There are a number of guidelines for the creation of scientific documents on the internet and on the university website. Among other things, the following should generally be observed:

• Recommendations adopted by the Department of Computing Science for the realisation of external theses (external, pdf)
• Guidelines for good academic practice at the University of Oldenburg (external, pdf)
• Good academic practice for the writing of academic theses - position paper of the Allgemeiner Fakultätentag (AFT), the Fakultätentage and the Deutscher Hochschulverband (DHV) of 9 July 2012 (external, pdf)

It would actually be superfluous to add anything to this. However, it makes sense to establish a few rules for the preparation of final theses and seminar papers in the Department of Systems Analysis and Optimisation so that expectations are clarified and a framework is created for any marking.

The thesis must be preceded by a written summary in German and English. There is a table of contents and a bibliography. A list of figures or tables is not necessary.

The thesis should have a comprehensible structure for the reader. The challenge/problem addressed should be presented at the beginning. It then makes sense to present relevant information or related work. This results in a detailing of the question or the need for action of the work.

If possible, the structure follows the principles from the general to the specific and from the abstract to the concrete. You do not describe the course of your research tasks but present your results.

The thesis concludes with a critical appraisal or evaluation of the results.

The department's template can be used to prepare the thesis, which can be found on the Download documents page.

Please use standardised terminology. The same (always!) means the same; different means different. Use short sentences. Use footnotes so as not to disrupt the flow of reading.

Create references in an author-date form, for example (Plösch, Gruber et. al. 2011), and include the author, title, editor, volume, publisher and place in the bibliography.

We recommend the Chicago Manual of Style (author-date variant) as a citation style, which is already available as a template for many reference management programmes such as Zotero, Endnote or Bibtex.

Up to two authors in the text (Ward and Burns 2007, 52) and several authors (Barnes et al. 2010).

Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. 2007 The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945, New York: Knopf.

Weinstein, Joshua I. 2009. "The Market in Plato's Republic." Classical Philology 104:439-58.

Kossinets, Gueorgi, and Duncan J. Watts. 2009. "Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network." American Journal of Sociology 115:405-50. Accessed 28 February, 2010. doi:10.1086/599247.

Images should always be of good quality, legible and described and referenced in the text.

The title, author, date and type of work should be recognisable on the title. Student ID number or address are not necessary. Please add your name and year to the back of the paper! The department logo is provided as a JPEG.

In the case of binding, either print on the cover cardboard or use a transparent film.

The author must declare in writing and sign with place and date that he/she has produced the work independently and has labelled and cited all content or findings adopted.

Attention must be paid to a good chain of argumentation. All statements must either be substantiated by literature references, derived or must be common knowledge. The same applies to the technologies presented. Basic technologies such as XML or similar do not have to be presented in theses if they are not specifically about these technologies.

All quotations (literal quotations in " ") or adopted content aspects must also be provided with a source reference.

The paper should be as short as possible. Seminar papers should not exceed 20 pages, BSc theses 80 pages, MSc theses 100 pages and doctoral theses 150 pages including foreword, table of contents and bibliography.

The level of innovation and completeness of the description will be assessed.

No work is done without context. This aspect, which at first glance seems unscientific, is also important for the work. The context also sets the framework conditions and may require additional work through coordination with others. Taking this into account is also a challenge and is included in the assessment accordingly.