Thesis Formatting & Completion Guidelines
Dissertation Formatting Guidelines and Miscellaneous Completion Information
Contact the department's Graduate Program Administrator (Vicki) for any questions on this information.
I. Defense Announcement Posting Required
College rules state that a Notice of Final Public Oral Examination must be posted at least two weeks before a defense takes place. Each student is required to complete the template found here and submit it electronically to Lauren Hardwig and Vicki Finney for posting.
II. Formatting your dissertation
The guidelines for proper formatting of your dissertation are now posted on our College website at this location. All students are required to read and follow these guidelines. You will find that most of the actual formatting rules will be found in the ProQuest/UMI Document form that is linked to these guidelines (see guidelines section 7).
Also linked to these guidelines you will find templates for the Thesis Title Page and Thesis Signature Page. Note that there are two signature page templates provided - one for joint degrees and one for regular (non-joint) degrees. Provide the information EXACTLY as shown on these templates, using the same spacing. Keep the font consistent with the font used in your thesis.
Note also that the lines are to remain on the signature page as they appear on the template. In other words type your thesis title, name, and department/s on top of the lines. Do not remove the lines.
Some key "Do's & Don'ts" when formatting your thesis:
a. Do acknowledge your financial support on the Acknowledgements page.
b. Don't list your thesis committee anywhere except on the Acknowledgements page.
c. If copywriting your thesis, do include a separate page with the copyright information.
d. On the title page, do use only the date (date = month & year) that your PhD will officially be conferred. For example, December 2010 graduates will use 'December, 2010' even if the final thesis was submitted much earlier. To state it another way, the only official months in which Carnegie Mellon confers degrees are May, August, and December so these are only the months that may be used on the title page.
As a final check, you may want to use the "Department Coordinator Checklist" found here. This is the checklist that each department's coordinator will use to verify that a thesis is ready to go to the Dean's Office for final approval.
III. Submission of your final disertation to the department and required documentation
After successful completion of the thesis defense, the following documents are required by the department before final certification of the PhD degree:
a. Final dissertation. The final dissertation must be single-sided and unbound, produced on high quality paper such as 32 lb. paper stock, acid-free, archival-grade, photographic-quality.
b. Signature Pages. 4 signature pages signed by the chair of your thesis committee must accompany your final dissertation. Templates for the signature page are provided on the college website in the thesis formatting guidelines (see item II above). You are responsible for obtaining your chair's signature on all four signature pages, the department coordinator will obtain the rest.
c. Survey of Earned Doctorates Form. All students receiving a doctorate from a U.S. university must complete this form. Coordinated through the Office of Scientific and Engineering Personnel of the National Research Council in Washington, D.C., the survey responses become part of a national data bank dating from 1920 to present. Survey information is used to serve policymakers at federal, state and university levels. The most recent form is available at the Hub's website under Forms and is also available here for your convenience.
d. Copy of your dissertation on a CD.
e. ProQuest Form. This is the form mentioned above in Section II that you will use to find specific dissertation formatting guidelines such as margins, suggested paper type, etc. You will also need to complete, sign, and submit this form as well.
On the form you must select a publishing option on Page 4. There are four publishing options from which to choose - two Open Access and two Traditional. If you select an Open Access publishing option, there is a $95 charge. You must include a money order or check made payable to ProQuest for this amount. If you select a Traditional option, there is no charge. Note: The ProQuest form shows different fee amounts for these publishing options. Disregard the ProQuest fee amounts shown on the form, and use the fee guidelines just outlined -- that is, no fee for the traditional publishing options, or a $95 fee for the open access publishing options.
You will need to include an additional copy of your title page for ProQuest and an additional copy of your abstract. ProQuest requests that the abstract be 350 words or less for publishing on their website, but it is not mandatory. If your abstract is over 350 words, ProQuest will stop at 350 words and add an ellipsis. If you like, you can include a shortened version of your abstract specifically for ProQuest.
Copyright. If you elect to copyright your thesis through ProQuest be sure select the copyright option on the form and include a money order or check payable to ProQuest in the amount of $55 (the fee ProQuest charges to file the copyright). You are not obligated to use ProQuest for copyright. There are free copyright services available through the web such as creativecommons.org. Regardless of whether you choose to publish with ProQuest, you must still complete the ProQuest form and select one of the publishing options.
You'll note that ProQuest offers a service to bind your thesis copies. We do not recommend that you use ProQuest for binding for two reasons: 1) the university library is responsible for sending all CMU theses to ProQuest, but they only send them a few times a year. Thus if you have elected to use ProQuest for binding your thesis, you may experience significant delays in receiving the bound copies; 2) as ProQuest is not part of CMU and not the preferred vendor for thesis binding, we have no way to easily monitor or check on the progress of this service. The department uses a different company for thesis binding - the HF Group, see Section V below for more details.
f. Ph.D. Dissertations Checklist (created by CMU Libraries)
This checklist is to be included along with the ProQuest form. Click here for the checklist.
Research Showcase option. CMU Libraries now offers students the option of entering their doctoral dissertations into the CMU Libraries Reserach Showcase. The Research Showcase is found on the library website and provides library users with a digital copy of your dissertation. This service is free of charge, but you must provide an additional cd containing a pdf version of your dissertation when you submit your thesis documentation to the department. This cd will be sent to the library. More information on the Research Showcase is available here.
IV. Dissertation Submission Dates.
Final dissertation submission deadlines set by our Dean's Office are as follows:
May graduation: Final dissertation(with 4 signature pages signed by thesis chair), ProQuest form, Survey of Earned Doctorates form, and a CD with a pdf of the thesis for the department's use, must be submitted to the department 10 business days before the final grade deadline; and to the Dean's Office 2 days before the final grade deadline.
August and December graduation: Final dissertation (with 4 signature pages signed by thesis chair), ProQuest form, Survey of Earned Doctorates form, and a CD with a pdf of the thesis for the department's use, must be submitted to the department 2 days before the final grade deadline; and to the Dean's Office on the final grade deadline.
V. Dissertation Copies & Binding.
Once the final dissertation and required documentation have been submitted to the department, at some point each student is to provide 3 (or more*) additional unbound copies of their thesis to Vicki that will be sent to the bindery company, the HF Group in Chesterland, Ohio (preferably two-sided copies). So that there is no expense to you for these 3 additional copies, upon request we will provide a direct bill account number that can be used at the university copy center or Kinkos. When the bound theses are returned from the HF Group one will be given to you, one will be given to the Department Head, and one will be retained in the department.
*If you wish to receive additional bound copies for personal use, we will be happy to coordinate the binding process. You would just need to provide the additional unbound copies to Vicki. There will be a $22 per book charge payable to the department once the bound copies are received back from the HF Group (at that time you will be contacted by the department via email regarding payment and shipping logistics).
