Linköping University, IEI, Applied Thermodynamics and Fluid, 2016‐03‐15
Structural Outline for Authors This document will provide some general recommendations for the structural outline to be
followed by authors of a scientific report, in this case master thesis. The recommendations
should be considered with respect to the specific field and may require small adjustments in
order to fulfill the overall requirements of the study.
Abstract (Maximum 500 Words) The abstract should aim for providing a clear view on what is the objective and scope of the
work and the highlights of the results. It should be written such that a reader may decide
whether the full text will be of particular interest or not. Although an abstract needs to be short
and precise still it should cover the general outline of the thesis. This implies that the main
content of your thesis including introduction, method, results and conclusions is summarized
in abstract. You need to make sure that the abstract reflect the content of the thesis accurately,
since it might be that many readers will only read that portion of the thesis. The reader should
be able to understand the abstract without reading the rest of the text. It is important that both
the title and abstract are informative to attract the reader’s interest. A separate line at the end
of abstract should be added as the key words.
Introduction The introduction chapter defines the scene and the tone of the thesis and therefore it is very
important to be well thought about it and be well written. In this chapter you highlight the
value and importance of the work. This is accomplished through provision of a rationale for
your work. The need for your research within the current knowledge of the discipline is
established and you clarify how this work will contribute to the knowledge in the field. The
introduction section covers answer to the following questions:
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The subject of the work is important because…
Those who have worked on this subject include…
What has not yet been done is…
The work project aimed to…
Background: The introduction chapter includes a short but comprehensive background to
where the problem stems from, the nature of the problem. The information provided in the
background may be historical, referring to previous research or practical considerations. You
should provide a good impression about the relevance and importance of your theme.
Literature survey: The literature survey included in the introduction shows in a clearly
structured and logical manner the limitation of the previous research. This should in turn lead
to defining the gaps in the previous research and unresolved conflicts in the field that may need
further research. The literature survey will help you to rationalize your choice of research
question and method, show the importance of the topic, additional background information to
understand the project and how much you are familiar with the state of the art of the work.
Aim (or objective): An important part of the introduction chapter is formulating the aim
and objective of the current work. Here you will clarify your research question and try to define
the scope of your thesis, Try to state clearly the purpose or objective of the work or hypothesis
tested by the study of observation.
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Structural Outline for Authors Note that the above mentioned subchapters define in general a flow of text from general
information that gives the background moving to the research project itself.
An appropriate formulation of the introduction chapter follows a narrowing pathway in
which from a very general background the reader will get to know first the problem formulation
and then the current research objectives. This is schematically shown in Fig. 1. The formulated
problem should be realistic and also relevant to the student’s main field of study.
Background
Literature survay and problem
formulation
Project specific
objectives
Fig. 1: Demonstration of an appropriate structure for the introduction chapter.
Outline: The introduction is finalized by an outline of the thesis, where the reader can obtain
an overview of the main points of your thesis. This also shows the structure of your thesis. You
can also demonstrate the relation of different parts by means of a good outline which can help
the reader where to find the most interesting parts from his point of view. Note that the outline
is not about bringing the headings together, it is indeed about formulation of a coherent
process in which the work is done in steps to establish the work.
Theory
The aim of theory chapter is to facilitate readers to analyze and interpret your data. This implies
that you may not write the theoretical perspectives that are not of importance or used. However
you are encouraged to present the theories which assist the reader to understand your results.
Not every thesis may have a separate theory chapter, thus sometimes this is included in the
method chapter. If you are using numerical method for your research, then the theory chapter
will include the theory behind the numerical models used to achieve the objectives of the work.
Within experimental works the theory deals with mathematical representation of the physical
laws which describe the fundamentals of physical phenomena. Note that there should be a clear
connection between established scientific theories and your work.
How detail should the theory chapter be, is dependent on the extent in which you will use
the presented theory in the results and discussion parts. In order to identify what you should
look when observing the data, you need to have read and explained enough theory.
Method
In this chapter you present the approach that has been followed by you, the materials used and
the procedure used by you to answer the research question. You need to motivate why this
approach has been used, and explain how the method can help you to reach the aims of the
work. You may also explain how and/or why others have used this method. In order to
accomplish this you need to have good understanding about established scientific
methods/approaches and their limitations and then justify the choice of the specific method
that is used. This chapter can include both numerical and experimental methods. If you have
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Linköping University, IEI, Applied Thermodynamics and Fluid, 2016‐03‐15
used both methods and they both need to be covered rather extensive, then it may be
convenient to have two separate chapters.
In the end of this chapter the reader should know what you have done and why you have
conducted your work in this way, your considerations and working conditions, what has been
done to increase the validity, reliability in data collection, if your conclusions are certain or
tentative and to what extent, and also the weakness and strength of your approach. This
chapter may cover:
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This study was based on the approach of…
This approach was chosen because…
It was likely to achieve the project aims by…
Others have used this method to…
The method chapter should include details enough such that someone with access to the data
will be able to reproduce the results.
If the research involves experimental work, it should cover details about experimental setup, data collection and analysis, and uncertainty quantification by means of appropriate
statistical tools etc. Geometrical information should be provided with enough details such that
it can be reproduced.
If the research involves numerical work, it should clearly explain why one specific model is
used, the choice of solver and numerical schemes, the choice of mesh, mesh sensitivity,
boundary conditions, etc. Note that if you do an error calculation of some kind when comparing
different data, then you should use appropriate statistics to quantify your error and the applied
method should be clearly explained.
Note that the statistical methods should be presented with enough detail in order to make
the judgment of the appropriateness of the data easy for a reader with enough knowledge with
access to the original data. The findings should be discussed considering the error or
uncertainty of the measurements.
