Once your thesis or dissertation committee has approved your work, you should submit final copies via the Thesis and Dissertation (TAD) Services operated by the Graduate College at Ohio University. Here are some guidelines for preparing the final copies.
In general, the appropriate style for submitted theses and dissertations is provided in the current edition of the APA Publication Manual. Please be familiar with that style and use it in the preparation of your thesis and dissertation.
The purpose of the Manual is to help authors prepare manuscripts for submission to APA journals. The style required for theses and dissertations, however, is somewhat different from that required for manuscripts. Please observe the following procedures in preparing your thesis or dissertation, keeping in mind that the thesis or dissertation is a final copy, not a manuscript:
- TAD includes templates for thesis and dissertations for each college, including the College of Arts & Sciences as well as a document format checklist. These instructions take precedence over the instructions given in the Publication Manual.
- The title page of your paper should be in the format given by TAD, not the format given in the Manual. In particular, do not use a page header or running head on your title page.
- Do not use a page header on any other page of your paper.
- If you use footnotes, put them in the body of the paper, not at the end of the paper. Articles in APA journals give you a model for how to insert footnotes.
- If you have tables or figures, put these in the body of the paper, not at the end. If the table or figure requires less than a full page, continue the text in the remaining space, just as it appears in a journal article.
The overall goal of these guidelines is to have a final copy of your thesis or dissertation that looks like a published article rather than like a manuscript submitted for publication. If you have questions about how to prepare your paper, you are welcome to check with the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies.