Thesis Formatting for Monash University Case Study

Associate Professor Ronil V. Chandra needed LaTeX formatting to submit PhD thesis at Monash University. It was a thesis by publication, so most of it already existed as published journal articles. The job was to turn seventeen separate Word files into one 214-page LaTeX thesis that met Monash’s requirements and read as a single piece of work rather than a stack of papers.

The research itself is confidential, so this case study covers only our work related to LaTeX formatting and production work.

Project Detail

What the client needed

He sent a written brief with the files, which made the job much easier. His priorities, in his order:

• A thesis that reads as one piece of work, not a collection of 4 separate manuscripts
• Full compliance with current Monash requirements and LaTeX Template
• Consistency across every chapter, including the published papers
• A clean design that would hold up as a submitted PDF and as a printed, archived document

What made this project different

This project was ‘thesis by publication’ and it is assembled from papers that were already published, each one formatted by a different journal. So the source material arrives inconsistent by definition. Different heading styles, different table layouts, different figure numbering, different reference styles, different everything.

On top of the four published manuscripts there were supplementary documents for each, short linking chapters written to connect them, an introduction, a discussion chapter, and the Monash preliminary pages. Seventeen Word files in total, with 47 tables and 51 embedded images spread across them.

The work is not converting any one of those files. Converting one chapter is straightforward. The work is making all of them behave like they were always part of the same document.

Combining the different manuscripts to read as one thesis

Everything was rebuilt into a single LaTeX project with one document class, so every chapter inherits the same rules instead of carrying its journal’s formatting with it.

• One heading hierarchy across all chapters, with the original chapter numbering and the thesis-by-publication structure preserved
• One caption style for all 32 figures and 25 tables, numbered continuously through the thesis rather than restarting per manuscript
• Cross-references are converted to real LaTeX references, so chapter, section, figure and table numbers are generated rather than typed. So, nothing breaks when something changes.
• Tables are rebuilt so they break across pages properly. Forty of them are long enough to need it, and four sections are set landscape because the tables are too wide for a portrait page.

How the Bibliography was rebuilt

Each chapter had its own EndNote library, six in total, and the published papers each carried their own reference list in whatever style that journal used. Monash University Thesis LaTeX template requires a single consolidated bibliography. We extracted the references from each chapter, consolidated them into one BibTeX file, and removed the duplicates. The result is 149 references in one list, in Vancouver style, numbered and sorted, with the citation numbers generated from the source.

The list of abbreviations across the whole thesis

A list of abbreviations built from separate manuscripts will miss the ones that only appear in the linking chapters, and will contradict itself where two papers expanded the same abbreviation differently.

So the client asked for it to be generated at the end, from the finished document. We built it after all chapters and appendices were integrated, which is the only point at which it can actually be complete. It runs to 49 entries, checked for consistent capitalisation and consistent expansion across the whole thesis.

Figures, tables reformatting

The work required to reduce unnecessary page turns. In practice it means controlling where floats land: how much of a page a figure is allowed to take before LaTeX pushes it to its own page, preventing a table from being separated from the text that introduces it, and stopping a heading from sitting alone at the bottom of a page.

We updated the float parameters for this document and used explicit float barriers at chapter boundaries so figures cannot drift into the next chapter. Figures were kept at their original quality, and we told the client which ones would benefit from higher-resolution files rather than upscaling them ourselves.

Monash University Thesis LaTeX Template requirements

Monash has a specific set of requirements for a thesis including published works, and a preliminary pages template that has to be followed.

• Title page, copyright notice and dedication
• Abstract
• Declaration for a thesis including published works, including the table listing each publication, its status, and the candidate’s contribution
• List of publications
• Acknowledgements
• Table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, list of abbreviations
• Roman numbering for the preliminary pages, switching to Arabic at the first chapter

The compiled PDF had 87 bookmarks in the PDF outline, and clickable internal links for every cross-reference, citation and contents entry.

TheLaTeXLab Delivery

• The compiled 214-page thesis PDF
• The complete LaTeX source: main file, custom document class, six chapter files, four appendices, six preliminary-page files, the consolidated BibTeX file, and all figure assets

Work went through three rounds of revision, each driven by the client’s own review of the compiled PDF. He read every version closely and sent specific, detailed notes, which is the fastest way for a project like this to go.

What the client said

“Thank you again for all your careful work on the thesis, particularly the formatting, navigation, manuscript integration and final production. You have helped bring together a very substantial body of work into a polished final document.”

— Associate Professor Ronil V. Chandra, Monash University

What this project shows we delivered

• Assemble a full thesis from scattered Word files, published PDFs and reference manager libraries, rather than converting one document at a time
• Build a custom LaTeX document class to a specific university’s requirements, instead of forcing the content into a generic template
• Consolidate references from multiple published papers and separate EndNote libraries into one clean bibliography
• Handle long, table-heavy documents where tables span pages and some need landscape orientation
• Work to a formatting brief without touching the research, and ask rather than guess
• Hand over source files the author can maintain himself

Who we usually do this for

• PhD and doctoral candidates submitting their Thesis to university.
• Thesis by publication and thesis including published works submissions.
• Researchers whose material is spread across Word files, published PDFs and EndNote or similar libraries
• Authors with confidential or embargoed research who need the formatting handled without the content being discussed
• People who do not write LaTeX and do not want to learn it for one submission

Most of our work is thesis and dissertation formatting and Word to LaTeX conversion for researchers working to a university or journal template. We have separate pages for Australian university thesis formatting, and a write-up on moving references out of Word into BibTeX.

When we are not the right fit

• You want your research reviewed. We format documents. We do not check methods, results or language.
• The writing is not finished. Formatting a thesis that is still being edited means paying to format it twice.
• You want to learn LaTeX. We deliver files, not training.