A Manual on Writing a PhD Thesis in Computer Science
Creating a PhD thesis is a task that has two parts. The first part consists of creating the program which will serve to present your topic during your defense. The second part is to write your actual paper. Writing this paper is the most difficult task for students who study computer science. In this article you may read about basic steps you should follow to write a successful PhD dissertation in computer science.
- Create your thesis proposal.
- Create an outline for your paper.
- Write the introduction.
- Write the body.
- Write the conclusion.
- Add the appendixes.
- Proofread and edit your thesis.
When your topic is chosen the first thing you should do is to write your thesis proposal. This will be the core of your whole work, so think carefully when composing it. In your proposal you should mention such things like the statement of the problem you’re going to study, previous works on this problem, the necessary software, and the goals of your research.
Before you begin writing your paper you should make a proper outline for it. Your paper should be divided into separate chapters which will serve different purposes. Make sure that chapters follow each other logically.
You should begin your paper with the introduction. In this chapter you should state the problem of your work, define the terms, review theoretical materials, and describe the contents of further chapters.
The body is the largest part of your thesis. You should reveal the idea of your work and demonstrate the process of your research in the body chapters. State the requirements and specifications to your problem, as well as algorithms and data structures that will be useful to you.
The conclusion is where you should summarize the results of your work and state their significance. Indicate whether the results met your expectations. Additionally, list the problems that you didn’t solve in your paper and propose the ways for further research of your topic.
The next step is to add materials that you couldn’t place in the middle of your paper, but that play important roles in your research. These materials include design documents, source codes, maintenance manuals, test suites, and so on.
The final step is to check your paper for mistakes. This applies not only to spelling and grammar errors. You should also pay attention to the structure of sentences and paragraphs. Rewrite the parts that look awkward or not clear.