Print final-year projects

If you’re in your final year of your degree and are wondering how to tackle the work required to graduate; if you’re fully immersed in that Master’s degree that’s so essential to rounding out your CV and securing your place in an increasingly demanding job market; or if you are putting the finishing touches to that doctoral thesis to which you have devoted the last three or four years of your life, we recommend that you read this article, which aims not only to advise you on the best way to tackle these projects that are so crucial to your future, but also to weigh up the best options available for printing, binding and presenting your thesis.

We hope that the information provided by Tesis Doctorales Online and our advice will be of use to you.

PRINT Bachelor’s and Master’s theses

In some countries, such as those within the European Higher Education Area, a final-year dissertation or project, known as a PFC, is required to obtain a university degree.

Following the Bologna Process, this programme became a compulsory requirement in Spain for obtaining any official bachelor’s or master’s degree.

To obtain an official bachelor’s degree the so-called Final Year Project, in which the student must carry out an individual research project under the supervision of a tutor, known as a supervisor TFG, and submit a final dissertation, which must be defended before a panel that will assess and grade the project. It is between 6 and 30 ECTS or European credits, the unit of measurement for academic activity. These credits will contribute towards the 240 ECTS credits required to obtain the degree. Their purpose is to ensure that students acquire the skills specific to their degree programme and consolidate the knowledge they have gained.

To obtain an official Master’s degree It is compulsory to carry out the TFM, a final project for a Master’s degree, with a procedure and objectives similar to those of a Bachelor’s Thesis (TFG). A Master’s degree, also known as a Master’s or Magister, is a postgraduate qualification lasting between one and two years, which cannot be undertaken until the student has obtained their Bachelor’s degree.

To be awarded a doctorate it is necessary to carry out a doctoral thesis, an original piece of research that will analyse various publications by other authors on a specific topic. The Doctorate It is the highest qualification that can be attained in the academic world, and the length of the dissertations submitted varies depending on the field of study in question or the requirements of the various universities.

The following steps are usually followed for all these academic assignments:

1. Election of the tutor or headteacher and the subject.
   2. Planning of the work to be carried out.
   3. Documentation, collection and organisation of data.
   4. Experimental phase, to test and demonstrate whether the initial hypotheses are valid or not.
   5. Writing, either in parallel with the previous stages or at the end of the research process, and which must always maintain a language and style appropriate to scientific texts.
   6. Public defence before an examining board, which will assess and evaluate the thesis.

CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE PFC, TFG, TCM AND DOCTORAL THESES

The contents The requirements for these academic papers vary depending on the requirements of schools and universities where they are taught (so it is vital that you check the course regulations and consult your tutor or project supervisor whenever necessary), but as a general rule, the PFC, TFG and TFM are usually between 45 and 85 pages long, whereas the thesis Doctoral theses often run to over 500 pages. It is no surprise, then, that the research carried out by doctorates They usually last between 3 and 5 years.

However, generally speaking, the structure is usually the same:

1. Front cover and title page: these must include a concise title that makes the purpose of the research clear at a glance. The title page is the first page following the front cover and is not numbered; it must include your personal details and those of the supervisor or tutor who has supervised your research.
2. Page index: this is the guide that your assessment panel will use to review your work efficiently. You must include all the sections and subsections into which your work is divided, along with the page numbers on which each one appears.
3. Memory: this is the thesis itself, the result of your research. Your thesis should include the text you have written, your conclusions, figures and tables, footnotes, etc.
4. Bibliography: you must include all the references you have used for your work, from the simplest of articles to the most extensive of books, including journals, monographs, other theses you have consulted, news articles, interviews… Of course, given that we live in the Internet age, this section allows you to include all the material you have used online, such as blogs, official websites, PDF documents, etc.
5. Appendices: a section more commonly found in doctoral theses than in PFGs, TFGs and TMFs; here you should include any supplementary material required for your research, such as formulas, questionnaires, a glossary of terms, data tables, calculations, etc.
6. Acknowledgements: although it is not usually mandatory, it is quite common to include a section for acknowledgements, either at the end or at the beginning of the work.

GUIDELINES FOR THE DESIGN OF FINAL YEAR PROJECTS, UNDERGRADUATE THESES, MASTER’S THESES AND DOCTORAL THESES

The main recommendation is to follow the guidelines set out by the various universities and schools, as well as those of the tutor supervising your work, to the letter.

