oxford master thesis template

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Oxford Thesis Template   138 comments

LaTeX and similar tools follow a “what you see is what you mean” model, unlike Microsoft Word, which is “what you see is what you get”. When you’re starting a new section in a LaTeX document, you don’t click bold and increase the font size. Instead, you type \section , and the engine automatically assigns a section number and format, updates the table of contents, and even adds within-document links. This all sounds complicated, but if you’ve written HTML, you know the idea. (Word power-users will reply that Word has similar tricks up its sleeve. This is true, but LaTeX explicitly separates text from layout, preventing a lot of the “gremlins” that creep into Word documents.)

Of course, this paradigm creates a significant disconnect between the text you type and the beautiful PDF document that results. This is where a good template comes in. It defines everything from how the title page is laid out to what the page header looks like in the bibliography. For a LaTeX user (and anyone writing a document as long as a thesis should be), a good template is everything. I was lucky enough to find a template that Sam Evans adapted for social sciences use based on the original maths template by Keith Gillow . I wound up making my own modifications, and re-packaged the template for posterity.

Download the Oxford thesis template here .

If you prefer, you can also view on GitHub .

Some of the features of this template are:

Fantastic chapter pages. The template retains Sam Evans’s use of the quotchap and minitoc packages to (optionally) include an epigraph and brief table of contents at the beginning of each chapter. I found this a great way to inject a bit of personality into the thesis (via the epigraph) and ensure that my reader wasn’t getting lost (table of contents). My modifications cleaned up some of the spacing, ensuring single-spaced tables and slightly more compact chapter headings.

Table of Contents refinements. Careful attention was paid to spacing and page headings in the table of contents as well as other heading sections. This can get tricky in documents using lots of packages. This template also inserts an “Appendices” page (and ToC entry) between chapters and appendices.

Table of abbreviations. Many science and engineering theses use lots of abbreviations. Humanities and social sciences theses often need glossaries. While there are some dedicated LaTeX classes that meet these needs in complex cases, I decided to create a simple list environment to handle the routine cases.

Highlighted corrections. Most Oxford theses go through a round of corrections, as time-honored a tradition as the viva itself. Minor corrections generally just involve sending a PDF of your revised thesis to your internal examiner. (Major corrections often require a more exacting process.) This class allows you to designate text (or figures, etc) as a correction. You can then toggle between generating a document in which these corrections are highlighted in blue (ideal for sending to your examiner for a quick read-through) and just printing them without any adornment (for generating your final copy).

Page layout, draft, and spacing options. In a few keystrokes, you can switch between a double-spaced, single-sided, binding-margin document (ideal for submission), a 1.5-spaced, double-sided document (for your parents’ copy), or a version with equal left and right margins (for submitting as a PDF). An optional draft notice (with date) can be included in the footer — just remember to turn it off before submitting!

Master’s thesis title page. Some masters’ degrees require title pages with a candidate number and word count rather than a name and college, to ensure anonymity for the examinees. They also require a statement of authenticity / originality on the title page. This template has a quick option to switch to this master’s submission format. And, just as importantly, it can be turned off when you want to print a version for yourself.

Posted 12 Jul 2015 by John McManigle in Technical

138 responses to Oxford Thesis Template

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Thanks very much to you and Sam Evans for developing this! I’m hoping to use it (or a slightly modified version) for my MSc thesis this year.

Fantastic! I wonder if it would be worth putting this on GitHub or similar, so that as people make/suggest modifications, others can make use of it… Out of curiosity, what did you decide to modify?

Did this ever go on github or no?

After much delay, it has been uploaded to GitHub at mcmanigle/OxThesis .

Thanks very much for this. it’s amazing. I am trying to change the titles of the chapters though to align left rather than right..how do I do that? I have been trying all day!

Hi Anne, So unfortunately left-aligning chapter titles isn’t an option that the quotchap package (which my class uses to format chapter titles) contains by default. Which doesn’t mean what you’re asking for is impossible, just that it’s a little clumsy.

Probably the easiest way is to insert the following block of code in Oxford_Thesis.tex just above the line that says %%%%% THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie on line 97).

This should redefine the chapter-heading command to move both the grey number and the chapter title to the left side of the page. Hope it helps!

Thanks very much for this. With a bit of a clumsier tweak from me the script did exactly what I wanted as I also needed the “Chapter” word before the number.

Pingback: Structure your thesis – thesismathblog

It is the most beautiful template which I have referred. But I would like to use “Chapter 1” instead of only number. HOW can I do, please? I am the beginner in Latex

Hi Le, Probably the easiest way is to insert the following block of code in Oxford_Thesis.tex just above the line that says %%%%% THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie on line 97).

Hi John, great code! I’m having difficulty changing the position of the page numbers. I would like for the number to always be at the bottom centre of the page… Thanks in advance!

Hi Sandra, So sorry for the delay in responding! Add the following lines to Oxford_Thesis.tex just before THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie line 97):

Hi John, thanks a lot! Well, the only problem for me is that my computer doesn’t seem to be able to find the figures/beltcrest.pdf file, so it’s always an empty square where the logo is supposed to be inserted..

Interesting… Is the figures/beltcrest.pdf file in the directory with the rest of your thesis? If you just download the thesis file, unzip it, and compile it, does the logo appear? I’m afraid this is one of those problems that’s probably specific to how the files are laid out on your computer, so you might be better off bribing a technically-minded friend to figure it out. I can’t debug it well without being at your computer…

Hi John, thank you for sharing this brilliant template, I’ll be using it for my MSc dissertation. I have removed the quote and want the Section header i.e ‘Chapter 1’ to start where the quote started instead of mid page, can you assist ?

Hi William, Apologies for the late reply! There are no doubt more “correct” answers to this question in terms of modifying the chapter headings entirely, but the simplest answer to your question is to insert the following line:

into Oxford_Thesis.tex just above the line that reads THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie on line 97 in the template version). You can adjust the “-80pt” to your heart’s content. For your reference, setting it to (+) 40pt will match how the template already is. Setting it to 0 will leave a generous top margin that you might find looks appropriate even without a quote. But do play with it!

Hello John, thanks for the template. How do I add my bibtex database i.e the reference list to my document?

I’m afraid there are so many different ways to configure BibTeX and other reference managers for LaTeX that I’m not able to provide help on any in particular. It also tends to involve pretty individual help depending on your setup. This template should work with whatever your preferred LaTeX referencing setup is, so I suggest getting in-person help from someone at your uni who has done it before.

I was wondering how I could decrease the upper margin of the title page so that there is more space for additional subtitles below. Thank you for the amazing template!

Apologies for the late reply! Assuming you are writing a DPhil thesis, add a line to ociamthesis.cls after line 217 ( \begin{center} ) that adds a negative vertical space. Try: \vspace*{-3cm} . That section of the file would then look like:

If you are writing a master’s thesis, you should instead change line 201 ( \vspace*{-3ex} ) to have a larger space. Try -3cm .

