Thesis content and style

The University has detailed guidance about the style, formatting and sequence of material standards for your thesis.

The University of York requires its PhD postgraduate researchers to submit an e-thesis, rather than a printed thesis. This means that you should take particular care to ensure that your thesis is accessible and easy for anyone to read. See guidance on making your thesis accessible.

Journal-style thesis guidance

The York Graduate Research School (YGRS) has recently published guidance about submitting a journal-style thesis which allows PGRs to submit a PhD thesis that incorporates one or more chapters in a format suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Journal-style theses are not the same as a PhD by publication, which is a format that allows for candidates to retrospectively identify papers that can be brought together, with integrated chapters, to constitute an original contribution to knowledge. Instead, journal-style theses represent an opportunity for PGRs to prospectively include papers as chapters alongside more conventional monograph chapters. The ‘papers’ need not be necessarily published. However, a journal-style thesis must bring together papers in a coherent fashion and represent a body of work that is equivalent in originality, quality, and volume as a monograph thesis.

In line with UoY policy on thesis format the Department of Health Sciences permits journal-style theses. There are no specific requirements about the make-up of this type of thesis for the Department of Health Sciences over and above those set out by YGRS. However the department has agreed that the following guidance should be followed when considering submitting a journal-style thesis:

Number of papers and authorship

• We expect that candidates who submit a journal-style thesis will normally include up to three or more chapters as papers. These papers might typically represent three data chapters or reports of empirical work.

• All papers submitted as chapters must be clearly the candidate’s work. This will typically be evidenced by being first author. Candidates must include a statement of authorship where there has been collaboration in the conceptualisation and/or research, and/or the write up.
  
  

Presentation and integration of papers in journal-style theses

• Papers included as part of a journal-style thesis need not be published but the publication status must be recorded at the start of each paper/chapter.

• It is expected that candidates will include sufficient supplementary and/or additional material to enhance readability, comprehension, and completeness of included papers. This might take the form of supplementary materials submitted to a journal (or written for this purpose), or additional material that is not submitted to a journal (or written for this purpose), such as further information on methods.

• If the substantive chapters (i.e. papers) do not include sufficient elements of a literature review and/or sufficient details about methods candidates should consider whether it will be more efficient to instead include additional monograph chapters that address these elements.
  
  

Timing, notification, and external permissions

• Candidates should discuss plans to submit a journal-style thesis as soon as possible, ideally before first progression and certainly before second progression.

• The Graduate Chair and Student Services should be notified of any decision to submit a journal-style thesis and it should be recorded on SkillsForge as part of a supervision and/or TAP record.

• Candidates can change their mind about the format of the thesis up to the point of submission.

• It is up to candidates to check with funders, sponsors, and any other external stakeholder if they permit journal-style theses.

• Candidates need to check if the funder/sponsor has an open access policy that will influence the choice of journals

See also the University’s guidance on practical issues and how to resolve them and examination and post-examination changes.

Referencing

The Harvard referencing style is used by the Department of Health Sciences. 

Training

In addition to online guidance on preparing and formatting your thesis, the University also offers courses to help you through Information Services and through YGRS.