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INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Due dates for theses to your readers will be shared by the Chair in the spring semester. Due date for final theses to Registrar are found here: Thesis Deadline dates
  2. Thesis Submission: When submitting your thesis to the Neuroscience faculty: email a PDF version to your thesis readers (this information will be emailed to you by the Chair in advance of the thesis due date).
  3. Thesis presentations (also called oral defenses): Senior Honors Thesis
  4. Final Thesis Submission to Registrar: The time deadline for submitting the final, corrected version of your thesis to the registrar is no later than 4 PM on the due date. See the section below on the Final Submission for details.

IMPORTANT: The Neuroscience faculty take the College's final deadline for submitting theses to the Registrar very seriously. We will not advocate on behalf of students who fail to submit their finalized copy on time.

ADVICE ABOUT TIMING

During the spring semester, work out a schedule for submitting drafts or sections of your thesis to your advisor for comments. Advisors typically review 2 drafts of the Intro and possibly other sections This is to ensure that the thesis in final form is ready for initial submission to the Neuroscience faculty on the due date. The final stages of preparation take more time than you expect!

  • Remember to plan time for making figures, tables, and figure legends, plus preparing the Table of Contents and List of Figures—have someone show you how to use Microsoft Word to do this automatically.
  • Allow plenty of time to print your thesis if you use a public printer because of the campus-wide rush of other thesis students across majors.
  • After reviewing each section, it is very desirable to evaluate a complete copy of your thesis containing your revisions before the final printing.  Give yourself days rather than hours for duplicating and collating the thesis and submitting it to the faculty.
  • Things often don't go as expected, and without extra time built into your schedule, you may not be able to meet the deadline with a document you are happy with.
  • Perhaps most important: frequently, frequently back up your data and text.

 

THESIS FORMAT AND STYLE

See full copies of past honors theses

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SECTIONS

The sections of the thesis are as follows:  Title page, Acknowledgments, Table of Contents, List of Figures, (List of Abbreviations, if applicable), Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, and References.  "Conclusions" may be omitted as a separate section, and included instead in the Discussion.  Number all pages consecutively, including figures and figure legends.

Formatting Your Thesis:  Using Microsoft Word, you can use section headers to auto-populate and auto-paginate your Table of Contents and List of Figure Legends.

FORMAT

  • Spacing: double-spaced required except for References section, which can be single-spaced
  • Type: 12 point
  • Paper size: 8.5 by 11 inch
  • Margins: at least 1 inch at the top, bottom, and right side, and 1.5 inches on the left

You may choose whether or not to 'justify' the text.  Don't "orphan" a heading or title by leaving it as the last line on a page. If this happens, enter a "page break" or add blank lines at the bottom of the page so that the heading or title will appear at the top of the next page with the text that comes under it.

THESIS CONTENT

General issues of style and content:

Science writing is different than other forms of writing. All thesis writers should read this excellent article on science writing: https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-science-of-scientific-writing

Neuroscience theses should be understandable by all faculty and other senior majors in Neuroscience, so terms must be identified and explained adequately.  Use nonstandard abbreviations only to avoid frequent repetition.  If you use abbreviations, define them in parentheses or in a footnote at their first mention, and include them in a Table of Abbreviations at the beginning of the thesis.

Citing References:

Throughout the text of the thesis, cite references by author or authors and year.  Numerical references  ("Sequencing the gene for the sodium channel12 led to predictions of the channel architecture...") are not acceptable in Amherst College Neuroscience theses. 

If a paper has either one or two authors, include the last name or names and the date in all citations to the paper: "Watson and Crick (1953) first showed...”; or,  "The nucleotides in DNA are arranged in a double helix (Watson and Crick, 1953).”

If the paper has three or more authors, list the first author followed by et al., which is always underlined or italicized.  For variety, consider occasionally writing out the English meaning of et al., which is "and others:"  "Noda et al. (1986) reported the sequence for the gene for the sodium channel..." or, "In 1986 Noda and others reported...." The correct style for theses is to list all authors the first time a given paper is referred to in the thesis.  However, with the advent of 20-author papers this may simply be unwieldy in a particular case--use your judgment, but do try to follow this rule!

Organize your references alphabetically by author, and, for a given author, chronologically.  Two or more papers by the same author or set of authors in the same year should be listed as 1987a, 1987b, etc., both in the thesis text and in the References section at the end.  Each combination of two or more authors is treated as a different author.   The format for listing references in the References section of the thesis is detailed below.

If you wish to refer to a paper which you weren’t actually able to obtain and read but which was discussed and cited in a paper you did read, list only the paper you did read in the References section.  For example, "Carpenter (1962), as pointed out by Jones (1966), argued that . . ." .  You would cite Jones (1966) in the References section, not Carpenter (1962).