Thank you; and how do I then add a subtitle in a smaller font?

There are “better” ways to do this in order to actually modify the template to expect a subtitle, but for quick results you can modify the line where the title goes (line 76 in Oxford_Thesis.tex) to instead be two lines:

Hi, thanks so much for publishing this!

I can’t figure some things out, though: 1. I was wondering is there a way for the examples not to start from 1 with the beginning of every chapter? This seems to be happening because of the chapters being in their separate .tex files. 2. There seems to be something weird happening with some of the formatting when I have a figure, a table or a big example. The text gets spread out. The LaTeX community online suggests adding \raggedbottom to the preamble but it does not seem to work. Any suggestions?

1. I didn’t use Examples myself; can you show me what your command is to start an example? That will help me answer this question.

2. Yes, raggedbottom will fix this, at the expense of not having the bottoms of your pages line up neatly. Instead of adding it to the preamble, change line 193 of Oxford_Thesis.tex (just before chapters are included) from \flushbottom to \raggedbottom .

Dear John, thanks so much for your answer.

It’s a linguistics thesis so I’m using \ex. and \exg.

Hi, thanks for the template. I am using the original maths template.

Can you please help me to figure out to add a Glossary and a List of Publications in the preamble before ending the Roman pages?

Thanks, Rahman

Hi Rahman, I’m afraid that providing individual help for someone working with a different template is something the hospital keeps me too busy to do. I would suggest that looking at the relevant code in my template (specifically the text/abbreviations.tex file and lines 354 to 368 of ociamthesis.cls ), which will hopefully set you on the right track!

Hello there, Just wanted to know what the font style was called for your thesis?

The template uses the Computer Modern font , which is the default in LaTeX and is widely used in technical publishing (partially for this reason).

GRACIAS TIBI VALDE

Thank you for the great template. I guess the font size that is used is 12. How can I change it? I tried to pass the parameter to \documentclass as follows: \documentclass[a4paper,twoside,12pt]{ociamthesis} but it does not seem to be working.

Hi Salah, You’ll need to change that on line 13 of ociamthesis.cls

Hope it helps!

I am a bit confused as google returned to me another file with the same name first. https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/it/faqs/latex/thesis-class

Why is the same material distributed at different places, with different versions and a clear copyright and license note? As there is no copyright and license, people in most jurisdictions are not allowed to make any changes to ociamthesis.cls.

Hi Johannes,

You are of course absolutely right; without a clear license it is very difficult to confidently make and distribute changes. I have had personal communication with Keith Gillow (author of the original maths template) who said “From my perspective you are very welcome to use and adjust this as the others have done before you, and also feel free to put it on github etc.” and Sam Evans (who modified it for social sciences use) who said “I’m also totally fine for this code to be as open as possible and live freely on the net.”

With that permission, Diego Vitali has adapted the same to suit the Roehampton University standard, which he published under a GNU license. Danny Price has developed a LyX version which is on Github with a statement stating “use responsibly” without specifying a license.

Given Keith Gillow and Sam Evans’ statements, I feel comfortable releasing this under an MIT license, and will update the files accordingly. Will also take this opportunity to upload to Github so that people can suggest updates and pull requests more easily.

Running BibTex, i consistently get an error: “I found no \bibstyle command—while reading Oxford_Thesis.aux”

Any advice?

There are a couple of different processing programs that “do” bibliographies in LaTeX. Some of the more popular are with bibtex and biber. Some of the differences are described here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/25701/bibtex-vs-biber-and-biblatex-vs-natbib

This template is currently designed to use biber, since it is growing in popularity and is easier to make custom changes to without learning a whole new language. Most LaTeX packages should have an option to run biber, but more technical advice can be found here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/26516/how-to-use-biber

Of course, if you prefer natbib (the older / more traditional way of doing things) feel free to modify the template as necessary, particularly around lines 47-57.

Hello, I have an issue, I am not able to find how to display the bibliography in this oxford template, how can I display it? Besides, I have citation but it is just like “nih_ct_2017” how can I add the [].

Hi John! Thank you very much for opening up this template for others but I seem to have an error from it when trying to compile the bibtex as it is from the download, that says

– no \citation commands – no \bibdata commands – no \bibstyle commands

These usually come up if end \end{document} was too early, but I can see that is not the case. I just wondered if this problem had come up for anyone else and whether you might know what has gone wrong / what I am doing wrong? I am running it from texmaker.

Further to my last message, I discovered that it’s a problem with the preset compile commands I was using in TexMaker. Thanks!

Hi John, I’m having the same issue. What did you change?

Hi, this is a great template! My only question is how do I adjust the font to Times New Roman and the line spacing of all text to 1.5x line spacing? Also, is there a way to include the Supervisor Name on the Title Page?

Thank you in advance,

I have stumbled across this having already written my masters dissertation. I would like to make my title page the same as the one in yours, but I have not managed to figure out how to do so. Any help would be appreciated! :)

Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this template with the wider community. I’ve used a modified version of yours and I’ll be submitting my thesis next week.

I hope this message isn’t considered as spam.

Really! Thanks a lot! Much appreciated. Keep up the good work.

Cheers, Deyan

Hi John, thank you so much for this brilliant template which is making my PhD life much easier! I’m stuck with trying to compile individual chapters (e.g. for submitting a chapter to a supervisor etc). I’m trying \includeonly{chaptername} after the documentclass but for some reason that is giving me only the bibliography! I’ve also tried commenting out the \include commands for individual chapters but that would typeset, e.g., chapter 5 as chapter 1. Can you assist?

Hi John, I managed to solve the problem in my last post – please ignore! I was wondering, however, how one could add in a `part’ structure above the chapter structure (i.e. Part 1 / chapter 1, 2, 3, Part 2 / chapter 4 5 6 or similar) – assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, Thank you so much for this template. May I ask how to change the option of double space and 1.5 space please? Thanks

Hi John, Many thanks for this! I’m having trouble with the Bibtex as John Ylang had written previously. However, I’ve checked my preset compilers and all seems to be correct, yet I’m still getting error messages with bibtex: – no \citation commands – no \bibdata commands – no \bibstyle commands

Many, many thanks for this template, it is so helpful. I am submitting my thesis in the form of journal articles for the different chapters. I was wondering if you could advise how I can create a small reference list per chapter (including only those references cited in that chapter)? Is it possible to also change the sub-section numbering within different chapters?

Thank you so very much, Isabel

Hi John, is the template still working? I installed TexWorks today and most of the template works apart from the bibliography/references – this is when trying to compile leaving everything unchanged from when it was unzipped.

