how to cite phd thesis in latex

Guide to BibTeX Type PhdThesis

BibTeX is a reference management tool that is commonly used in LaTeX documents. The “phdthesis” BibTeX type is used for PhD dissertations or theses. In this guide, we will explain the required and optional fields for the “phdthesis” BibTeX type.

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Required Fields

The “phdthesis” BibTeX type requires the following fields:

• author : The author of the thesis.
• title : The title of the thesis.
• school : The name of the institution that awarded the degree.
• year : The year the degree was awarded.

Optional Fields

In addition to the required fields, the “phdthesis” BibTeX type also has a number of optional fields that can be used to provide additional information. These fields include:

• type : The type of the thesis, such as “PhD thesis” or “Master’s thesis”.
• address : The location of the institution.
• month : The month the thesis was submitted.
• note : Any additional information about the thesis.

Here is an example of how to use the “phdthesis” BibTeX type:

In this example, the BibTeX entry defines a PhD thesis authored by John Smith titled “An Analysis of Example”. The degree was awarded in 2022 by the University of Example, and the thesis was submitted in June in Example City, CA. The type of the thesis is specified as “PhD thesis”, and a note is included that provides a URL for the thesis.

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Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX

The bibliography and list of references.

The Graduate School requires a Bibliography which includes all the literature cited for the complete thesis or dissertation. Quoting from the Graduate School’s Guidelines for the Format of Theses and Dissertations :

“Every thesis in Standard Format must contain a Bibliography which lists all the sources used or consulted in writing the entire thesis and is placed at the very end of the work. The complete citations are arranged alphabetically by last name of the author. Individual citations are not numbered. No abbreviations in titles of published works will be accepted. The full title of a book, journal, website, proceedings, or any other published work must be italicized or underlined. Citations must follow standards set by the style manual that the student is using. The bibliography for URI theses is not broken into categories.”

The List of References is not required by the Graduate School, but is the style commonly used in Engineering, Mathematics, and many of the Sciences. It consists of a numbered list of the sources used or consulted in writing the thesis in the order that they are referenced in the text. There can be either one List of References for the entire thesis, or a List of References at the end of each chapter.

Both the Bibliography and the List of References will be generated by the urithesis LaTeX class. All you need to do is add information about your sources to the references.bib file, which is a database containing all of the necessary information about the references, then cite the reference in your thesis using the \cite{} command.

Generating the Bibliography and References

The bibliography and list of references are generated by running BibTeX. To generate the bibliography, load the file thesisbib.tex into your editor, then run BibTeX on it.

If each chapter has its own list of references, you will need to run BibTeX on each chapter to update its list of references. If there is one list of references for the whole thesis (because you used the oneref option, you will only need to run BibTeX on the top level file thesis.tex .

How to Add a Bibliography Entry

When we want to refer to a source in the thesis, we place an entry for that source in the file references.bib , then cite the source in the thesis with the \cite{LABEL} command. The syntax for an entry in the references.bib file is of the form:

ENTRYTYPE is the type of bibliographic entry such as Book , Article , or TechReport , that this entry describes. At the end of this page is a list of all possible entry types .

LABEL is a unique string that is used to refer to this entry in the body of the thesis when using the \cite{LABEL} command.

The FIELDNAMEn entries are the fields that describe this entry, (ie. author, title, pages, year, etc.). Each entry type has certain required fields and optional fields. See the list of all entry types for a description of the available fields.

As an example, suppose we have a paper from a conference proceedings that we want to cite. First we make an entry in the our references.bib file of the form:

We then cite this source in the text of our thesis with the command \cite{re:toolan:as03} . This will generate a Bibliography entry that looks something like:

and a List of References entry that looks something like:

Types of List of References

The Graduate School requires that the bibliography is always at the end of the thesis and sorted alphabetically by author, therefore there is no options that affect it. The list of references is optional, therefore there are a few different ways that it can created.

By default a separate list of references appears at the end of each chapter, and are sorted by the order that they are cited in that chapter. The option oneref (see options ) will create a single list of references for the whole thesis, which due to the requirements of the Graduate School, will appear after the last chapter and before any appendices.

