-حکومەتا هەرێما کوردستانێ عێراقوەزارەتا خواندنا بلند وڤەکولینێن زانستى

زانكويا دهوك

-حكومة اقليم كوردستان العراق وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث العلمي

جامعة دهوك

Kurdistan Regional Government – Iraq, Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific ResearchUniversity of Duhok

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Guidelines for Writing High Diploma, M.Sc.

and Ph.D. Theses

-حکومەتا هەرێما کوردستانێ عێراقوەزارەتا خواندنا بلند وڤەکولینێن زانستى

زانكويا دهوك

-حكومة اقليم كوردستان العراق وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث العلمي

جامعة دهوك

Kurdistan Regional Government – Iraq, Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific ResearchUniversity of Duhok

Guidelines for Writing High Diploma, MSc. and Ph.D. Theses

Thesis structure:It is contain the following terms:

1. Thesis title page 2. Certificate of the Supervisor, Names and Signatures of Linguistic

and Scientific evaluators, Forwarding of Head of Department and Director of Postgraduate Studies, Name and Signature of the Dean of the College.

3. Certification of the examining committee 4. Dedication (optional) 5. Acknowledgements 6. Summary 7. Table of contents 8. List of tables 9. List of figures10. List of abbreviations11. Introduction12. Literature review13. Materials and Methods14. Results 15. Discussion16. Conclusions and Recommendations17. References18. Appendices

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19. Summary in Arabic and Kurdish languagesN.B.: Write each section or chapter in a new page.General considerations:

- The left margin must be a minimum of 4 cm. The right, top, and bottom margins must be a minimum of 2 cm

- Pagination in Latin numerical (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) start with summary page, at the centre of the bottom of the page.

- Pagination in English numerical (1, 2, 3, 4) starts with the introduction page, at the top of the right side of the page.

- The font type is Times New Roman, the font size is 14, the distance between lines is 1.5 space of the Microsoft word computer program, with no use of Italic letters unless indicated.

Title PageThe title should be written as approved by the scientific committee. The title page contains the following in order:

1. From the up left-sideKurdistan Region of IraqMinistry of Higher Education & Scientific ResearchUniversity of DuhokCollege of -------------- The logo of the University should be above the title at the right of

the page.2. Title of the thesis is written in capital and bold letters3. Submission of the thesis4. Name of the candidate, his qualification, and department of the

study5. Academic title and name of the supervisor6. The year of submission of the study should be written in Western

or Christian; AD on the left side, Islamic calendar (Hijri or Muslim; AH on the middle side and Kurdish year on the right side.

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- Certificate of the Supervisor: I (we) certify that this thesis was prepared under my (our) supervision at the College of ……….., University of ………….. in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of ……………….. in ……………….Academic title, name and signature of the supervisorDate:

- Certificate of the Linguistic Evaluator: I certify that the linguistic evaluation of this thesis was carried out by me and it is accepted linguistically and in expression.Academic title, name and signature of the linguistic evaluatorDate:

- Certificate of the Scientific Evaluator:I certify that the Scientific evaluation of this thesis was carried out by me and it is accepted Scientifically.Academic title, name and signature of the Scientific evaluatorDate:

- Forwarding of the Head of DepartmentI certify that this thesis was carried out in the Department of -------------------- and I nominate it to be forwarded to discussion.Academic title, name and signature of the Head of the DepartmentDate:

- Forwarding of the Director of Postgraduate StudiesIn view of the above recommendations, I forward this thesis for debate by the examining committee.

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Academic title, name and signature of the Director of the postgraduate studies Date:

Certification of the examining committee and endorsement of the Dean of the College:

- After reading this thesis and examining the student in its contents, we certify that it is adequate for the award of the degree of…………………… in ………………..

Academic title, name and signature of the chairman, members and supervisor.

- Approved by the dean of the collegeAcademic title, name and signatureDate:Dedication:This is an optional pageAcknowledgements:The acknowledgements section has no substantive impact upon the reception of the thesis.It is polite to thank those who have assisted you either technically, intellectually or financially during your research work.