The log shows: I found no \citation commands—while reading file Oxford_Thesis.aux I found no \bibdata command—while reading file Oxford_Thesis.aux I found no \bibstyle command—while reading file Oxford_Thesis.aux

…and all the citations are undefined. Not sure what’s going on here.

Update: I fixed the referencing problem using the following. You need to select Biber instead of Bibtex. From stackexchange:

“I’m a TeXstudio user and whenever I receive this error message, it’s because I’ve changed the default bibliography tool from biber to bibtex.

To change it back, I have to do Options > Configure TeXstudio > Build > Default Bibliography Tool and the process works again.

Even if this answer never helps anyone else ever, it’ll at least be good for me to have this here as a aide memoire next times this happens!”

Thanks so much for making this available, I really like it! I’m new to latex and am trying to work out the best way of adding a list of equations. This seems like the kind of thing people would do all the time but I can’t seem to get anything to work. Any suggestions?

Cheers, Suzanne

Thank you for the template, great job! However, as many complained about it, the refences page is missing. Is there anyone who can display the references page? I have experience with Latex, I worked on it a lot but still no results.

Hi and thank you very much for this template.

I wonder how I could fit in a subheading below the title on the front page, in a slightly smaller fonts size?

The template is great, but I can’t seem to change the font size to 14, where do I control this?

On line 19 of ociamthesis.cls, change “12pt” to “14pt”.

Thanks for this amazing template!

However what can I do to remove the empty page that occurs before each new chapter?

Masters are page count constrained so everyone counts!

I believe the “empty page that occurs before each new chapter” is added automatically to make sure each new chapter starts on the right-hand page in double-sided page layouts. So it will only be added if the new chapter would otherwise start on a left-facing page. In Oxford_Thesis.tex, look at lines 25-30. Specifically, you should probably add a percent sign at the beginning of line 26 and remove the one at the beginning of line 28 to change to one-sided binding, like so:

If you do want two-sided binding, but with chapters allowed to start on either side, change line 26 to:

Again, thank you for your continued help.

I am mostly using \parencite and \textcite for my citations. I am wondering when using multiple citations within the same parentheses, can I tell latex to order them? I would want them to be ordered, starting with the oldest publication.

Thank you, JOD

Hi, sorting of citations, and especially sorting them differently in the bibliography vs the in-text citations, is a big rabbit hole that you can dive down here if your resolve is firm.

Probably / hopefully the easiest solution (if you are using biblatex/biber for your bibliography, which is currently the default in the template) is:

• look at whichever of line 55 or 59 in Oxford_Thesis.tex, beginning with \usepackage[style= , that does not have a % starting it
• find the list of arguments between square brackets
• you’ll notice either sorting=none or sorting=nyt or some other option controls how the bibliography is sorted. (‘nyt’ means first by author Name, then by Year, then by Title. ‘none’ means in order of appearance in your text.)
• add the option (with a comma between options) sortcites=false . This will continue sorting the bibliography as described above, but will order the in-text multiple citation groups in whatever order you type them in the latex file.

The advantage of this solution is that it’s simple enough to type out here. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t really sort your in-text citations by year, it just doesn’t sort them, so whatever order you type is what you get.

first of all thanks a lot for this amazing template. I’m using it currently for my master thesis in physics.

I have tinkered around and modified some things to my needs, but I am struggeling with one modification: I want a “List of Symbols” in my thesis. You already provided a list of abbrevations with two rows. For my List of Symbols I want an additional row, i.e. Symbol, Description, Unit. It should look like this:

h . . . . . Hight of tower [m]

Is there a way to modify the existing mclistof environment to achieve that, i.e. just add a row to the right?

Best regards, Tom

I make no promises, but try adding to ociamthesis.cls (I suggest around line 375, after the mclistof environment):

Then, you should be able to make the kind of list you’re asking for with a block like this in one of your text files:

Let me know how it goes!

Thanks a lot for your quick response. The proposed code works just as I wanted it to work. Thanks a lot for your help.

I am currently trying to cut words in my thesis; is it possible to change the references to

example: (Weber, 2010:5) ?

That would save me two words for each citation.

Thank you and best regards.

Also, currently my compiler (Overleaf) recognises this

urldate = {2019-05-01}

as citing it as (visited on 05/01/2019), while I want it to be

(visited on 01/05/2019)

Can I change that?

Yes, that is possible, but I don’t have any special knowledge on it. Assuming you are using biblatex (the default bibliography formatter used in the template), there are examples of many pre-defined styles here .

Basic ideas about customizing styles in more detail (which can get pretty complicated) are here , with one example here . If you decide to go this route, this cheatsheet might help.

Good luck! John

Hello, Thanks so much for the amazing template. I’m currently struggling with recurrent Overfull \hbox errors in my section and subsection headers. If I insert a hypen or line break then this looks odd in my mini-toc. Is there a away to get round this? Perhaps by reducing the size of the section and subsection font?

Many thanks! Cat

So I can get an idea of what kind of errors you’re seeing, would you give an example or two of section or subsection headers you are using? (I’m trying to figure out if they are just long phrases, or very long single words, or what?)

Hi John, thank you so much for the template! Just prepping for hard copy bod submission and wondering how to remove page numbers from the blank pages between chapters? Thanks in advance!

The blank pages between chapters are there to make sure that chapters open on right-hand facing pages when printing a two-sided thesis. If you want to remove them entirely, you can change “openright” on line 19 of ociamthesis.cls to “openany” (best if you are doing two-sided printing but want to be able to start a chapter on either side of the book), or switch to one of the one-sided binding options around line 25-30 of Oxford_Thesis.tex.

If you want the blank pages to be there, but want them to be truly blank, insert the following code to Oxford_Thesis.tex. I suggest adding it right after \begin{document} (around line 106):

For more details, look here and here .

Brilliant, that’s worked, thank you John! Really appreciate your help :-)

Hi John – thank you for the template! I have an issue with some very long captions which run off the bottom boundary of the page. I would like to split them onto the next page (ideally on the page facing the figure, but overleaf would be fine too). I have tried putting the caption in a separate float but this doesn’t always appear immediately after the figure and it disrupts the figure numbering. Any suggestions would be great – thanks in advance!

There are a few different types of solution to this problem; I assume you’ve done a bit of googling already. The two I would suggest trying are:

Option 1, adapted from here , is to forego the float environment entirely and just do everything inline. The caption package (which Oxford_Thesis already includes) provides the \captionof command to facilitate this. The disadvantage is that without a float environment, you’ll have to put the figure exactly where you want it in text, so if you change the text around the figure, or change page layout or line spacing, you may have to move the picture manually to put it in the correct place on the page. Code to insert a figure would look like this:

Option 2, adapted from here , is to split the image/caption across two floats like you’ve been trying to do. I think that by using the [h] , [t] , and/or [b] options to the float environment judiciously you would be able to get good luck at where things appear. Try this to place your image:

If you want to be super fancy, you can throw this into Oxford_Thesis.tex , ideally just before \begin{document} :

Hi John – this is great. Thank you very much! Option 2 worked for me with some careful placement parameters. I really appreciate it :)

Is there any experience using the glossaries or acronym package together with this template?

