A good idea

robyn.owens — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:15:00 GMT

Sometimes, in passing, examiners present good ideas for all.

The abstract should have a short paragraph in which contribution(s) to knowledge are claimed and the major finds of the thesis and their implications noted ... It would also help retrieval of the thesis by interested parties, if a series of keywords are added to the bottom of the abstract.

Text, especially digital, should be tagged by keywords and appropriately structured to facilitate digital search. Where appropriate, accompanying data should similarly be tagged and structured so that direct links can be made between the text and the data. Simple, old-fashioned, examples of this idea include putting your text within chapters and chapter subsections, identifying and tagging citations, equations and diagrams, and forming links between these objects and the text itself. Pushing this idea further, if your thesis is accompanied by the data you collected, you can link your text, diagrams and tables etc to the appropriately tagged component of your full dataset.

And speaking of digital theses, I'm wondering how long I have to wait before someone requests permission to submit a purely digital thesis with embedded objects such as sound files (interviews, music) and video clips (a visual representation of the synthesis of a particular chemical, how to tag a willy-wagtail with a microchip, a snippet from the movie you are analysing (with permission, of course)).

theEzone : digital

A good idea