Format and presentation requirements for research degree thesis submissions

Graduate Board has delegated authority to the Progression and Examinations Group to implement University policy and procedures for the examination of research degree candidates.

The Group also conducts regular reviews of procedures and all documentation associated with the examination of research degree candidates, including the requirements as set out on this page.

Supporting guidance for postgraduate researchers (PGRs) on the thesis examination process is provided by Doctoral College Operations and published on the thesis and viva pages.

The thesis must be written in English. For research degrees in the modern languages, in certain circumstances approved by the Graduate Board, a thesis may be submitted in a language other than English.

The text must be presented in a clear, standard font of 11 to 12pt size. You should consult with your supervisor regarding any text/font conventions normally used in your discipline.

Text must be in double or one and a half line spacing (except indented quotations or footnotes where single spacing may be used).

Text that is in upper case only or in which some letters are non-standard is not acceptable as thesis text.

Margins at the left hand (‘binding’ edge) must be not less than 40mm and other margins not less than 20mm. This is required in cases where examiners may request a printed and bound copy of the thesis to support the examination.

All pages must be numbered consecutively throughout including images and/or diagrams where possible. Page numbers must appear on each page, preferably at the top centre.

The title page must give the following information:

• thesis title: the full and exact thesis title as submitted at examination entry.
• your full name as recorded in the university records.our degree: include the following statement (with the name of your degree added in full):
  • “Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of [full degree name]”
• The University: include
  • “The University of Leeds”
• your school: select one of these options: 
  • The name of the parent school where you were registered and supervised.
  • If you were formally supervised in two schools (one being your parent school), you may include both schools. This includes programmes associated with Doctoral Focal or Landscape awards (formerly CDT): if you were registered in one school but your main supervisor was from a different school you may include the school(s) where supervision occurred.
  • The name of the academic centre or unit where research was conducted (requires permission from the Director of PGR Studies in your parent school).
• Date of submission for examination (for example, October 2025): 
  • month and year.
• If you are registered at an accredited institution: after “The University of Leeds” include your institution followed by the name of the school within that institution.
  • Leeds Trinity University [name of school]

Your thesis must include the following on the second page:

Authorship statement

Add one of the following statements:

If there are no jointly-authored publications:

“I confirm that the work submitted is my own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.”

If you have included your work from any jointly authored publications:

“I confirm that the work submitted is my own, except where work which has formed part of jointly authored publications has been included. My contribution and the other authors to this work has been explicitly indicated below. I confirm that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others.”

You must then also include:

• which chapters are based on jointly authored publications
• full details of the publications (title, authors, date, journal)
• the work within the publications that is directly attributable to you
• the contributions of the other authors.

For an alternative style of doctoral thesis (including published material):

“I confirm that the work submitted is my own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.”

You must then also include:

• a brief rationale for submitting an alternative format thesis
• a summary of the thesis structure
• full details of the publications (title, authors, date, journal)
• the work within the publications that is directly attributable to you
• the contributions of the other authors.

Copyright statement

Include the following:

“This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.”

Optional: Assertion of moral rights:

If you wish to assert your moral right to be identified as the author, include:

“The right of [your full name] to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by [your full name] in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.”

This page should be used to acknowledge and credit anyone who assisted with your work, such as your supervisor(s), sponsor(s) or other specialist assistance or advice (for example, data analysis support). Examples of specific scenarios and wording include:

• Where work is the result of collaborative research, the contribution of collaborators must be clearly stated as part of your thesis acknowledgements. 
• Where you have worked as part of a team you should include a specific statement as follows: “This research has been carried out by a team which has included (name the individuals). My own contributions, fully and explicitly indicated in the thesis, have been (please specify)” The other members of the group and their contributions have been as follows: (please specify)”
• If your thesis was proof-read by a third-party proof-reader before submission (or following corrections) the following statement must be added: “The thesis was proof-read before submission by a third-party proof-reader. I confirm that the third-party proof-reading undertaken was in accordance with the Postgraduate Researcher Proof-reading Policy.”
• If you made use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance tools (please consult the University’s Generative AI guidance for postgraduate researchers for more detailed guidance around the use of GenAI tools and the acknowledgments needed) the minimum requirement to include in acknowledgement are:
  • name and version of the generative AI system used, for example, CoPilot
  • publisher (company that made the AI system) 
  • URL of the AI system
  • brief description (single sentence) of context in which the tool was used. For example: “I acknowledge the use of CoPilot to proofread my final draft.”
• If you will be incorporating any work you have used towards an earlier degree in your thesis, you need special permission for this. This page of your thesis must indicate the earlier work you have incorporated into your thesis. In addition to any earlier work the thesis must include a substantial new body of research. If you are not sure whether the relevant permissions are in place please contact your Graduate School immediately, well before you submit your thesis.

Your acknowledgements page may include personal thanks to those who have supported you in your studies, but if choosing to include personal mentions, please bear in mind that your final eThesis will be deposited and publicly available in White Rose Etheses Online.

An abstract (summary) of the thesis of no more than 300 words should be included immediately after the acknowledgements page.

The table of contents should immediately follow the abstract. It should list in sequence, with page numbers, all relevant subdivisions of the thesis, including the titles of chapters, sections, and subsections, as appropriate, the bibliography and any appendices.

Lists of tables and illustrations should follow the table of contents and should list, with pages numbers, all tables, images, diagrams, etc, in the order in which they occur in the text.

Where abbreviations are used, a key must be provided.

You must use an established referencing standard in your thesis (examples include Harvard, or Numeric or other recognised referencing style used within a discipline).

It is important that you familiarise yourself with the referencing conventions used in your subject area and you should seek further advice from your supervisors or Director of PGR Studies on employing the correct academic conventions for referencing and citing work within your discipline.