Adding to oriamthesis.cls:

\usepackage[acronym,]{glossaries}

and to Oxford_Thesis.tex:

\makeglossaries \loadglsentries{text/frontmatter/glossary}

, then implementing glossary items in the chapters seems to break the PDFLateX compilation process. It gives a ” File ended while scanning use of \field.” error.

I don’t personally have any experience using these packages, but usually that error means that either you are missing a closing brace } somewhere, or that you have a percent sign % in your text, possibly hiding in a bibliography file. Remember that in LaTeX, a percent sign begins a comment, so if you have a line like:

\newglossaryentry{spec}{name={specificity},description={a measure of false positive rate, expressed in %}}

The % sign will prevent LaTeX from seeing the closing braces (as they will be a comment). You need to “escape” the percent sign by using \% instead.

Hi again, John.

I am trying to remove hyphenation from my section and sub-section titles. Nearly all the titles longer than one line are hyphenated, often very awkwardly.

I tried adding \usepackage[raggedright]{titlesec} to the preamble. This works but it breaks the chapter pages: instead of the nice grey number, it outputs eg., “Chapter 1”. I guess this is something to do with quotchap.

Is there a way to make section and subsection left flush (or at least change the tolerance) without affecting the chapter pages?

Thanks very much!

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but after trying for a few minutes, I can’t figure out a chapter title that will made my version hyphenate. Would you tell me an example chapter title and page size so I can start testing? I think there should be a reasonably straightforward solution.

Thanks very much indeed. I haven’t changed any of the page size or font settings from your template.

For example, \sec{Homeobox genes and miRNAs: key regulators in MLLr leukemia} %hyphenates ‘regula- tors’

\subsec{MLL-rearranged leukemia is associated with poor treatment outcomes} %hyphenates ‘treat- ment’

Thanks; sorry I misread your original post and thought it was chapter titles, rather than section titles, that were being hyphenated.

You’re right both in that \usepackage[raggedright]{titlesec} fixes the problem, and breaks the quotchap package. The easiest solution is to add this not in the preamble, but to ociamthesis.cls at line 403 (immediately before \usepackage[grey,utopia]{quotchap} ). That way quotchap will override titlesec for chapters only.

It seems to work for me in brief testing; let me know if you encounter any issues!

Fantastic – thanks, John. This seems to work perfectly!

For some reason, my minitoc is double-spaced, and I’m not quite sure why this is happening. I tried forcing it with single-spacing which seems okay. But in either case the minitoc spans across two pages when really it seems in your version the chapter title page is quite compact with even text beginning directly after. Any help would be so greatly appreciated.

Interesting. The version of this template that I modified had the minitoc double spaced, and one of my changes was to single space it. My biggest suggestion is that maybe your first paragraph just after the minitoc is a length that the system thinks would look bad without that extra spacing.

LaTeX does this weird thing where it judges the “badness” of different layouts — leaving one line of a paragraph dangling on a page, vs increasing line spacing in other places, vs overflowing a line beyond the margin, etc. If your (single spaced) minitoc would end in a place where the next paragraph would fall in a very odd place (ie with only one line on the page, or one line dangling off the next), LaTeX might have decided that it “knows best” and to fix the “issue” instead increased spacing on your minitoc.

One way to test this is to add \raggedbottom before that chapter, and see if that changes anything. Another way would be to compile the thesis with the example text that came with the template and see if that is single or double spaced.

If all of this doesn’t seem like the problem, feel free to email me your thesis and I’ll take a look.

Hi John, thanks very much for your input. I am very sorry, but it doesn’t seem to work. I toyed around with the following in the cls file

\renewcommand{\chapterheadstartvskip}{\vspace*{-30pt}} \renewcommand{\chapterheadendvskip}{\vspace{30pt}}

which seems to pull the chapter title pages up, so that the text starts immediately after the minitoc (which I ended up having to force into single with \setstretch) but what I didn’t realize was that changing this messed with the toc, list of figures, and list of tables. Basically all of these start way at the top of the page (including one of the chapters).

I think the easiest thing might be to make a copy of your whole thesis directory, remove all but one chapter and all figures, compile it to make sure it still has the problem, and then and email the directory to me ([email protected]) as a zip file. I’m happy to take a look. Unfortunately trying to debug something like this that depends on changes to multiple files is too hard to do on this kind of forum.

Hopefully a quick question for you here – I’m trying to change the section level numbering in the minitocs to reflect what it is in the main toc. The maintoc section level is set in the main text fairly straightforwardly but i’m finding it hard to figure out what to amend to make the minitoc depth match it? Main TOC successfully shows numbers to subsubsection but minitoc stops at subsection. Thanks very much in advance!

Try \mtcsetdepth{minitoc}{3} in Oxford_Thesis.tex just before \begin{document} (around line 104). Let me know if it doesn’t work. For excruciating detail on minitocs, see here .

This worked a treat! Thanks so much John :)

Is there any way the font can be changed with the current TeX?

Thank you so much for this, been a massive help!

This is surprisingly a more complicated question than it should be. For a first try, add to Oxford_Thesis.tex just before \begin{document} (around line 104) the command \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{phv} where “phv” is replaced by the code for the font you want. A list of codes is here , but a short list is: ptm for Times, ppl for Palatino, pbk for Bookman, phv for Helvetica, pcr for Courier.

If that doesn’t work for whatever font you’d like, my next step would be to add, just before that line, a \usepackage{helvet} to make sure the font is loaded. The list of font packages (in the same order as above) is mathptmx, palatino, bookman, helvet, courier.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for the excellent template. I could not figure out how to change the colour of the chapter number headings to black instead of grey, and how to make chapter title to bold. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks in advance.

Replace line 404 (the one that mentions quotchap) of ociamthesis.cls with these two lines:

You will get a few errors on compiling about “Undefined color ‘chaptergrey'” but that is expected and it should still compile fine.

Thanks John. This seems to work. But instead of using nogrey I redefined chaptergrey with a new color with a new command.

Hi John, To create a glossary the template uses \item to produce a list. Most of my terms are very long. It is possible to make the item automatically set a new line in their own space for glossary in the mclistof environment?

My little glossary area was designed to be a relatively quick-and-easy template for my minimal glossary. For a more “full-featured” glossary, look into the official glossary package in LaTeX. I’ll also take a look at how to modify my template to do what you’re asking, but it might take me a couple of days. What exactly do you mean by “make the item automatically set a new line in their own space”? Have the term on one line and the definition below?

