Thesis writing and final grade

1. Choose a topic of your interest. If the topic matches your interests, the result will be more engaging.
2. Choose a Supervisor among the Professors of your Degree Programme, who will evaluate the appropriateness of your proposal in relation to the study plan. On each Professor's web page you can find the research topics and titles of the latest theses as well as publications and contacts.
3. Agree with the supervisor on the topic that will be the subject of your thesis work.
4. Be sure to narrow the topic to avoid your thesis appearing generic or incomplete: "the more you narrow down the field, the better you work and the safer you are", writes Umberto Eco in his book "How to write a degree thesis".
5. Agree on the objective and methodology with the Supervisor, keeping in mind that, in general, the theses are divided according to the degree of originality of the approach and results.
6. After reading more general articles or manuals, create an index or at least a schedule before starting the actual writing work.
7. The discussion with the supervisor will help in drafting a real index with clear objectives (with the possibility that they will change during the course of the project following the bibliographic work).

ATTENTION: the writing process generally requires several moments of reading and comments by the Supervisor. Therefore, it is better to send the drafts of the different parts well in advance (the interventions are often substantial).

It is suggested to agree on the method and deadline for sending the drafts with the Supervisor.

1. look at the bibliography at the bottom of the texts or articles you are studying;
2. identify the main keywords to carry out a targeted research:
3. using the opportunities offered by the University library service

https://sba.unibo.it/it (AlmaStart in particular)

• searching for academic papers on search engines, for example Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.it), Elsevier Scopus (http://www.scopus.com) and Web of science (access with unibo IP or from proxy)

The Library of the Department organizes courses, seminars and makes educational material available to learn how to carry out a bibliographic research https://agraria.sba.unibo.it/usa-la-biblioteca/formazione-information-literacy

The thesis is usually structured into chapters, according to this indicative scheme, to be defined in detail with the thesis supervisor:

1. purpose of the thesis (motivations and objective)
2. context framework (relevant literature)
3. materials and methods (methodology and data)
4. (possible) case study (if any, it can also be placed before the methodology)
5. results
6. (possible) discussion (comparison of the data found with the literature)
7. conclusions

Each chapter can be divided into paragraphs and subparagraphs numbered consecutively (for example, chapter 1, paragraph 1.1, subparagraph 1.1.1)

The central chapters are preceded by:

• Title page,
• index,
• introduction (one or two pages explaining the objective and the structure of the thesis),

and they are followed by

• bibliography and sitography
• appendix (any attachments can be included in the appendix, after the bibliography)

• between 50,000 and 100,000 characters (including spaces) for L (Bachelor) and LM (Master’s)
• the title page, index and final bibliography are not included in the count.

1. Styles for paragraphs and titles with automatic index (Microsoft Word “Home” menu)
2. Justified allignment (Microsoft Word “Home” menu)
3. page and section breaks (Microsoft Word “Layout” menu)
4. header, footer, page number (Microsoft Word “Insert” menu)
5. insertion of footnotes, captions, automatic page numbering, tables, figures (Microsoft Word “References” menu)
6. Insertion of quotes and bibliography (Microsoft Word “References” menu). Alternatively, and in agreement with the thesis supervisor, you can use free tools such as Mendeley (https://www.mendeley.com) and Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/).
7. revisions and comments (“Review” menu of Microsoft Word)

Font: Times New Roman, Arial, Courier new, Helvetica

Body of the text: 12 or 13 pt (Notes and captions should be in 10 pt)

Margins: left-right and top-bottom margins 2.0 cm; 1.5 line spacing
Tables, graphs and figures: must be cited in the text, numbered progressively and have a short descriptive title in italics with 10 pt size. For example, “Table 1. Debt ratio of Italian companies”. The source of the data used must always be reported at the bottom (for example, "Source: Bank of Italy" or, in the case of data reprocessing, "Source: our processing on data of the Bank of Italy").

Every time you insert words from other authors into the text (copied and pasted) you must indicate them with double quotation marks indicating the author, source and the page of the book or article. Copying and pasting without reference to the author and source is in all respects a crime of plagiarism.

P.N. anti-plagiarism software is in use (e.g. Compilatio), which quickly allows to ascertain the originality of a text or the presence of plagiarized parts.

Every time you insert the thoughts or work of one or more authors into the text you must mention their surnames and the year. Tools like Zotero make it easy to annotate and create references and bibliography. https://sba.unibo.it/it/bacheca/eventi/zotero-il-reference-management-per-la-gestione-delle-bibliografie

In the case of web pages you must report the web address.

The references indicated in the text must then be included in full in the bibliography at the bottom of the essay.

All bibliographic sources and websites used and cited in the text must be reported in alphabetical order in the bibliography and sitography. Alternatively, the APA (American Psychology Association) style can be used: it can be set by Zotero (page 18 of Zotero guide). 

Some examples of style for listing bibliographical references, differentiated by type of source:

• journal article:

Monier-Dilhan, S. e Ossard, H. (1998). Producers' loss due to asymmetric information: An application to a specific case. European Review of Agricultural Economics 25: 155-169

• book article:

Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M. (1997). Dynamics in consumer behaviour with respect to agricultural and food products. In Wieringa, B., Tilburg, A. van, Grunert, K., Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M. and Wedel, M. (eds), Agricultural Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in a Changing World. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 143-188.

• book:
  Swinnen, J. F. M. (ed.) (1997). Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

• Book chapter:

Bhimani A., Bromwich M. (2009), Management Accounting in a Digital and Global Economy, in Chapman C., Cooper D., Miller P. (Eds.), Accounting Organizations and Institutions: Essays in Honour of Anthony Hopwood, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 85-111.

• paper presented at a conference:

Zeller, M., Schrieder, G., Braun, J. von and Heidhues, F. (1997). Rural Finance for Food Security for the Poor: Implications for Research and Policy. Food Policy Review 4, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Washington DC: IFPRI.

When drafting the sitography, you must only report the top-level address of the site consulted (for example, “www.borsaitaliana.it”) and not the address of the specific page (for example, “http://www.borsaitaliana.it /etf/etf/home.htm”), indicating the last date on which you viewed the site.

Silvestro R. (2016), Do you Know what Really Drives your Business’s Performance?, MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer, pp. 1-10, accessed 14 July 2016 on http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/do-you-know-what-really-drives-your-businesss-performance/.

The procedure for uploading the thesis to Studenti Online involves entering the title of the thesis, the keywords and a brief description of the work, previously agreed with the supervisor.

If the thesis is in English, the abstract must also be reported in Italian.

Time for presentation [times agreed with the coordinators]

10 minutes for Bachelor's Degrees and 15 minutes for Master's Degrees. It is important to present your work effectively especially since the time available is limited. It is suggested that you do some tests to check whether your presentation meets the required criteria and that you follow the instructions suggested by your Supervisor.

A further 5 minutes are foreseen for the discussion of the presentation, with answers to the Commission's questions.