- The first paragraph is for the supervisor and co-supervisor.- The second paragraph is for the dean of the college.- The third paragraph is for head of the department. - The fourth paragraph is for the Director of the postgraduate

studies

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- The final paragraph is for any other person(s), colleague(s) who substantially helped you in the completion of the thesis work.

A maximum of one page is earmarked for the acknowledgements.

Summary : The summary can be defined as a synopsis of the information in a document. It should provide a brief summary of each of the main sections of the thesis: Introduction, aims, methodology, results, discussion and conclusions.A well prepared summary enables readers to identify the basic content of a document quickly and accurately, to determine its relevance to their interests, and thus to decide whether they need to read the thesis in its entirety.The summary in thesis should not exceed 2 pages of double spaced text and should be designed to define clearly what is dealt with in the thesis. The entire summary should be written in the past tense, because it refers to work done and do not use abbreviations. The summary should never give any information or conclusion that is not stated in the thesis. References to the literature must not be cited in the summary.Table of contents:

- List all the major sections of the thesis document (headings and subheadings) and their page ranges.

- The skeleton of the table of contents should be produced in draft, but it can only be finalized with the actual page numbers when the rest of the thesis has been printed in final form.

List of tables and figures:- List page numbers of all tables and figures.- It is better to copy and paste the titles from the actual tables and

figures to ensure that they match exactly.

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Chapter OneIntroduction:Start with definition of the problem.The introduction should cite previous research in this area. It should cite those who had the idea or ideas first, and should also cite those who have done the most recent and relevant work. You should then go on to explain why your work was necessary.An important function of the introduction is to provide a rationale for the thesis research. The thesis rationale is concerned with answering the questions.'Why does this work need to be done?. The most basic rationale for studying something is that we do not know about it already. It is recommended to be not more than 2-3 pages, according to the size of the work.The main and secondary objectives of the study should be made clear, written at the end of the introduction.

Chapter TwoLiterature review:A literature review should be informative, evaluative and integrative. It should contain review of current articles in the field relevant to the thesis.It should be divided into main topics and subtopics according to the subject, including a thorough description of the subject (e.g., historical background, definition, epidemiological, clinical, laboratory findings, etc).The literature review must not be more than a third of the overall length of the thesis.

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Chapter ThreeMaterials and Methods: Methodology is an important aspect of knowledge; therefore it must contain information to allow the reader to assess the believability of your results. Methodology should be written in details. This chapter is entitled Materials and Methods.

Key points in writing the methodology:- Describe the design, setting (place of the study) and time of the

study.- Describe the type of the study.- Describe exactly how the research was conducted. It is usual to

commence with a brief description of your ethics approval procedures.

- Describe the number of participants in the research and their basic attributes including age, sex and diagnostic groupings.

- Describe the inclusion and exclusion criteria for their participation in the research. It is sometimes useful to include a table summarizing the participants' demographic attributes at this point in the thesis.

- Describe the use of any research instrument or tool employed in the conduction of your research. Where the tools are not standardized and/or well known, then they need to be described in detail so that the reader understands exactly what has occurred.

- All materials used should be identified precisely giving the name and origin

- Describe your analytical methods, calculations, including reference to any specialized statistical software.

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- In the case of questionnaires, it is not usual to include the full text of the questionnaire in the main body of the thesis in the methods section. Normally, the questionnaire is included as an appendix.

- Statistical methods should be described briefly. Detailed statistical analyses, questionnaire forms, some scoring systems, maps, etc. are better presented in the appendix.

- Describe limitations of the work (if present). Chapter Four

Results:This chapter is including well presented tables and figures, and clarity of presentation of the results.

- The results constitute the major part of the original work and it should be presented in logical sequence in the form of text, tables and figures giving the main or most important findings first. Data in tables and figures should not be fully repeated in the text summarizing only the important observations.