I looked at most of the glossary style, there are mainly two ways to do for the long terms. First, the terms are combined with the definition lines but separated with a spacing ( https://www.dickimaw-books.com/gallery/index.php?label=long-descriptions ). The other one is like you said, term on one line and definition below. I am happy with either one. But I think I prefer the first one with an adjustment which is when a term longer than a certain length the definition start a new line below.

Hi John, my thesis involves Chinese and I was thus hoping to use XeLaTeX to compile it; however, this breaks the savequotes (perhaps due to ‘incorrectly’ nested braces and begin/ends in the definition). Do you know how I might be able to resolve this issue?

Hi Al, I’m not sure exactly what is causing this issue, but I’ve verified that if you delete lines 384 – 394 (the part renewing the savequote environment) in ociamthesis.cls, it will compile under XeLaTeX. My only modifications (if I remember correctly) to the original quotchap package was to make the spacing for multi-line quotes a little more pleasant, so you might find you don’t notice a difference. If you decide to make further modifications yourself, it might help to refer to the source code for quotchap .

Hi John, it is possible to put the footnote at the bottom of the page? I want to put a footnote for the chapter heading. I tried to used direct \footnote{} but a lot of errors appeared. Do you have any idea?

For vaguely annoying reasons having to do with the internal ways LaTeX moves text around to the Table of Contents, if you are putting a \footnote{} inside a chapter or section title, you need to “protect” it with \protect . So your line would look like:

Notice that, in addition to the \protect\footnote{} and the \label{} tags, there is also an optional argument [Introduction] at the beginning of the chapter definition. This is the title as it will appear in the Table of Contents. You can leave that part out if you want, but then the footnote mark will appear in the ToC.

Hi John, thanks for your help earlier with XeLaTeX. Do you know how I might be able to use bold face small caps in my document? Thanks!

Hi John, I will remove the red boxes (lines around the links) on the tableofcontents. I tried use the ‚hyperref‘, but I am wounder why there is no effect? How can I adjust the look and feel of the links behavior?

Hi Hermann, I apologize for the late reply! You will have to add your hyperref options to the oicamthesis.cls file on line 173. Any changes you make there should carry over to your complied thesis. Let me know if you need any help!

Hi John, Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful template! I just wanted to check one thing with you. For some reason my chapter titles have changed font from the Computer Modern font they were before. Is a way to bring them back to match the rest of the text. Many thanks, Claire

Hi Claire, Glad it’s working for you! In order to answer your question, I would have to know exactly how you set your font to something different in the first place. A good thing to try first is to add the following lines to your Oxford_Thesis.tex file, just before \begin{document} , e.g. at line 102:

Replace \bfseries with whatever font command you are using; it will be used in the chapter titles.

Hi John, Thank you so much! This has fixed it and brought it back to the default (which I think is computer modern). Sadly I have no idea how I managed to change it from the default in the first place. Very much still learning with regards to Latex but your template has made it so much easier. Really appreciate you sharing it and for your help on this issue. All the best, Claire

Thank you for producing such a brilliant template. I was wondering whether it’s possible to change the font size of just the bibliography, i.e., have chapters in 12pt and bibliography in 10pt? This would help with my page limit massively, while still being within the rules

Glad the template is helping! Believe it or not, the bibliography font size is already a little smaller in the default template. But you can fiddle with it more. Look at Oxford_Thesis.tex line 63:

You can replace \small with any of the standard LaTeX font size commands, which from largest to smallest are: \Huge, \huge, \LARGE, \Large, \large, \normalsize (same as thesis text), \small, \footnotesize, \scriptsize, and \tiny. You could theoretically do something fancier (like the last thing described here ) to get an exact font size if you needed it, but you can probably get satisfactory results sticking with those pre-made options.

Thanks a lot, the template has been extremely useful! All the best, Benoit

Thanks for the great template! I would like to remove the big chapter numbering, but unfortunately I cannot find the code for it. Can you help me?

Hi Virginia,

The same package, quotchap , does both the big chapter numbering and the quotes (epigraphs) at the beginning of each chapter. To turn this package off, open ociamthesis.cls and comment out (by putting a percent sign % at the beginning of each line): 1. Line 375 – which loads the quotchap package, 2. Lines 385-394 – which clean up chapter epigraph formatting, and 3. Lines 442-443 – which adjusts chapter heading spacing.

After that, you’ll just have to go through all of your chapter files, and the bibliography area of the main Oxford_Thesis.tex , and remove all savequote blocks. This will return you to the default LaTeX chapter headers. If you miss any of the above, don’t worry: you’ll get compile errors that point you at which line(s) you missed.

This template is one of the most incredible things out there. Thanks for sharing it with the world! I’m using it for my dissertation with a few alterations here and there.

Question: in the list of abbreviations with

“\begin{mclistof}{List of Acronyms}{3.2cm}”

is there a way to turn off the dot leaders between the abbreviation and word? My graduate school says they want them removed (tbh I think they’re great though).

thanks for any help,

– [also] John

Oh wait! I realized I just need to comment out

\mkern\@dotsep mu$}\hfill}

in the ociamthesis.cls

thanks still all the same. The template our university provides isn’t nearly as nice as yours.

Glad the template was helpful and that you figured out the abbreviation list kerning. Best of luck finishing up!

hello John,

Thank you for your template.

Can we insert figures with eps not only png?

If you want to insert EPS figures, add the line: \usepackage{epstopdf}

You can add it to Oxford_Thesis.tex anywhere before the \begin{document} , which is line 104. (The easiest would be to add it directly before that line.)

When you include images, do not include the .eps extension in the tex file; just use something like: \includegraphics{path/to/file_name_without_extension}

For a little more information, see this StackExchange question .

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Hello John,

Thank you vert much for the great template. I’m wondering how I can reduce the spacing at the beginning of every chapter (so that the chapter title moves closer to the top of the page)?

Try changing the “40pt” at the end of line 442 of ociamthesis.cls, which reads in full:

Dear John, Many thanks for this template, it is very helpful! I have three unrelated chapters, at the end of which I would like to add separate references. At the moment I can only add references at the very end of the document. Do you know how to specify to add bibliography per chapter? Best wishes, Sam

Try adding refsection=chapter to line 55 of Oxford_Thesis.tex , which loads the biblatex package. The line should now look like:

You would then need to use \printbibliography at the end of each chapter file. There is a lot more you can customize about how exactly this behaves, which is explained in gritty detail in the biblatex documentation .

Hello John, I would love to use your template. but I am having trouble getting it to work. I am not yet a pro at using LateX…. I saved the folder on my PC and just hit “Build an view” to see what happens. However, I get the message “Unfortunately, the package cbfonts-fd could not be installed.” and more errors are spit out. ( line 104 This NFSS system isn’t set up properly. \begin{document}). I would be happy if you could help me with this!