The option aparefs will cite references using the APA style, which is the last name of the author and year of publication, such as (Toolan, 2006), instead of the default IEEE style, which is a number, such as [1]. This option will also sort the references alphabetically by author, instead of in order of citation. The options oneref and aparefs can be used together to create a single list of references using the APA style.

Supported Bibliography Entry Types

The following is a list of all the entry types that can be used. Click on the desired type to see a detailed description of how to use that type.

• Article – An article from a journal or magazine
• Book – A book with an explicit publisher
• InBook – A part of a book, such as a chapter or selected page(s)
• InCollection – A part of a book having its own title
• Booklet – Printed and bound works that are not formally published
• Manual – Technical documentation
• InProceedings – An article in a conference proceedings
• Proceedings – The entire proceedings of a conference
• MastersThesis – A Master’s thesis
• PhDThesis – A Ph.D. dissertation
• TechReport – A report published by a school or other institution
• Unpublished – A document that has not been formally published
• Electronic – An internet reference like a web page
• Patent – A patent or patent application
• Periodical – A magazine or journal
• Standard – Formally published standard
• Misc – For use when nothing else fits

Articles that have not yet been published can be handled as a misc type with a note. Sometimes it is desirable to put extra information into the month field such as the day, or additional months. This is accomplished by using the BIBTEX concatenation operator “#“:

Example .bib using this type:

Books may have authors, editors or both. Example .bib using this type:

Inbook is used to reference a part of a book, such as a chapter or selected page(s). The type field can be used to override the word chapter (for which IEEE uses the abbreviation “ch.”) when the book uses parts, sections, etc., instead of chapters

Incollection is used to reference part of a book having its own title. Like book , incollection supports the series, chapter and pages fields. Also, the type field can be used to override the word chapter.

Booklet is used for printed and bound works that are not formally published. A primary difference between booklet and unpublished is that the former is/was distributed by some means. Booklet is rarely used in bibliographies.

Technical documentation is handled by the manual entry type.

References of papers in conference proceedings are handled by the inproceedings or conference entry type. These two types are functionally identical and can be used interchangeably. Example .bib using this type:

It is rare to need to reference an entire conference proceedings, but, if necessary, the proceedings entry type can be used to do so.

Master’s (or minor) theses can be handled with the mastersthesis entry type. The optional type field can be used to override the words “Master’s thesis” if a different designation is desired:

The phdthesis entry type is used for Ph.D. dissertations (major theses). Like mastersthesis , the type field can be used to override the default designation. Example .bib using this type:

Techreport is used for technical reports. The optional type field can be used to override the default designation “Tech. Rep.” Example .bib using this type:

The unpublished entry type is used for documents that have not been formally published. IEEE typically just uses “unpublished” for the required note field.

The electronic entry type is for internet references. IEEE formats electronic references differently by not using italics or quotes and separating fields with periods rather than commas. Also, the date is enclosed within parentheses and is placed closer to the title. This is probably done to emphasize that electronic references may not remain valid on the rapidly changing internet. Note also the liberal use of the howpublished field to describe the form or category of the entries. The organization and address fields may also be used. Example .bib using this type:

The nationality field provides a means to handle patents from different countries

The nationality should be capitalized. The assignee and address (of the assignee) fields are not used, however, they are provided. The type field provides a way to override the “patent” description with other patent related descriptions such as “patent application” or “patent request”:

The periodical entry type is used for journals and magazines.

The standard entry type is used for formally published standards. Alternatively, the misc entry type, along with its howpublished field, can be used to create references of standards.

Misc is the most flexible type and can be used when none of the other entry types are applicable. The howpublished field can be used to describe what exactly (or in what form) the reference is (or appears as). Possible applications include technical-report-like entries that lack an institution, white papers and data sheets.

Additional Comments

Because we are effectively creating multiple bibliographies, (one for the actual bibliography, and one for each list of references), the two LATEX commands \bibliographystyle{} and \bibliography{} are not used. They have been redefined to do nothing, and the equivalent of these commands are done automatically when necessary.

When there is a reference that should be included in the bibliography, but does not need to be explicitly referenced in the thesis, use the \nocite{} command. This command works like the \cite{} command, except it does not put the citation in the list of references, only in the bibliography. The \nocite{} command must appear after the first \newchapter{} command, or it will be ignored.

When using the option aparefs , and a citation does not have an author, (such as often occurs with a web page), the key field can be used to specify what to use in the citation instead of the author’s name.

