Thesis Requirements: General Information

Prior to submitting their thesis to the Library, students need to have this final element of their work formatted, any revisions completed, and their work approved by their senior supervisors.  Publication standards are the same for all graduate degree dissertations, theses, extended essays, and research projects so, for ease in reading, these will be referred to as "thesis" or "theses" most often throughout the Thesis Assistance webpages. 

There seems to be some confusion surrounding regulations and requirements, and it is the Library's and Dean of Graduate Studies mandate to clear this up through a new website structure and help resources.  The Library's realm has to do with requirements (the required documentation and preliminary pages), layout, and format-related issues, and there is flexibility with the latter (format).  The Library encourages students to learn good academic practices:

1. applying one of their discipline's publication manual's style guides,
2. obtaining copyright permissions early on in their writing, and
3. learning how to easily format papers early in their studies (i.e., attend Workshops). 

Content is completely up to the author, supervisor, and committee, so it is up to the student and his/her supervisor to decide on what publication style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) requirements and copyright permissions are necessary.  Though the most recent copyright statement at the bottom of the thesis template Title Page implies that copyright has 'relaxed' somewhat, we still recommend that you get permission for images/figures/maps, etc. they are including in their theses—early—that is, as soon as you think you'd like to include the material in your work.

The Assistant forTheses is revamping the thesis templates and help resources.  All resources are being updated daily as questions come in from graduate students, departmental graduate assistants, alumni, and faculty, so please revisit the Thesis Assistance website ( www.lib.sfu.ca/theses ) regularly and browse the Library's FAQ section as well.  

Many students enquire about the Templates and Workshops, Submission Deadline dates, the order of operations for thesis submission and graduation, and help and support services with regard to formatting their theses.