You may find the information on the Library’s reference pages helpful.

If you are registered for a practice-led research degree in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (AHC), you must also consult the practice-led protocol for additional examination information.

This protocol explains the submission and assessment requirements for practice-led degrees, including the assessment of any live practice and the recording and format of this for submission.

Any material essential for the examiners to evaluate your work must be included in the thesis itself.  This is the examined content and examiners must read and assess this. 

Supplementary content is defined as additional data or materials that may be useful for examiners but are not required for examination. Your thesis must stand alone and be understandable without supplementary material.

Examiners may choose to access supplementary material, but they are not obliged to do so.

If you include supplementary data or information, you must complete the inclusion of supplementary data/material with a thesis submission form (Word doc) and upload this form to GRAD when submitting your thesis for examination.

A multi-part thesis is a thesis which includes a number of different electronic files and formats, beyond just a single PDF.  

A pilot for ‘multi-part’ thesis submissions is currently running, which will allow applications for the submission of a multi-part thesis. The multi-part thesis submissions page has information on the pilot, application process and guidance for PGRs and staff.

Full details on reusing your own published work in your thesis is available in the guidelines on the use of solely or jointly-authored publications in a thesis.

If your thesis includes work from solely or jointly authored publications, you must outline this on the second page of your thesis (see earlier guidance) and upload a copy of each publication to GRAD when submitting your thesis

This submission model is available only to doctoral PGRs in the faculties of Arts, Humanities and Cultures, Medicine and Health, Environment, Engineering and Physical Sciences (Engineering Schools only) and Biological Sciences.

Please discuss this option with your supervisory team. You should consult your faculty’s protocol for detailed guidance on the published material eligible for inclusion, and the format, content and presentation of an alternative style thesis. Your supervisors must confirm the format is appropriate and meets your faculty’s protocol.

Any thesis submitted for examination under the alternative style protocol must still include the other sections referenced on this page, including:

• the title page
• intellectual property and publications page
• acknowledgements page
• abstract
• contents
• list of abbreviations
• references/bibliography, and 
• appendices.

If you are registered on a dual award PhD, there may be specific requirements for your thesis. Consult the dual award guidance for any programme-specific expectations, for example, over the sequencing of the viva.

The University expects theses to normally not exceed the maximum length specified for your programme of study:

• MA, MSc, MSc (Eng) and MEd: 30,000 words (100 pages)
• MPhil: 60,000 words (200 pages)
• PhD (including Integrated PhD and Master): 100,000 words (300 pages)
• EdD: 55,000 words (185 pages)
• DPaedDent: 50,000 words (170 pages)
• DClinEd: 55,000 words (185 pages)
• MD: 80,000 words (250 pages)
• DClinPsychol: 40,000 words (135 pages). In exceptional cases, with the approval of their supervisor(s), PGRs may include appendices (up to 20,000 words maximum) which will not be counted towards the overall word length of the thesis
• Practice-led PhD: a minimum word limit of 15,000 and a maximum word limit of 50,000
• Practice-led MPhil: a minimum word limit of 10,000 and a maximum word limit of 30,000
• Alternative format thesis with published material: see your faculty protocol. Theses submitted under the alternative format route are not expected to exceed the normal word and page limits for the degree.

These limits include appendices and footnotes, but exclude bibliographies/reference lists. Appendices are part of the examinable content and must be included within the word and page limits. If you have material that is useful for examiners but not essential for the examination, this could be submitted as supplementary material, separate from the thesis. Please read the supplementary information section of this page.

Examiners will be assessing not only the content of your thesis but also the clarity and conciseness of your writing. Your ability to present your research findings, arguments, and conclusions in a clear and structured manner is an important part of the examination process. Excessive length or an overly discursive style may be considered a weakness.

The maximum limits are not intended to be interpreted as a requirement for the length of the thesis and in certain disciplines the thesis may be considerably shorter. If you believe you cannot avoid exceeding the stated maximum, you should:

• discuss the matter with your supervisor at an early stage.
• if necessary, the Director of PGR Studies will seek approval from the Graduate Board for submission of a thesis that exceeds the stated limits.

It would remain open to the examiners to request that the length be reduced as part of any corrections to the thesis. It is therefore in your best interest to consider the overall length during the initial stages of thesis preparation.

If your research required ethics approval, confirmation of ethics approval from the relevant body (for example, research ethics committee) should be included in your thesis. This may involve including a copy of the relevant approval in the appendix. Please consult your supervisors for advice on the best approach.

All final eTheses will be published online through White Rose Etheses Online (WREO) after any embargo period. It is therefore important that your thesis is created as a digitally accessible document. This ensures that your work can be read by the widest possible audience, including individuals using assistive technologies such as screen readers.

The University provides digital accessibility guidance to help you prepare your thesis in an accessible format. The version made live in WREO is normally a PDF, so you should ensure your thesis is accessible before converting it to PDF. The guidance includes detailed checklists and instructions on:

• Headings: how to structure headings correctly for accessibility.
• Text: applying text styles that conform to accessibility standards.
• Links: using descriptive text for hyperlinks to improve clarity.
• Images, tables, and objects: adding alternative text to images and other visual content so they are accessible to screen readers.

Several resources are available to support you in making your thesis accessible:

• Checklists for Word documents: guidance on making Word documents accessible before saving as PDF. Word also includes an automatic accessibility checker you can use.
• Video accessibility checklist: includes instructions on captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions. This is particularly relevant for practice-led researchers submitting video content.
• LaTeX and accessibility: specific advice for those preparing theses in LaTeX.

To support long-term digital preservation and accessibility in other formats, it is strongly recommended that when you upload your final eThesis to WREO, you also provide the thesis in its original source file format (for example, Word or LaTeX) in addition to the accessible PDF.