Hi Frances, What application are you using to compile the template? It seems like this error sometimes comes up when the program (based on a google search, maybe TexStudio and MiKTeX more than others) can’t find the LaTeX package repository to get all of the fonts installed. I wonder if the guidance at this Q&A page would help? If not, let me know what program you’re using and I’ll try to think of other answers. Thanks, John

thank you for your reply! I am using TexStudio and, unfortunately, i could not find the answer on the Q&A page :/

kind regards Frances

Thanks for making this template available! It’s been super useful to write up my thesis.

Just a quick question for you. I want to display a minitoc, minilof and minilot for each appendix. The mini table of contents works fine, but the mini list of figures/tables appears in the wrong appendix (i.e. the ones from appendix B are listed in appendix A, and so on). Any idea what might the problem?

Best wishes,

Thank you so much for your beautiful template, I just started working with it and it’s super easy to work with and adapt to ones own needs!

I had one question which I wasn’t able to find anywhere – I would need to insert a “Contribution” page in the roman pages, however I don’t know where I need to define a new environment (similar to acknowledgements), in order to do so?

Hi John, Thank you so much for your nice template. But I have faced some issues. Can you help me to resolve these? I couldn’t call the references in the introduction section. How I should manage the bibliography? Please give a response.

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Hi! Thanks for the template!

How should I acknowledge using this template in my thesis?

The template is freely released, and may be used without any acknowledgement. If you are feeling particularly generous, you could put a sentence in your thesis Acknowledgement section that says something like “I would like to thank John McManigle, Sam Evans, and Keith Gillow for developing the template used to format this thesis.”

John, thanks so much for a magnificent template. I am trying to update the beltcrest to the newer logo but struggling to figure out a way to acheive this so that it retains the same size. I tried to screenshot the new logo, save as jpg and convert to pdf as the same name, but the pdf is now considered an entire A4 page so it looks terrible. Any advice on this? Do you perhaps have access to a similarly-formatted beltcrest that is the newer version?

Hi Markos, I reached out by email to ask for a copy of the new crest to test, but haven’t heard back from you yet. Let me know when you have a minute to play with it!

Hi John, Apologies I missed your email. Have now replied. Best Markos

I’ve added a PDF version of the logo to the GitHub repository. If you copy that to your /figures/ directory, then add the following line to Oxford_Thesis.tex just before \maketitle (around line 150):

I’ve also added this as a (commented-out by default) option on the version of the template currently on GitHub .

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• Graduate school
• Information for postgraduate research students
• Submitting your thesis

This section contains essential information and guidance for the preparation and submission of your thesis.

Preparation and Submission of your Thesis

IMPORTANT - When preparing your thesis please ensure that you have taken into account any copyright or sensitive content issues, and dealt with them appropriately. 

COVID-19  Additional academic support – Supporting Students to Submission

Additional academic support is available for postgraduate research students impacted by the pandemic. If your research has been disrupted by COVID-19, it will now be possible to have this taken into account in viva examinations.

Tips on planning your thesis

At an early stage you should:

• Prepare a detailed work plan for your research in consultation with your supervisor.
• Build some flexibility into your plan. It is difficult to give general advice about the allocation of time on theory‑oriented projects, because the nature of these is so variable. In the case of experiment‑based research projects, you should normally allow up to six months to write a DPhil thesis, or three to four months for a corresponding MSc by Research thesis.
• Consider attending available skills training courses, for example  Thesis and Report Writing .

It is not advisable to leave all the writing to the end, for several reasons:

• You will need practice at writing over a period of time in order to develop a good style.
• There will inevitably be hold‑ups in experimental work and it is better to use that time to work on part of your thesis, rather than to waste it. If you do some writing earlier the final completion of your thesis will not seem such a daunting task.
• Approaching your submission date will become more stressful than necessary.

About your thesis

The best way to find out what is required for a successful thesis in your subject area is to look at some written in recent years. You should obviously look particularly closely at theses written by previous members of your own research group, which are available in the University library.

The formal requirements for obtaining your degree are set out in detail in the ‘ Examination Regulations ’. The standard required for success in the DPhil examination is defined as follows: that the student present a significant and substantial piece of research, of a kind which might reasonably be expected of a capable and diligent student after three or at most four years of full‑time study in the case of a full-time student, or eight years in the case of a part-time student. For the MSc by Research the standard required is that the candidate should have made a worthwhile contribution to knowledge or understanding of the relevant field of learning after a minimum of one year or two years of full-time study.

Statement of Authorship

 - Do I need to provide a separate statement of authorship with my thesis?

When you complete your application for appointment of examiners, you will be asked whether the work you are submitting is solely your own work. Where you have completed work in collaboration, or are using work completed by others, as well as making it clear throughout the thesis, you should always provide a separate document with details of which parts of the thesis are not your own work.

Thesis page and word limits

Several departments place a word limit or page limit on theses. Details can be found in the  Examination Regulations  or  GSO.20a Notes of Guidance for Research Examinations .

Permission to exceed the page and word limits

Should you need to exceed your word/page limit you must seek approval from the Director of Graduate Studies in your department. You and your supervisor must submit a letter/email requesting approval, giving reasons why it is necessary to exceed the limit. This must be sent to the MPLS Graduate Office ( [email protected] ).

Proof-reading

It is your responsibility to ensure your thesis has been adequately proof-read before it is submitted.  Your supervisor may alert you if they feel further proof-reading is needed, but it is not their job to do the proof-reading for you.  You should proof-read your own work, as this is an essential skill in the academic writing process. However, for longer pieces of work it is considered acceptable for students to seek the help of a third party for proof-reading. Such third parties can be professional proof-readers, fellow students, friends or family members (students should bear in mind the terms of any agreements with an outside body or sponsor governing supply of confidential material or the disclosure of research results described in the thesis).   Proof-reading assistance may also be provided as a reasonable adjustment for disability.    Your thesis may be rejected by the examiners if it has not been adequately proof-read.  

See the University’s Policy on the Use of Third Party Proof-readers . The MPLS Division offers training in proof-reading as part of its Scientific Writing training programmes.

Thesis structure for an Integrated Thesis

Subject to approval, students registered on research programmes (DPhil, MSc (Res) and CDTs) in the following departments may submit an integrated thesis rather than a conventional thesis: Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Engineering Science and Statistics. Where a student is admitted to an interdisciplinary doctoral training programme (CDT/DTP), the regulations for the department that the student is hosted in will therefore determine whether an integrated thesis may be applied for.

An integrated thesis may either be a hybrid of conventional chapters and high-quality scientific papers, or be fully paper-based. Regardless of the format, the content of the thesis should reflect the amount, originality and level of work expected for a conventional thesis. It should not be assumed that the act of publication (in whatever form) means the work is of suitable academic quality and content for inclusion in a thesis, and students should discuss all papers in detail with their supervisor before including. It would be anticipated that the candidate would be a lead contributor, rather than a minor author, on at least some of the papers in order to consider this format. There is no minimum, or maximum, number of papers a candidate is expected/allowed to include as part of such a thesis and it will remain a matter for the examiners to conclude whether the contributions are equivalent to that which would be expected of a standard DPhil.