However, we will now outline the most common practice in the absence of specific regulations.

– Cover page: this usually follows standard templates provided by the faculty itself, but if that isn’t the case, it’s best to steer clear of rococo-style designs featuring figurines and oddities – something that will, more often than not, turn the examination board against you. They don’t like being treated like nursery school teachers.

– Paper size: the most suitable is the A4 for PFC, TFG and TFM, and the one for 17 x 24 for doctoral theses. For projects requiring drawings, such as those in an Architecture degree, the most commonly used format is A4 or even larger sizes that can be folded.

– Font size: just use your common sense. The most commonly used size varies between 11 and 12 points. Larger fonts would take up too much space, and smaller ones would need to be read with a magnifying glass.

– Typography: in the absence of specific instructions, you should choose the most traditional and universally recognisable fonts: Arial, Times New Roman, Helvetica, Calibri or Verdana. The ones to avoid are ornate fonts, as seen on the cover. Simplicity is a virtue in the world of academic work. This isn’t show business; it’s the world of science.

– Margins: you must always include them, and it is recommended that they be at least 2 centimetres. Make sure your work looks centred and balanced, with no imbalance between the top and bottom margins, and with a wider margin on the left than on the right. An example of a balanced layout would be 6 cm on the left margin, 4 cm on the top margin, and 2 cm on the bottom and right margins.

– Line spacing: this is very important to ensure that the text doesn’t look like an indecipherable jumble of letters or a half-empty space with a few lines of text. The standard is the default setting in text editors, which can even be increased to 1.5 points. The justified alignment built into any word processor will give the text the necessary formal look.

– Text hierarchy: any modern word processor allows us to organise our work concisely and clearly by dividing it into sections and subsections, so that headings are larger than subheadings, and subheadings are larger than their own subheadings. It is very important to use the underlined and the bold to highlight what we consider most important in the text, as well as the italics for direct quotations. It is also important not to overdo it, so that the text does not end up looking like a black hole and becomes unreadable. As with everything we’ve been discussing, balance is key. Neither monotony nor excess.

– Figures and tables: all drawings, maps, diagrams, photographs and graphs shall be considered figures. All must include a title with its corresponding identifier using consecutive Arabic numerals (Fig. 1, Fig. 2), and you may also include the chapter number if you consider it necessary (Fig. 2.1, Fig. 2.2). Tables should be labelled and numbered in the same way. Both figures and tables must include a footnote indicating their source.

CITATION SYSTEMS IN BACHELOR’S THESES, DIPLOMA THESES, MASTER’S THESES AND DOCTORAL THESES

It is essential to cite the work of other authors or students correctly, as failing to do so or doing it incorrectly could result in you being accused of plagiarism and losing all the work you have done over months or years.

It is advisable to keep quotations short and to use them appropriately. You cannot produce a piece of work consisting of 50% quotations, or even less, as this would, of course, be considered plagiarism.

There are 3 citation systems:

1. The name-and-date system, also known as the Author-Year system or the Harvard System. Citations are included within the text of the work, using the surname of the author being cited, the publication date and, in brackets, the page number. Footnotes are not required. Let’s look at some examples:
– The author and year are given in brackets (Smith, 1995) or the author is mentioned in the text and the year in brackets (“Smith (1995, b, p. 225) stated that…”).
– If two or more authors are cited, they should be separated by a semicolon (Smith 1995; Jones 1997).
– If the author has several publications from the same year, they are numbered with letters a, b… The page numbers of the cited documents being referred to may also be indicated (Smith, 1995; Jones 1997 b, p. 336).

2. Numbering system: a system in which bibliographical references are numbered in the order in which they appear and listed at the end of the document. This system is rarely used in monographs, being more common in journals.
– The reference is indicated by a superscript, square brackets or round brackets.
– The numbering is sequential as it is listed.
– Subsequent citations by the same author should be numbered consecutively.
– The pages on which the information appears can be specified.

3. Continuous note system: this allows you to make notes in the text, either as footnotes or at the end of the chapter.

Quotations may contain any kind of information or comments.

The numbered list of references can be placed at the end of the chapter or on the page where the text appears.