About the Bibliography Format

The bibliography format used by the urithesis class is based on the IEEE format. See the article “How to Use the IEEEtran BIBTEX Style” by Michael Shell for more details.

Overleaf for Scholarly Writing & Publication: LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

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LaTeX Theses and Dissertatons

Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in  Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX  is a file format used for lists of references for  LaTeX  documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate  BibTeX  files of your library or folders for use in your  LaTeX  documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks   has a  Bibliography Management  page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf   here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

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Getting Started with Your Thesis or Dissertation

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the  Overleaf Gallery .

You can  upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery   if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other  tutorial videos   if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

How to Write your Thesis/Dissertation in LaTeX: A Five-Part Guide

Five-Part LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation  Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure   corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout   corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding  video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex  corresponding  video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract   corresponding  video

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Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX is a file format used for lists of references for LaTeX documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate BibTeX files of your library or folders for use in your LaTeX documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks has a Bibliography Management page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

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• Chat in real time with collaborators right within the project

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the Overleaf Gallery .

You can upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other tutorial videos  if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

Add Institutional Library contact info here.

Contact Overleaf   or email [email protected]

5-part Guide on How to Write a Thesis in LaTeX

5-part LaTeX Thesis Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex corresponding video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract corresponding video

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because LaTeX matters

Writing a thesis in latex.

Writing a thesis is a time-intensive endeavor. Fortunately, using LaTeX, you can focus on the content rather than the formatting of your thesis. The following article summarizes the most important aspects of writing a thesis in LaTeX, providing you with a document skeleton (at the end) and lots of additional tips and tricks.

Document class

The first choice in most cases will be the report document class:

See here for a complete list of options. Personally, I use draft a lot. It replaces figures with a box of the size of the figure. It saves you time generating the document. Furthermore, it will highlight justification and hyphenation errors ( Overfull \hbox ).

Check with your college or university. They may have an official or unofficial template/class-file to be used for writing a thesis.

Again, follow the instructions of your institution if there are any. Otherwise, LaTeX provides a few basic command for the creation of a title page.

Use \today as \date argument to automatically generate the current date. Leave it empty in case you don’t want the date to be printed. As shown in the example, the author command can be extended to print several lines.

For a more sophisticated title page, the titlespages package has a nice collection of pre-formatted front pages. For different affiliations use the authblk package, see here for some examples.

Contents (toc/lof/lot)

Nothing special here.

The tocloft package offers great flexibility in formatting contents. See here for a selection of possibilities.

Often, the page numbers are changed to roman for this introductory part of the document and only later, for the actual content, arabic page numbering is used. This can be done by placing the following commands before and after the contents commands respectively.

LaTeX provides the abstract environment which will print “Abstract” centered as a title.

The actual content

The most important and extensive part is the content. I strongly suggest to split up every chapter into an individual file and load them in the main tex-file.

In thesis.tex:

In chapter1.tex:

This way, you can typeset single chapters or parts of the whole thesis only, by commenting out what you want to exclude. Remember, the document can only be generated from the main file (thesis.tex), since the individual chapters are missing a proper LaTeX document structure.

See here for a discussion on whether to use \input or \include .

Bibliography

The most convenient way is to use a bib-tex file that contains all your references. You can download bibtex items for articles, books, etc. from Google scholar or often directly from the journal websites.

Two packages are commonly used to personalize bibliographies, the newer biblatex and the natbib package, which has been around for many years. These packages offer great flexibility in customizing the look of a bibliography, depending on the preference in the field or the author.

Other commonly used packages

• graphicx : Indispensable when working with figures/graphs.
• subfig : Controlling arrangement of several figures (e.g. 2×2 matrix)
• minitoc : Adds mini table of contents to every chapter
• nomencl : Generate and format a nomenclature
• listings : Source code printer for LaTeX
• babel : Multilingual package for standard document classes
• fancyhdr : Controlling header and footer
• hyperref : Hypertext links for LaTeX
• And many more

Minimal example code

I’m aware that this short post on writing a thesis only covers the very basics of a vast topic. However, it will help you getting started and focussing on the content of your thesis rather than the formatting of the document.

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16 comments.