Any papers utilised must concern a common subject, constitute a continuous theme and conform to the following guidelines:

 (i) If a candidate for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy wishes to be examined through an integrated thesis (in the departments listed above), they should apply for permission to be examined in this way when they apply for confirmation of status, as detailed in the relevant departmental handbook. A candidate for the Degree of Master of Science by Research should normally apply to the DGS for permission to be examined in this way six months before submitting their papers for examination. To revert to being examined by a conventional thesis rather than an integrated thesis, the candidate must inform their department of the change as detailed in the relevant departmental handbook.

(ii) Work can be included regardless of its acceptance status for publication but candidates may be questioned on the publication status of their work by the examiners.

(iii) Any submitted/published papers should relate directly to the candidate’s approved field of study, and should have been written whilst holding the status of PRS or a student for the MSc (by Research), or DPhil.

(iv) The collection of papers must include a separate introduction, a full literature review, discussion and a conclusion, so that the integrated thesis can be read as a single, coherent document.

(v) The candidate must ensure all matters of copyright are addressed before a paper’s inclusion. A pre-print version of any published papers should be included as standard.

(vi) Joint/multi-authored papers are common in science based subjects and thus acceptable if the candidate can both defend the paper in full and provide a written statement of authorship, agreed by all authors, that certifies the extent of the candidate’s own contribution. A standard template is available for this purpose.

• Download the Statement of Authorship template as a Word document
• View the Statement of Authorship template as a webpage  

The length and scope of theses, including word limits for each subject area in the Division are set out in Departmental guidelines.

In all departments, if some part of the thesis is not solely your work or has been carried out in collaboration with one or more persons, you should also submit a clear statement of the extent of your contribution.

• Download the guidance for submitting an Integrated Thesis as a Word document
• View the guidance for submitting an Integrated Thesis as a webpage

Examiners and Submission Dates

You are strongly advised to apply for the appointment of examiners at least four to six weeks before you submit your thesis.

Appointing examiners for your thesis

Approval of the proposed names of examiners rests with the Director of Graduate Studies. Two examiners are normally appointed. It is usual for one of the examiners to be a senior member of Oxford University (the ‘internal examiner’) and the other to be from another research organisation (the ‘external examiner’). The divisional board will not normally appoint as examiners individuals previously closely associated with the candidate or their work, representatives of any organisation sponsoring the candidate’s research, or former colleagues of a candidate. Your supervisor will make suggestions regarding the names of possible examiners. Before doing so, your supervisor must consult with you, in order to find out if you have any special views on the appointment of particular examiners. Your supervisor is also allowed to consult informally with the potential examiners before making formal suggestions. Such informal consultation is usually desirable, and is intended to determine whether the people concerned are willing in principle to act, and if so, whether they could carry out the examination within a reasonable period of time. (For example, there may be constraints if you have to return to your home country, or take up employment on a specific date).

See information on examiner conflicts of interest , under section 7.3.3 Examiners.

What forms do I need to complete?

You will need to complete the online  GSO.3 form. Supervisors complete the section indicating names of the proposed examiners, and they should provide alternatives in case the preferred examiners decline to act. Please remember where you have completed work in collaboration, or are using work completed by others in your thesis, to upload a separate document with your GSO3. form, with details of which parts of the thesis are not your own work.

Timing for appointment of examiners

You are advised to submit your appointment of examiners form in advance of submitting your thesis to avoid delays with your examination process. Ideally you should apply for the appointment of examiners at least 4-6 weeks before you expect to submit your thesis for examination.

There are currently no University regulations requiring examination to take place within a certain time limit after thesis submission. However, your examiners would normally be expected to hold your viva within 3 months. If you need to have your examination sooner than this, you may apply for an early viva , by completing the 'Application for a time specific examination' section on the appointment of examiners form, this section must be endorsed by your supervisor and DGS in addition to their approval in the main body of the form. The request must be made at the time of completing and submitting the appointment of examiners form, it cannot be done after this.

Please bear in mind that the examination date requested must not be earlier than one calendar month after the date on which the thesis has been received by the Research Degrees Team or after the date on which the examiners have formally agreed to act, whichever is the latest. The actual date of the examination will depend primarily on the availability of both examiners. In the Long Vacation, a longer time is normally required. It is therefore essential that you leave sufficient time for your forms to be formally approved, and for your examiners to be formally invited.  If sufficient time has not be given this could impact on your early examination request .

If, for any reason, examiners wish to hold a viva within four weeks of receiving their copy of the thesis, permission must be sought from the Director of Graduate Studies. The internal examiner will need to give details of the proposed arrangement and the reasons for the request. Under no circumstances will a viva be permitted to take place within 14 days of receipt of the thesis by the examiners.

Special considerations

Your supervisor is permitted to indicate to the Director of Graduate Studies if there are any special factors which should be taken into account in the conduct of your examination. For example, a scientific paper may have been produced by another researcher which affects the content of your thesis, but which was published too late for you to take into account. The Director of Graduate Studies will also need to be told of any special circumstances you may require or need to inform your examiners of which may affect your performance in an oral examination, or if any part of your work must be regarded as confidential. The Director of Graduate Studies will then forward (via the Graduate Office), any appropriate information that they think should be provided to the examiners. The Graduate Office will also seek approval from the Proctors Office if required.

Change of thesis title

If during your studies you want to change the title or subject of your thesis, you must obtain the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies using the online form GSO.6 . If you are requesting the change at the time of submitting your thesis, you may do this on the application for appointment of examiners form. A change of title is quite straightforward; it is common for students to begin with a very general title, and then to replace it with a more specific one shortly before submitting their thesis. Providing your supervisor certifies that the new title lies within the original topic, approval will be automatic. A change of the subject of your research requires more detailed consideration, because there may be doubt as to whether you can complete the new project within the original time‑scale.

If following your examination your examiners recommend that your thesis title be changed, you will need to complete a change of thesis title form to ensure that your record is updated accordingly.

From MT19 y ou must submit your digital examiners’ copy of your thesis online, via the Research Thesis Digital Submission (RTDS) portal, no later than the last day of the vacation immediately following the term in which your application for the appointment of examiners was made.   If you fail to submit by this date your application will be cancelled and you will have to reapply for appointment of examiners when you are ready to submit. Y our thesis should not be submitted until your application for confirmation of status has been approved (this applies to DPhil students only) . For MSc by Research students you should ensure that your transfer of status has been completed .