- Mention negative results as well as positive.- Break up your results into logical segments by using subheadings.- Numeric results should be presented as the absolute numbers and

as derivatives (percentage, rate). Use S.I. units (m, s, kg, etc.) throughout the thesis. Statistical methods used to analyse the findings should be specified.

- Figures and/or tables can be used and numbered consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text, and they should have a brief informative title. They should be made as self-explanatory as possible. In tables, each column should have a short or abbreviated heading. Explanatory matter should be written in footnotes and not in the heading. Title of the table is written above the table while that of the figure is written below. Significant values should be included in the table.

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- Make sure that all numbers are to the same decimal point (this is important and should be consistent through the whole document).

- Do not interpret results - save that for the discussion.

Chapter FiveDiscussion:This section should be rich in references to similar work and background needed to interpret results. Break up the section into logical segments by using subheads.

Key Points for discussion writing:- Speculate, but be reasonable and avoid too much discussion of

nonessentials.- Do not repeat in details the data given in the results, the main

findings should be summarized briefly.- Compare your results with other relevant studies and the possible

mechanisms or explanations for the findings should be explored and mention agreement or disagreement with previous works and mention the expected reason(s) of disagreement.

- Do not refer to others works just to increase the references cited section.

- Mention the significance of the present results - Avoid use of the words such as I, we, our and use the current or

the present study.Note: Merging of Results and Discussion (Optional)

Chapter SixConclusions and recommendations:The conclusions and recommendations should be linked with the goals and findings of the study.A-Conclusions:

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- What are the strongest and most important findings or results- Avoid conclusions not adequately supported by the data.- Refer back to problem posed, and describe the conclusions that

you reached from carrying out this investigation, summarize new observations, and new interpretations, that have resulted from the present study.

B-Recommendations:- Further research to fill in gaps not covered by the study.- Directions for future investigations on this or related topics.

References in the text of thesis

References should be written according to the Harvard system (author-date) by giving the author's surname and the year of publication.

Citation in the text:1- If the author's name occurs naturally in the sentence the year is

given in after the surname of the author, e.g. Harvey (1992) found that………..

2- If there are two authors the surnames of both should be given. e.g. Matthews and Jones (1997) have proposed that. ..

3- If the name does not occur naturally in the sentence; both name and year of publication are given, e.g. A more recent study (Stevens, 1998) has shown……, or (if 2 authors): A more recent study (Stevens and Jones, 1998) has shown……., or (if more than 2 authors), the surname of the first author is written only followed by et al (in italic

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letters) and then year of publication, e.g. A more recent study (Stevens et al., 1998) has shown…

4- When an author has published more than one cited document in the same year, these are distinguished by adding lower case letters (a, b, c, etc.) after the year and within the parentheses. e.g. Johnson (1994a) discussed that ----- and Johnson (1994b) found that--------------

5- When more than one reference are referred to in the statements, the references should be arranged in a chronological order after the statement, e.g. (George, 2003; William et al., 2006; Watson, 2009).

The reference list:- In Harvard system, the reference list is arranged alphabetically by

author.- All authors' last names (surname or family name) are inverted (last

name first), and first names are abbreviated to the authors' initials, e.g. Serwan Khorsheed Amedi will be: Amedi SK.

- Multiple authors are separated by a comma. For one to six authors, list all. - For seven or more, list the first six followed by a comma and et al., If more than one article or publication has been published by the same author at different years, they should be listed in a chronological order.

- Where an item has no author it is cited by its title, and ordered in the reference list alphabetically by the first significant word of the title.

- The second line of the reference should start under the fifth letter of the first line.

A-Books:1-Personal author(s):Author(s), (year), title of the book, edition of the book if later than 1st ed. Place of publication: publisher. e.g. of Single author:

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Stephenson T (2004). Pocket pediatrics. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Living stone.e.g. of Two authors: O'Callaghan C & Stephenson T (2004). Pocket pediatrics. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

2-Editor(s), compiler(s) as author:- Author(s), editors (year), title of the book, edition of the book if later than 1st ed. Place of publication: publisher, e .g. Silverman M, editor (2002). Childhood asthma and other wheezing disorders. 2nd ed. London: Arnold.