8. June 2012 at 7:09

I would rather recommend a documentclass like memoir or scrreprt (from KOMA-Script), since they are much more flexible than report.

8. June 2012 at 8:12

I agree, my experience with them is limited though. Thanks for the addendum. Here is the documentation: memoir , scrreprt (KOMA script)

8. June 2012 at 8:02

Nice post Tom. I’m actually writing a two-part (or three) on Writing the PhD thesis: the tools . Feel free to comment, I hope to update it as I write my thesis, so any suggestions are welcome.

8. June 2012 at 8:05

Thanks for the link. I just saw your post and thought I should really check out git sometimes :-). Best, Tom.

8. June 2012 at 8:10

Yes, git is awesome. It can be a bit overwhelming with all the options and commands, but if you’re just working alone, and probably on several machines, then you can do everything effortlessly with few commands.

11. June 2012 at 2:15

That’s what has kept me so far. But I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks!

8. June 2012 at 8:08

What a great overview. Thank you, this will come handy… when I finally get myself to start writing that thesis 🙂

8. June 2012 at 14:12

Thanks and good luck with your thesis! Tom.

9. June 2012 at 4:08

Hi, I can recommend two important packages: lineno.sty to insert linenumbers (really helpful in the debugging phase) and todonotes (allows you to insert todo-notes for things you still have to do.)

11. June 2012 at 0:48

Thanks Uwe! I wrote an article on both, lineno and todonotes . Here is the documentation: lineno and todonotes for more details.

12. June 2012 at 15:51

Thanks for the post, i’m currently writing my master thesis 🙂

A small note: it seems that subfig is deprecated for the subcaption package: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Floats,_Figures_and_Captions#Subfloats

12. June 2012 at 16:05

Hey, thanks for the tip. Too bad they don’t say anything in the documentation apart from the fact that the packages are not compatible.

1. August 2012 at 21:11

good thesis template can be also found here (free): http://enjobs.org/index.php/downloads2

including living headers, empty pages, two-sided with front and main matter as well as a complete structure

2. August 2012 at 11:03

Thanks for the link to the thesis template!

15. November 2012 at 22:21

Hi Tom, I’m writing a report on spanish in LaTex, using emacs, auctex, aspell (~170pags. ~70 files included by now) and this blog is my savior every time because I’m quite new with all these.

The question: Is there anyway (other than \- in every occurrence) to define the correct hyphenation for accented words (non english characters like é)? I have three o four accented words, about the subject of my report, that occur near 100 times each, across several files, and the \hyphenation{} command can’t handle these.

20. November 2012 at 3:47

I was wondering what packages you load in your preamble. For a better hyphenation (and easier typing), you should use these packages:

See here for more details.

If this doesn’t help, please provide a minimal working example to illustrate the problem.

Thanks, Tom.

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LaTeX Resources for Graduate Students: Formatting of theses and dissertations

• BibTeX reference format
• BibTeX command
• LaTeX bibliography file
• LaTeX editors and compilers
• Sample LaTeX file with bibliography
• Sample LaTeX file without bibliography
• Formatting of theses and dissertations

Formatting and structure

The Cornell Graduate School has become increasingly flexible about the formatting of theses and dissertations.  There now are only seven core requirements . For the structure of theses and dissertations here is a list of required and recommended sections .

Latex template

Among the available thesis and dissertation templates provided by the Graduate School is also a LaTeX template (ZIP archive). This template has been uploaded to Overleaf and placed in the Cornell template directory . This template contains a small fix to avoid an error message about \ifpdf .

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• Last Updated: Oct 25, 2022 5:12 PM
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BibTeX phdthesis template

The phdthesis entry type is intended to be used for a PhD thesis.

Minimal template

Minimal template with required fields only for a BibTeX phdthesis entry.

Full template

Full template including required and optional fields for a BibTeX phdthesis entry.

Information Technology

LaTeX Your Thesis

General thesis tips, about the thesis template, changing headers, using and modifying sections, handling images and tables, landscape orientation, managing paragraph spacing, uploading the thesis template to overleaf, add a collaborator, managing your bibliography, choosing a bibliography style, how to cite a reed thesis, changing the title of your bibliography, fragment your thesis with \include, using labels and references, adding appendices, including full page pdfs.