In order to keep the method chapter short but with enough details, you may need to leave
part or parts of the method which requires more details for Appendix. As an example you may
have developed a code as part of the method which you use for obtaining the results. The code
then should be brought as an appendix. A further example could be a small side work which its
results have been used for validation of a method but is not directly related to the research
method. Finally if you need to provide information regarding part of the work in an step-bystep approach, you should put this in the appendix. In fact you bring less critical, still new,
details of the method as an appendix since it may disrupt the reader from the main objectives
of the chapter itself.
Results
The highlights of your thesis are presented in the results and discussion part. The findings are
presented in a systematic and logical sequence such that it should fulfill the expectations of the
reader which has been developed within previous chapters. By presenting your results you will
demonstrate the similarity and differences between phenomena by means of appropriate tools
such as graphical tools, tables, etc. One of the important objectives of the results chapter is also
to put your theory into work. You should not repeat all the data in the tables or figures in the
text. You should mention what the results indicate, what are the most important and
interesting observations within the figure or table. You should only present the tables and
figures that are essential for explaining the project objective. Thus avoid figures that do not
confine with project aims and the only reason for them to be there is that they show some
interesting observations.
Within each paragraph in this chapter you should have a clear statement in form of the
prediction, question or hypothesis presented in the Introduction chapter. In addition, the
paragraph should also contain key argument for or against the method. You should avoid using
sentences stating a figure or table as subject or object as a figure of speech (e.g., ‘‘Figure 3
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Structural Outline for Authors shows the results of....’’). Also you should not present any description about a method in this
chapter.
Note that under circumstances in which there are limited results to be presented and
accordingly the discussion would also become short; one can combine the Results and
Discussion chapters. In such a case the author requires to follow the guidelines given with
respect to each chapter in a combined fashion. Indeed, every presented result will be followed
immediately by the relevant discussion.
Discussion
Due to the importance of the discussion chapter appropriate time and space should be
allocated for it in order to show the importance of your findings. You also need to demonstrate
that you can apply a theory and interpret in an independent way.
Start this chapter by presenting the rational for the question or hypothesis stated in the end
of introduction chapter. Continue your discussion with providing arguments while you study
different phenomena from different point of views. This implies that you need to question your
findings and suggest different interpretations. It is also recommended that you discuss your
findings with respect to other researchers and interpret the differences, similarities etc.
An important part of the discussion is the comparison and/or contrast of your data and
observations versus data in open literature. This could be done both quantitatively and
qualitatively and even opinions. If there are discrepancies, they should be mentioned and
clarified as much as possible. The discrepancies that cannot be explained should be noted also.
Within your discussion, you should also address the major assumptions and/or limitations
of the approach or method. Note that you should distinguish between selecting one approaches
versus another one where you bring the reasoning for it and when you may have assumed or
have not done certain tasks due to time limitations, scope limitations etc. After reading this
part, the reader should be convinced that the conclusions from this work will not be affected
or seriously jeopardized by the limitations and assumptions.
Conclusion
This chapter covers the answer to the research question whether it would be positive or
negative. Here you should answer the question you have formulated in the aim or objective
section. You clarify your conclusions based on the results and discussion. Thus you need to
formulate the results of your work towards the framework of the prediction, research question,
hypothesis or objective explained in the introduction.
Outlook
In this chapter (or section of the conclusion) you will put your work into a broader perspective
from academic and/or industrial perspective. If you have unresolved questions or you have
encountered new research questions which will complement your work, you will address them
in the outlook.
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Further research is needed in order to…
More information is needed on…
Practice could be improved by…
Proposed changes would be feasible if…
Perspectives
In this chapter your work is put into societal and commercial perspectives. First, you need to
clearly address the impact of the formulated problem from different perspectives such as
environment, economic, society, working environment and ethics. Even if the perspective is
not influenced or valid for the current study, this needs to be stated. Then you need to explain
how your study and conclusions drawn from your work contributes in each of these
societal/commercial aspects, either directly or in an indirect way.
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Linköping University, IEI, Applied Thermodynamics and Fluid, 2016‐03‐15
References
You need to provide referencing to the original research source. In order to guide the readers
to a body of literature an effective approach would be to refer review article references.
Conference abstracts cannot be used as reference, though they may be cited in the text in
parentheses. For detail information regarding appropriate referencing read the Report
Formatting for Authors.
Appendix
The supplementary materials and technical details can be put in appendix. Thus the
information that is not crucial for explaining the findings of the thesis (but still may support
and/or validate your analysis) should be provided as an appendix. This makes such useful
information accessible for the reader and at the same time it may not disrupt the flow of the
main text. Keep in mind that the body of your text should be complete even in the absence of
appendices. Appendices should be referred to in the body of the text.
An appendix cannot be consisting of several sections, though they may be formed as
subsequent parts separated for clarity. Examples of what can be an appendix are:
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Supporting evidence (e.g. raw data that is referred to in the text)
Contributory facts, specialized data (raw data appear in the appendix, but summarized data
appear in the body of the text.)
Sample calculations
Technical figures, graphs, tables, statistics
Detailed description of research instruments
Maps, charts, photographs, drawings
Letters, copies of emails
Questionnaires/surveys)
Transcripts of interviews
Specification or data sheets
General Remarks
In order to send the message of your work in an effective way, repetition of some kind, very
brief, through different parts of the thesis is desirable. In particular the research question
which is given in the end of introduction should be briefly addressed in the beginning of
discussion and also abstract. The answers provided in the beginning of each paragraph in the
Results may be repeated in the end of discussion, the figure captions and the end of abstracts.
The captions of the figures should convey the message of the figure and should include the
highlight of the figure which is related to the research question. 5