A master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertation may be produced in any of the following styles; the selected style must be maintained throughout the document.

1. Traditional style: typically consists of typically consists of distinct chapters such as introduction, literature review, objectives, methodologies, results and discussion and one set of references at the end
2. Manuscript style: a document consisting of one or cohesive series of manuscripts, written in a style suitable for publication in appropriate venues. A manuscript-style thesis is not merely a collection of published or publishable papers; it must meet the principles and objectives required of a thesis/dissertation and include an introductory chapter, and a final chapter / general discussion to tie the manuscripts together. The manuscripts may or may not be identical to the published papers.
3. Research-creation (practice-based research, arts-based research): This style combines creative and academic research practices to support the generation of new knowledge, competence and innovation. It may employ a variety of art forms (such as audio, music, performance, visual art, or artifact-based display) and typically includes an explanatory document to demonstrate research design, methodology, results and discussion appropriate to the disciplines involved or to the interdisciplinary approach taken.

The format and style of a thesis or dissertation can differ by academic unit, and by discipline. Your academic unit will identify an acceptable style and format for the thesis/dissertation and communicate it to you.

Your advisory committees will discuss and approve the focus of the thesis/dissertation at the proposal stage including the number of manuscript chapters (in case of manuscript style thesis or dissertation) or the scope of scholarly work (in case of research-creation style thesis or dissertation). The focus may be modified by agreement of the committee as the research progresses; any revisions must be approved by the supervisor and advisory committee.

All theses and dissertations are expected to be written in English. The document can be written in other language in cases where the language of assessment is approved in the program requirements (e.g. MA in French or Cree). If the language of the document is other than English, required sections of the preface (including the abstract) in English language must be included in additional to the original language.

The author (you) holds the copyright to the thesis/dissertation and grants permission to the USask Library, College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and the Academic Unit to provide access to the document.

• Creative Commons attributes are permitted.
• Consider potential implications for published scientific papers or future publications.

You must indicate in the preface and on the first page of the chapter when copyrighted and/or co-authored material such as, but not limited to, figures, survey inventories or computer code have been included in the document either “with permission” or “under license”. Any payment which might be required by the rights holder(s) is the responsibility of the student. Copies of the letters of permission or licenses must be available upon request and may be included within the thesis as appendices.

Academic programs determine whether and how GenAI may be used by graduate students and provide information and guidelines to the students on the uses of GenAI that are permitted or not permitted for master’s and doctoral research or scholarly activity and thesis/dissertation writing.

• Use of large language models for autonomous content generation and scientific exploration (including but not limited to search, design, outline, draft, write code, analyze data, write, or generate images or other content types) and for editorial purposes through standalone software or as embedded components in the word processing software will be considered use of GenAI and must be declared.
• Common word processing editorial functions such as spelling corrections, hyphenation, word/syntax/grammar suggestions, reference management are considered as use of artificial intelligence, and such use is permitted and need not be declared unless the academic unit policy prohibits such assistance from humans and/or technologies or requires specific forms of assistance be declared.
• Student author and co-authors (in the case of manuscript style thesis/dissertation) must confirm the originality of scholarly contributions and human accountability of work presented in the thesis/dissertation.
• Large language models do not satisfy the authorship criteria.
• The writer should not cite a source unless they have read the source and should exercise caution in the use of GenAI to avoid infringement of copyright or other intellectual property protections.

A GenAI declaration must be included in the preface section regardless of whether GenAI was used or not. Methodological details regarding the use and purpose of GenAI must be included in the appropriate sections of the thesis or dissertation. Search histories, prompts used, and other details may be provided in appendices, if appropriate. Students must ensure that any data provided to a GenAI tools does not contravene compliance with any of the Data Management Policy of the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Saskatchewan Human Research Ethics Policy, and any conditions of the ethics approvals.

• Data Management Policy
• Human Research Ethics Policy

Page numbering

• All pages in the document must be numbered.
• The preface section is numbered in lower-case roman numerals (example: i, ii, iii, iv, …).
• The page number is not printed on the title page.
• Pages for the chapters and appendices are numbered sequentially in natural numbers (example: 1, 2, 3, …).

Grammar

Accepted rules of grammar must be followed, and forms of spelling and punctuation must be used with consistency.

Previously published/submitted manuscripts

When previously published or submitted manuscripts are included as chapters, they must match the formatting standard of the thesis or dissertation, including but not limited to numbering of tables and figures.

• Previously published manuscripts must be assigned page numbers that are sequential within the document and must not be inserted into the document as copies of journal pages (reprints).
• For jointly authored manuscript/s, chapter title page should have the thesis/dissertation writer and other co-authors contributions stated in detail (for example but not limited to: conceptualization, creation, data curation, formal/statistical analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, supervision, visualization, writing – original draft, writing -review and editing).

Reference and citation

Reference and citation styles differ between disciplines and department, but a single and consistent style must be used throughout the document. References can either be listed as chapter-by-chapter or be presented in a single list at the end of the thesis or dissertation.

• If the chapter-by-chapter approach is adopted, each chapter, including chapters that are not manuscripts (such as the introduction and concluding chapters), require a list of references.
• If a single list appears at the end of the thesis, all references cited in the chapters must be included in the list.