• Additional Resources - LaTeX Cheat Sheet
• BACK UP YOUR THESIS. Often you will not realize for days or weeks that important paragraph or page is missing. Make recovery as easy as possible by keeping a dated backup of each writing session. Then copy those backups to at least two locations other than your hard drive: your home server, Gmail account, thumb drive, the options are wide and numerous. There is no excuse for not backing up the most important document of your Reed career.
• Start your bibliographic database the day you start reading. Keep it up to date and annotate it, so you know where it came from (library, Summit, ILL, public library, professor), whether you've read it, and where you want to cite it. This will make the writing process less frustrating and creating the bibliography seamless.
• Think of thesis formatting as a form of productive procrastination. Please don't put it off until the last week.
• BACK UP. No, seriously. It's not "if" your hard drive fails, it's "when." Not to scare you or anything, but it's a good habit, like buckling your seat belt or not leaving your laptop unattended. You really don't want to wish you had taken that small precaution.
• Keep the editable original of each graphic you want to include in your thesis in one folder. Later you may need to change a graphic quickly and having the editable original makes it easy. For graphs, keep the original Excel/JMP/Stata document, not a PDF. For photographs, keep a high resolution copy (such as a tiff). For drawings and illustrations, keep the original Illustrator document.
• Use the timesaving benefits of LaTeX from the first day. Cross references can refer to tables, graphics, and chapters so you do not have to update references as your thesis changes. Use comments to make notes about what needs to added or changed.
• Enjoy the experience! And get some sleep, food and relaxation on occasion. Hundreds of people did this before you; you can do this too.

The thesis template, available for download here , contains two main files of importance: Reedthesis.cls and Thesis.tex . (As you noticed, there are many other files in the folder. For more information about all the files LaTeX creates, see our article on the subject. ) Reedthesis.cls is a document class like article or book, and so must be defined in the preamble (see the section about document classes for more info ). Additionally, since the average installation (even Reed's) does not include Reedthesis.cls, you will have to bring the file wherever you want to work on your thesis.

The thesis template folder also contains bonus materials you may find helpful, such as an array of bibliography style files (.bst) that can support an undergraduate thesis citation and files already modified to work with a psychology major's specific needs. So make sure that you have the latest version of the thesis template and read through the thesis.tex file for more complete overview of the template's contents.

Common Queries

While the content of your thesis is certainly much more important than the appearance, a nicely typeset thesis will be more pleasant to look upon ten years from now. We have collected nearly every query for the last few years so you can make the changes you want and get back to revising your latest chapter. That typo on the first page will bug you even more than the headers once the thesis is bound and in the library. Most of these answers are links that lead to other pages in our LaTeX documentation because they fit well elsewhere and this page would be much too long if we decided to be redundant.

If you don't like how your headers appear, you can change them. That is, they are modifiable in LaTeX, but your adviser or the library might not like the change. But people change how they look all the time (usually to have the name of the chapter in small caps and without the title of the current \section), so the advanced LaTeX page has a few ways to go about tweaking the headers .

When using Reedthesis.cls, you will use \chapter{ optional title here } to denote the beginning of a new chapter (obviously) while \section{ title } and \subsection{ title } will subdivide those chapters. You do not need to use \subsection if you don't wish to, but \section will probably prove very useful to break up your chapters.

If you don't like the automatic numbering of \chapter, \section and \subsection, you can easily eliminate the numbering by adding an asterix to the command ( \chapter*{ title }, \section*{ title } , etc.), but then the section won't show up in the Table of Contents. To learn how to make sure these show up in the ToC, and to learn more about sectioning commands in general, check out the advanced LaTeX page .

In order to add an image in LaTeX, you must use the package graphicx and place the image ( \includegraphics{ imagename } ) inside the figure environment. Be sure to give a caption if necessary, but remember that LaTeX will add the "Figure x.x" to your caption on the typeset document. For more information on handling images, including the answers to our most common questions, see our graphics documentation . To make your life easier, I highly suggest that you read the section on using references and labels .

Like figures, tables also need to be in a float environment such as tabular or longtable . For an introduction to tables or to learn how to do more complex table formatting, see our documentation on tables . To learn how to change their position, numbering or presentation, the graphics documentation covers the same material. You may have to replace figure with table wherever appropriate, but the commands are basically the same. Feel free to stop by the CUS desk or try Google if you get lost!