3-Author(s) and editor(s):Author(s), (year), title of the book, edition of the book if later than 1st ed. Name of editors, editor. Place of publication: Publisher name.e.g. , Breedlove GK & Schorfheide AM (2001). Adolescent pregnancy. 2nd ed. Wiec zorek RR, editor. White Plains (NY): March of Dimes Education Services.

4- Chapter in a book:Author (s) of the chapter (year), title of the chapter. In: Surname (s) and initials of the editors followed by the word editor(s), title of the book, edition of the book if later than first. Place of publication: publisher. Pages are written as pp. e.g., Armstrong WF (2005). Echocardiography. In: Zipes DP, Libby P, Bonow RO & Braunwald E, editors. Braunwald's heart disease: a textbook of cardiovascular disease. 7th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier Saunders. p. 187-270.

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5- Standard journal article:- Journal titles are abbreviated. Remember that a reference to journal

article will need:1- The year when the journal was published.2- The volume number. There may be one volume or more, per

year.3- The page numbers of the article itself. If the article is on pages

11-15, you can abbreviate this to 11-5.- Author(s) surname followed by initials (year of publication), title of

the article, title of the journal; volume: and pages.e.g., Halpern SD, Ubel PA & Caplan AL (2002). Solid-organ transplantation in HIV infected patients. N Engl J Med; 347:284-7.347 is the volume number, 4 the issue and 284-7 the page numbers, that is, pages 284-287. The journal title is abbreviated and followed by a full stop.

6- More than six authors:Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al (2002). Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 935(2):40-6.

6- Organization(s) as author:Example:Advanced Life Support Group (2001). Acute medical emergencies: the practical approach. London: BMJ Books. 454 p.

7-No author given:e.g., Anonymous (1981). Coffee drinking and cancer of the pancreas (Editorial). Br Med J. 283:628.

8-Online sources:

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If the source is on the web, include the date when you accessed it (as [cited ...)

- Journals:e.g., Williams FM, Cherkas LF, Spector TD & MacGregor AJ (2004). A common genetic factor underlies hypertension and other cardiovascular disorders. BMC Cardiovasc Disord [Internet]. 4:20 [cited 2009 Mar 23]. Available from:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2261/4/20.- Books:e.g., Foley KM & Gelband H, editors (2001). Improving palliative care for cancer [In ternet]. Washington: National Academy Press [cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074029/html/.

- CD-ROM:e.g., Perkin GD, Hochberg FH & Miller DC (1999). Atlas of clinical neurology [CDROM]. 2nd ed. Version 1.1. London: Mosby.

- Unpublished Material (In press or Forthcoming):(Note: NLM prefers "Forthcoming" rather than "In press" because not all items will be printed).e.g., Tian D, Araki H, Stahl E, Bergelson J & Kreitman M (2002). Signature of balancing selection in Arabidopsis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. Forthcoming.

- Appendices:If there is material that should be in the thesis but which would break up the flow or bore the reader unbearably, include it as an appendix. Some things which are typically included in appendices are: important and original computer programs, data files that are too large to be

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represented simply in the results chapters, pictures or diagrams of results which are not important enough to keep in the main text.

- Editing your thesis:Even a rough draft should be edited.

1- Proof read your thesis a few times.2- Check your spelling.3- Make sure that you use complete sentences.4- Check your grammar: punctuation, sentence structure, subject-

verb agreement (plural or singular), tense consistency, etc.5- Give it to others to read and comment.

Thesis length:- The goal is the shortest possible paper that contains all information

necessary to describe the work and support the interpretation.- Avoid unnecessary repetition statements. The number of pages

should be not more than 100 pages for diploma, 150 pages for MSc. and 200 pages for PhD thesis.

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