SPECIFIC SECTIONS OF THE THESIS

Abstract:

The abstract should be an approximately one-page summary of the thesis.  It should be as specific as possible, consistent with brevity.  For example, avoid writing "the implications of these results are discussed" and, instead, actually summarize the discussion.

Introduction:

Begin with a statement of the problem addressed in your research.  Then provide a detailed literature review of previous work relevant to the problem.  End the Introduction with a statement of the specific rationale for your approach to the problem.

At an early point in the thesis either in the Introduction or in the Methods section name any organisms with which you worked, giving both the common and scientific names.  Species names are underlined (Rana pipiens) or italicized  (Rana pipiens).

Use the past tense in describing specific findings of the papers you cite.  Thus: "Raymond (1979) found a supernormal period in sciatic nerve fibers...," not "Raymond (1979) finds a supernormal period...”.  Use present tense only for very well-known conclusions of cited papers, and for accepted, basic facts that do not require citation:  "There exists a concentration gradient of ions across all nerve membranes..."

Methods:

Include details sufficient to allow a competent worker to repeat the experiment.  Thus the methods will be more detailed than in most published scientific papers.  The methods section of a thesis is not a laboratory protocol written in the imperative ("Adjust the pH to 7.4"), but rather a description of the methods that were used  ("The pH was adjusted to 7.4").

Results:

Describe your results in words and also using tables and figures (i.e. graphs and illustrations). Figures should be located near their first mention in the text.  Each figure must be accompanied by a legend, on the same page or on an adjoining page, even though the figure is also explained in the text.  Legends should include a figure number and identifying material.  Figures and tables must conform to the same margin requirements as other parts of the thesis.

Photos: the illustration should identify structures pointed out.  For example, don't say "note union of aedaegus and uncus" without indicating what and where the aedaegus and uncus are on the photo.  Indicate magnification wherever appropriate. Include scale bars on microscopy images where appropriate.

Graphs: The format and labeling of axes should be as prescribed by a major journal in the field and should be consistent throughout the thesis.

IMPORTANT: All Figures should have a Figure Legend similar to every journal article you have read.

Discussion:

The Results section of a thesis should contain only a statement and presentation of the results, saving the discussion (i.e. interpretation, conclusions, suggestions for further work) for the Discussion.   A common mistake is to use the Results section to discuss results as well as to present them, and then - having nothing left to discuss - to use the Discussion section for vague speculation.

References:

We recommend using Zotero to format citations and references. The college offers many workshops in using Zotero for your thesis. The format for citing papers in the References section may be that of any major journal in the area of neuroscience in which you are working, but must include: 

  • all authors (no matter how many)
  • year of publication
  • title of the paper
  • name of the journal (titles may be abbreviated according to accepted PubMed formats)
  • volume number
  • inclusive pages (not just the first page)

Example:

Watson, J. D. and Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids. A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 171: 737-738.

References to books should give the same information as for journal articles, and in addition, the title of the book, the editors (if appropriate), publisher, and the city of publication.  Titles of books should be bolded in the References section.

Example:

Rosenblatt, J. S.  The sensorimotor and motivational bases of early behavioral development of selected altricial mammals.  In: Spear, N. E. and Campbell, B. A. (Eds.)  The Ontogeny of Learning and Memory, pp. 189-206.  New York:  John Wiley and Sons, 1979. 

From the Neuro Honors main page:

Thesis Evaluation

Your grade for the three thesis courses (Neuroscience 498 & 499D) and your Latin honors recommendation for graduation are based on your thesis work, as well as your written thesis document and your oral thesis presentation.

Some students work hard during the year but don't set aside enough time to do a good job in preparing the thesis document.  What is available to the faculty is the thesis itself, but not necessarily all the late nights in the lab. If what you submit on the due date is not in final form—i.e., if it requires significant revision—your grade and determination of Latin honors will be affected, no matter how much work you've done during the year. Generally, you should only make minor typographical corrections after the initial submission of the thesis...

FINAL SUBMISSION OF THE THESIS

After turning in the initial thesis and presenting your thesis defense, there is a tendency to feel that you are finished, but a final and very important step remains: making any corrections and turning in a physical and electronic final copy of the thesis to the Registrar!

IMPORTANT: You must follow the Registrar's Guidelines for Thesis Submission. Students are required to submit an electronic version as described in the Thesis Guidelines.

NOTE: on the Submittable website submission choose the "Place an embaro" option and select the CC BY-NC-ND option for license type.

  1. If the faculty reader(s) made comments or suggestions/ corrections that you need to make, they will share their suggestions in the copy of the thesis that will be returned to you after your oral presentation. It is your responsibility to make the requested changes to your thesis before it is due to the Registrar. Consult with your advisor if you have questions about the changes.
  2. On submission date turn in 1) a final electronic copy to the Registrar (via Submittable), 2) a final PDF copy to your thesis advisor, and 3) email a final PDF version to the neuroscience ADC.

Congratulations on seeing this complex process through to the end!