When you have a table or figure that is too wide for your page, you will need to rotate your page to be in landscape rather than portrait orientation. To avoid rotating your headers and footers as well, use the package lscape (for more information on packages, see the advanced LaTeX section ) and enclose whatever needs to be rotated in the landscape environment:

\begin{landscape} \begin{figure}[htbp] \caption{A Really Wide Figure} \includegraphics{panoramicimage} \label{pan} \end{figure} \end{landscape}

This will keep the headers and page numbers in the portrait orientation, but rotate your figure or table as well as the appropriate caption. You do not want to use the package Portland ; this rotates the headers and footers as well, and the registrar will probably not accept such a setup.

The line breaking and spacing algorithms of LaTeX are not always successful. Sometimes the space between paragraphs is inconsistent from page to page, or even within the same page. If this happens to you, try ignoring it for a bit and continue to write your paper. Often the addition of a new subsection or just more words will be reorganized into a more pleasing arrangement.

But don't add unnecessary bulk to your thesis just to make it look good. Try putting this in the preamble: \setlength{\parskip}{0pt} . This sets the inter-paragraph spacing to 0 pts. You could also tell LaTeX that it can be more permissive when placing page breaks by putting \allowdisplaybreaks or \raggedbottom in the preamble. If none of these solutions work and you don't want to add more content to your finished chapter, bring your .tex file to the CUS desk and we shall see what we can do.

Using Overleaf

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that allows one to use LaTeX software without downloading or configuring. It has a variety of templates, but can also be used to make changes on our thesis template. 

• Download the LaTeX template .zip file from the Thesis Templates section at downloads.reed.edu
• Go to overleaf.com and create an account. We recommend using personal credentials so you don’t lose any data after graduation. Note: If you have a subscription through Reed you’ll have to use your Reed credentials instead

• Select template .zip file from your computer and click Upload  if prompted.
• Using the template is the same as with any LaTeX compiler  
• Thesis edits should be made to thesis.tex, and a live version can be viewed by clicking Recompile . You can also upload your own .bib file to your project instead of using the example prelim.bib .

You can add your adviser as a collaborator so they may leave comments on your work as you go. Without a subscription you can have a single collaborator, with a student subscription you can have up to 6. If you are interested in joining our pilot subscription program, inquire by emailing [email protected] .

• Open your project.

Bibliographies

Unless you are doing a creative writing thesis, you will read way too much for your thesis. As a result, your bibliography will be ridiculously long. Thankfully, there is this great program called BibTeX that will typeset your bibliography for you. For more general information on using BibTeX to create your bibliography, as well as choosing a bibliography format and using a bibliography manager, see our BibTeX documentation .

While it is possible to create a bibliography manually , and there are reasons to do so, your senior year will be made a bit easier if you take advantage of BibTeX's automation . We strongly suggest that you use an application such as JabRef or BibDesk , both of which have documentation on the BibTex page. 

The BibTeX page has the following advice for creating your bibliography in BibTeX, but I thought it was worth repeating here:

• Like with thesis formatting, the sooner you start compiling your bibliography for something as large as thesis, the better. Typing in source after source is mind-numbing enough; do you really want to do it for hours on end in late April? Think of it as procrastination.
• When you have more than one author or editor, you need to separate each author's name by the word and .
• The cite key (a citation's label) needs to be unique from the other entries.
• Bibliographies made using BibTeX (whether manually or using a manager) accept LaTeX markup, so you can italicize and add symbols as necessary.
• To force capitalization in an article title or where all lowercase is generally used, bracket the capital letter in curly braces.
• You can add a Reed Thesis citation option. In fact, your bibliography style (.bst) may already have the option. See the thesis template for more details.

If you know what bibliography style you need to be using (Chicago or MLA, for example), then you should check out the available bibliography styles on the page about BibTeX styles . If your discipline varies with regard to preferred bibliography style, ask your adviser which format or journal you should use, then check out the BibTeX style page for a Reed edition, or CTAN.org for most other styles. 

A normal bibliography style (.bst) has formats for a PhD thesis and a Master's thesis, but no preset format for an undergraduate thesis. In your .bib file, use the Phd. thesis entry type, and in the optional type field, enter "Reed thesis" or "Undergraduate thesis" and that will be displayed instead of "Phd.thesis".

