as far too much and assimilate as not all read. I put more references, totally assuming that for some references i would not be able to remember all details. The referees told me that it was nicer to put al those. see what your boss considers at best.

As said by the bearer, the exercise to sum up the results in 3-4 sentences help to find the line to follow up to get the thesis story. The results should be following this line and it’s easier to read. In general features, it’s easier to deal with modifications and figures, if you put the text on right pages, and figures on the left page. Put table of abbreviations and table of figures, and the introduction should not be more than 40% of total manuscript.Referees told me the material and method section is neglected nowadays. So they ask me to add some exp on this section.

I give you the example of my introduction section. i worked different ways.
For polymerase III, i started with historical overview, and features of the three ARN polymerases. I then goes for RNA polymerase III and analyzed the features of the enzyme the genes and factors involved. The strategy followed was : what’s this ? What’s the role ? What helps ?

The reviewers liked the small italic paragraphs which summed up the parts.

For RNAi, i worked slight differently.
I added an historical approach followed by the actors involved (miRNA, siRNA, rasiRNA, piRNA and tasiRNA) mixing the features and the roles. I finally ended with therapeutical approaches which ended the introduction and give future hopes.

good luck with writing the manuscript. Coffe and/or tea will be your friends now

cheers
fred

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Hi Minnie Mouse,

I have three additional suggestions.

Firstly, a document of large size can be troublesome and you may end up with a corrupt file that e.g. cannot be opened or saved. You may want to consider adding figures to your Word document as icons only. Thereby your file stays of limited size while you write on it (while you can already work in figure descriptions and make use of automatic numbering) and you can add the figures after corrections of the text.

Secondly I received the advise to write the introductory chapter last. Thereby you can make it most relevant to your work.

Finally keep the word limit in mind and chose carefully what experiments you describe in your thesis. Maybe you can create the best piece of work by leaving out some less fruitful experiments and concentrate on the main findings.

Best of luck!

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