Including Publications In Your Thesis

All students are encouraged to publish their research during candidature.

Publications both give you an advantage for future employment, and show your examiners that your research has been accepted through a peer review process already. It is very important that you read the guidelines for including publications  and the associated FAQs  to ensure that you are including a publication appropriately and consult with your supervisor regarding the structure of your thesis. You will also need the Statement of Authorship  form for all publications you include. You can view an example statement of authorship .

Of course you are not required to include publications in your thesis, you can choose to submit a conventional thesis, a combination thesis with some publications and work written specifically for the thesis, or a thesis with a major work. Descriptions of the different thesis types are in the 'Thesis' section of the Research Student Handbook.

How do I format my thesis when including publications?

In the Specifications for Thesis you will find the essential components of a thesis in clause 3.3.  It is always important that those parts are included.  How to structure ‘the main body of work’ will depend on your publications, how many you are including and what additional information you need to include to ensure your reader (examiner) has a comprehensive understanding of your research.

The main challenges of including publications in a thesis are:

  1. Maintaining flow of the thesis
  2. Adding information to your thesis that was not possible in the publication due to style or word limits for so the research presented is complete

Note that thesis is no specific requirement for the number of publications that should be included in a thesis.  This will depend on factors such as discipline norms, depth/length of publications, student contribution to publications etc.

Example thesis formats

Please use these as a guide only as suggested ways a thesis could be formatted, other formats will be accepted as long as they meet the Specifications for Thesis requirements.

  • Example 1 - Thesis by publication

    Chapter 1: Introduction

    Chapter 2: Literature Review

    Chapter 3: Materials and Methods

    Chapter 4: Statement of Authorship and Publication 1

    Chapter 5: Statement of Authorship and Publication 2

    Chapter 6: Statement of Authorship and Publication 3

    Chapter 7: Statement of Authorship and Publication 4

    Chapter 8: Statement of Authorship and Publication 5

    Chapter 9: Discussion and Conclusions

  • Example 2 - Combination Thesis

    Chapter 1: Introduction

    Chapter 2: Materials and Methods

    Chapter 3: Statement of Authorship and Publication 1 (Literature Review)

    Chapter 4: Regular thesis chapter

    Chapter 5: Statement of Authorship and Publication 2

    Chapter 6: Regular thesis chapter

    Chapter 7: Statement of Authorship and Publication 3

    Chapter 8: General Discussion

  • Example 3 - Combination Thesis

    Chapter 1: Introduction

    Chapter 2: Literature Review

    Chapter 3: Materials and Methods

    Chapter 4: Statement of Authorship and Publication 1

    Chapter 5: Regular thesis chapter

    Chapter 6: Regular thesis chapter

    Chapter 7: Regular thesis chapter

    Chapter 8: General Discussion

  • Example 4 - Combination Thesis

    Chapter 1: Introduction including literature review

    Chapter 3: Materials and Methods

    Chapter 4: Statement of Authorship and Publication – large

    Chapter 5: Regular thesis chapter

    Chapter 8: General Discussion

Publication chapter formats

When you have additional information that should be included in addition to your publication.

  • Example 1 - Publication with introduction

    1. Statement of Authorship
    2. Introduction – including specific aims and hypotheses
    3. Publication 1

  • Example 2 - Publication with additional information
    1. Statement of Authorship
    2. Introduction – including specific aims, hypotheses
    3. Methods – results (including validation, preliminary) not included in the paper
    4. Results (including validation, preliminary) not included in paper
    5. Publication
    6. Discussion – expansion of paper discussion

Example University of Adelaide theses including publications

The following theses have incorporated publications well.  As you will see there, other than ensuring that you have met the requirements of the Specifications for Thesis, is no set format or style that must be used.

Other examples are available in the University Library: https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/ 

Select Theses and do a key word search.