If you are funded on a research council studentship, you will have a recommended end-date before which your thesis must be submitted. If you do not know this date, please consult your supervisor.

Please note that you must not submit copies of your thesis directly to your examiners as this could result in your examinations being declared void and you could be referred to the University Proctors.

On this page

• Introduction
• Information for new students
• Fees and Charges
• Supervision and Termly Reporting
• Policies & Guidance - Your rights and responsibilities
• Progression and Key Milestones
• Adjustment to Assessment/Examination Arrangements
• Internships
• Extensions and Suspensions
• Lapsing and Reinstatement
• Examination and Graduation
• Student Welfare and Support Services
• Academic Services
• Clubs and Societies
• Student representation: Postgraduates
• UKRI Funded Students

Oxford theses

The Bodleian Libraries’ thesis collection holds every DPhil thesis deposited at the University of Oxford since the degree began in its present form in 1917. Our oldest theses date from the early 1920s. We also have substantial holdings of MLitt theses, for which deposit became compulsory in 1953, and MPhil theses.

Since 2007 it has been a mandatory requirement for students to deposit an electronic copy of their DPhil thesis in the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) , in addition to the deposit of a paper copy – the copy of record. Since the COVID pandemic, the requirement of a paper copy has been removed and the ORA copy has become the copy of record. Hardcopy theses are now only deposited under exceptional circumstances. 

ORA provides full-text PDF copies of most recent DPhil theses, and some earlier BLitt/MLitt theses. Find out more about Oxford Digital Theses, and depositing with ORA .

Finding Oxford theses

The following theses are catalogued on SOLO (the University libraries’ resource discovery tool) :

• DPhil and BLitt and MLitt theses
• BPhil and MPhil theses 
• Science theses

SOLO collates search results from several sources.

How to search for Oxford theses on SOLO

To search for theses in the Oxford collections on SOLO :

• navigate to the SOLO homepage
• click on the 'Advanced Search' button
• click the 'Material Type' menu and choose the 'Dissertations' option
• type in the title or author of the thesis you are looking for and click the 'Search' button.

Also try an “Any field” search for “Thesis Oxford” along with the author’s name under “creator” and any further “Any field” keywords such as department or subject. 

Searching by shelfmarks

If you are searching using the shelfmark, please make sure you include the dots in your search (e.g. D.Phil.). Records will not be returned if they are left out.

Oxford University Research Archive (ORA)

ORA was established in 2007 as a permanent and secure online archive of research produced by members of the University of Oxford. It is now mandatory for students completing a research degree at the University to deposit an electronic copy of their thesis in this archive. 

Authors can select immediate release on ORA, or apply a 1-year or 3-year embargo period. The embargo period would enable them to publish all or part of their research elsewhere if they wish. 

Theses held in ORA are searchable via  SOLO , as well as external services such as EThOS and Google Scholar. For more information, visit the Oxford digital theses guide , and see below for guidance on searching in ORA.

Search for Oxford theses on ORA

Type your keywords (title, name) into the main search box, and use quotes (“) to search for an exact phrase.

Refine your search results using the drop-downs on the left-hand side. These include:

• item type (thesis, journal article, book section, etc.)
• thesis type (DPhil, MSc, MLitt, etc.)
• subject area (History, Economics, Biochemistry, etc.)
• item date (as a range)
• file availability (whether a full text is available to download or not)

You can also increase the number of search results shown per page, and sort by relevance, date and file availability. You can select and export records to csv or email. 

Select hyperlinked text within the record details, such as “More by this author”, to run a secondary search on an author’s name. You can also select a hyperlinked keyword or subject. 

Other catalogues

Card catalogue  .

The Rare Books department of the Weston Library keeps an author card index of Oxford theses. This includes all non-scientific theses deposited between 1922 and 2016. Please ask Weston Library staff for assistance.

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

You can use ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global  to find bibliographic details of Oxford theses not listed on SOLO. Ask staff in the Weston Library’s Charles Wendall David Reading Room for help finding these theses. 

Search for Oxford theses on ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global

Basic search.

The default Basic search page allows for general keyword searches across all indexes using "and", "and not", "and or" to link the keywords as appropriate. Click on the More Search Options tab for specific title, author, subject and institution (school) searches, and to browse indexes of authors, institutions and subjects. These indexes allow you to add the word or phrase recognised by the database to your search (ie University of Oxford (United Kingdom), not Oxford University).

Advanced search

The Advanced search tab (at the top of the page) enables keyword searching in specific indexes, including author, title, institution, department, adviser and language. If you are unsure of the exact details of thesis, you can use the search boxes on this page to find it by combining the key information you do have.

Search tools

In both the Basic and Advanced search pages you can also limit the search by date by using the boxes at the bottom. Use the Search Tools advice in both the Basic and Advanced pages to undertake more complex and specific searches. Within the list of results, once you have found the record that you are interested in, you can click on the link to obtain a full citation and abstract. You can use the back button on your browser to return to your list of citations.

The Browse search tab allows you to search by subject or by location (ie institution). These are given in an alphabetical list. You can click on a top-level subject to show subdivisions of the subject. You can click on a country location to show lists of institutions in that country. At each level, you can click on View Documents to show lists of individual theses for that subject division or from that location.

In Browse search, locations and subject divisions are automatically added to a basic search at the bottom of the page. You can search within a subject or location by title, author, institution, subject, date etc, by clicking on Refine Search at the top of the page or More Search Options at the bottom of the page.

Where are physical Oxford theses held?

The Bodleian Libraries hold all doctoral theses and most postgraduate (non-doctoral) theses for which a deposit requirement is stipulated by the University:

• DPhil (doctoral) theses (1922 – 2021)
• Bachelor of Divinity (BD) theses
• BLitt/MLitt theses (Michaelmas Term 1953 – 2021)
• BPhil and MPhil theses (Michaelmas Term 1977 – 2021)

Most Oxford theses are held in Bodleian Offsite Storage. Some theses are available in the libraries; these are listed below.

Law Library

Theses submitted to the Faculty of Law are held at the Bodleian Law Library .

Vere Harmsworth Library

Theses on the United States are held at the Vere Harmsworth Library .

Social Science Library

The Social Science Library holds dissertations and theses selected by the departments it supports. 

The list of departments and further information are available in the Dissertations and Theses section of the SSL webpages. 

Locations for Anthropology and Archaeology theses

The Balfour Library holds theses for the MPhil in Material and Visual Anthropology and some older theses in Prehistoric Archaeology.

The Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library holds theses for MPhil in Classical Archaeology and MPhil in European Archaeology.

Ordering Oxford theses

Theses held in Bodleian Offsite Storage are consulted in the Weston Library. The preferred location is the Charles Wendell David Reading Room ; they can also be ordered to the Sir Charles Mackerras Reading Room .

Find out more about requesting a digitised copy, copyright restrictions and copying from Oxford theses .