The default bibliography title is just "Bibliography," but if you want to change this, LaTeX gives you an easy way to do so. Here is an example of a bibliography renamed to "Works Cited." Note the placement after the command \backmatter and before the commands that make the bibliography ( \bibliographystyle and \bibliography ).

\backmatter \renewcommand{\bibname}{ Works Cited } \bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{thesis}

Special Topics In Thesis: Tricks to Make Life Easier

Thesis may be scary, but putting it together doesn't have to be. A number of recent alumni answered a call for recommendations to the next crop of seniors; here are the computer related gems.

Your thesis is big, or at least it will be soon enough. Instead of typing everything into the thesis template, you can have separate files for each chapter and then include them in the thesis template. To learn more about using the commands \include and \input , see the appropriate section in the advanced LaTeX documentation.

If you've made a table or figure, you have probably noticed the command \label{default} . If you want to refer to that table or figure elsewhere in your document, you need only to write \ref{default} and your typeset document will replace that ref with the number of the item. But you can refer to more than just tables and figures with ease:

• For figures and tables, the label command should be inserted right after the \caption .
• For equations or lists, the label command should be within the environment as a whole.
• For chapters or sections, it will refer to the first preceding section title, whether it is a subsection, section, or chapter.
• If you want the page number of the reference, use the \pageref{ marker } command. If you want just the reference, use the \ref{ marker } command. For correct spacing, you may wish to precede the reference commands with a tilde (~) if you are using the reference in a sentence or text.
• You will need to typeset your document at least twice to see cross-references reflect any changes. You will know that you need to typeset again if you see question marks where there should be references.

To add an appendix to your thesis, find \appendix towards the end of your thesis template. Right after the \appendix , it should have another \chapter command, in which you can specify the name of your appendix. This is what the template has:

\appendix \chapter{The First Appendix} \chapter{The Second Appendix, For Fun}

You can either write directly in the template as if the appendix is just another chapter, or stick an external document in using \input (for .tex documents only, see the documentation on this ) or \includegraphics (for PDFs and other formats, see below). Your appendices will appear in the Table of Contents as Appendix A: Appendix Name (the second appendix will be Appendix B, and so on). The appendix itself will have both Appendix A and the appendix title on separate lines.

If you want to remove the "appendix" part of your appendix title or otherwise modify how that part of the title is displayed, remove \appendix from your thesis, thus making your appendices into normal chapters. You then need to keep the appendix from being numbered as "Chapter # ", so make the following modifications to your document:

Original: \appendix \chapter{The First Appendix} To make the appendix named Appendix: The First Appendix, change the above to: \chapter*{Appendix: The First Appendix} \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Appendix: The First Appendix} \chaptermark{Appendix} \markboth{Appendix}{Appendix}

The \chapter* creates an unnumbered chapter and \addcontentsline adds the chapter to the Table of Contents with the title you specify. The commands \chaptermark and \markboth handle the headers. For more on modifying chapter names, look at the documentation on sectioning . To learn more about changing headers, read the Headers In a Thesis section.

Music Majors: There are two LaTeX related routes to typesetting music, MusicTeX and LilyPond. However, past music seniors have struggled to incorporate the files from both programs into their theses. The official CUS recommendation is to use Finale to typeset your music, then export the sheet music to PDF. (See this page to learn how to create pdfs in a program such as Finale.) Using \includepdf (with the package PDFPages ) is a great way to add them. PDFPages is a powerful and flexible way to include multi-page PDF files in your LaTeX document. Example: \includepdf[pages=1-8 offset=15 -15,scale=.80, frame=true,pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{Orlando.pdf}

Additional Resources

For a quick LaTeX Cheat Sheet, please visit https://www.stdout.org/~winston/latex/ .

Template for a Masters or Doctoral Thesis

This LaTeX template is used by many universities as the basis for thesis and dissertation submissions, and is a great way to get started if you haven't been provided with a specific version from your department.

This version of the template is provided by Vel at LaTeXTemplates.com , and is already loaded in Overleaf so you can start writing immediately.

Checkout this short video to see how to easily create and edit new chapters as your thesis develops.

Please read the unofficial quick guide to the template; it contains some tips and suggestions on how to modify certain things.

(Updated 27/08/17)

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