mit research paper format

Formatting, Specifications, Copyright and Submission

Thesis checklist.

• Department Checklist for Thesis Submittal

Required Signature Form

Fill in your name & signature, then send to your advisor(s) to fill in their name & signature, which acts as their approval of your thesis. Signature form must be submitted along with your completed thesis document to the department by the department due date. 

• Signature Form

Thesis Committee

• Thesis Committee Guidelines
• Title page, abstract and committee page templates

Writing and Communications Center

The WCC at MIT ( Writing and Communication Center ) offers free one-on-one professional advice from communication experts. The WCC is staffed completely by MIT lecturers. All have advanced degrees. All are experienced college classroom teachers of communication. All are published scholars and writers. Not counting the WCC’s director’s years (he started the WCC in 1982), the WCC lecturers have a combined 133 years’ worth of teaching here at MIT (ranging from 4 to 24 years).

The WCC works with students (undergraduate and graduate), post-docs, faculty, and staff — the WCC no longer meets with alumni or spouses/partners.). The WCC helps you strategize about all types of academic and professional writing as well as about all aspects of oral presentations (including practicing classroom presentations & conference talks as well as designing slides).

No matter what department or discipline you are in , the WCC helps you think your way more deeply into your topic, helps you see new implications in your data, research, and ideas. The WCC also helps with all English as Second Language issues, from writing and grammar to pronunciation and conversation practice.

Writing and Communication Center offers a number of programs to the wide community of MIT undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, and staff, which include:

• Individual Consultations on oral, visual, and written projects
• Workshops on various aspects of academic writing
• Writing Together Online program

Departmental Writing Support

We also have in house writing support for you, to help you with thesis writing support.  Marilyn Levine , our  Writing Consultant is available by appointment. She is an incredible department resource for everyone, and is available for workshops, advice, one on one student meetings, and more. Her contact info is [email protected] .

Formatting and Specifications

• Implementing the formatting and specifications saves a lot of time while your final thesis submission is being reviewed. The majority of students go through an average of 3-4 formatting revisions before their thesis book is approved as archive ready, and received by the department for final submission to the library.
• A thesis is a research paper , and must reflect the formatting specifications as such. Creative and stylistic formatting have their limits; all published theses must ultimately hold to the formatting requirements in order to ensure the document is accessible to all readers (observing ADA compliance regulations.)

Notes: While submissions must be a single, continuous page, you may switch between portrait and landscape orientation.

There is no institute-wide style guideline, as different disciplines adhere to their own. MIT Architecture does not prescribe a specific documentation style but recommends you confer with your thesis advisor in addition to adhering to the institute-wide specifications for each style: https://libraries.mit.edu/distinctive-collections/thesis-specs/

1. Thesis Checklist

Download the Department’s Thesis Checklist to review your final document for archival acceptability. Take note that there is one addition to the checklist required by the Department ; page 2 (placed between the title and the abstract pages) must list your thesis/dissertation committee . It should have the academic titles of your advisors and readers as they are listed in the MIT Bulletin — see TEMPLATE .

2. Committee Chair Information for Title Page

• Skylar Tibbits
• Associate Professor of Design Research Chair of Undergraduate Curriculum Committee
• Timothy Hyde
• Professor of the History of Architecture Chair of the Department Committee on Graduate Students

3. MIT Libraries Specifications for Thesis Preparation

• Specifications
• Review for information on obtaining correct research permissions, copyright, supplemental material and research data, accessibility features, holds, and more.
• MIT Thesis FAQ

4. Pay special attention to:

• General Policies
• Copyrighting your thesis
• Statement required on all title pages: 
• “ The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”
• Using previously published materials
• Thesis title — Make sure your final thesis title matches the Institute record by checking in  WebSIS  under “Online Degree Application”.
• Proper wording on title, abstract and committee pages — see  TEMPLATES  (includes templates by degree, template for joint theses and template for dual degree theses).
• Pagination  — The title page is always considered to be page 1, and every page must be included in the count regardless of whether a number is physically printed on a page.  Make sure the page numbers in your Table of Contents are accurate  (see tip in “Check Table of Contents Links” below)..
• Typeface & Size  —  Main body of text , including appendices and front matter should be no smaller than 11-point and not be script or italic (although italics may be used for short quotations or to highlight variables in equations).
• It is easy to overlook the font size of text  within  images. This text can be no smaller than 10-point (per bullet above, see  supply an alt tag )..
• Check Table of Contents Links — Make sure you have links in your table of contents that go to the correct location in your document. It is easy to make structural changes to your document and forget to revisit your Table of Contents links for accuracy. Microsoft Word has a  Table of Contents tool  that allows you to link TOC entries directly to the appropriate content in the document; it is a great tool to use as if your content moves during the editing of your document, Word automatically updates your links in your TOC). 

Copyright and Thesis

Scholarly publishing’s  theses and copyright  page.

This page covers the following:

• Fair use and your thesis
• Copyright term and the public domain
• MIT license agreements
• Copyright for images and figures

MIT libraries’  Using Copyrighted Content  page.

• Fair use for your thesis: Two questions to determine fair use
• MIT license agreements that may allow reuse
• Copyright Clearance Center
• Obtaining permission for use

FINAL Thesis Submission

→ Signatures are not required on the title page. They ARE required on the  SEPARATE SIGNATURE FORM .

On or before department thesis deadlines:

• Upload the final document to the Department’s  Thesis Submission Tool  for a  final formatting review  (choose “Single Sign On” and login with your MIT email address).
• If final formatting revisions are not complete by the Institute Deadline for Thesis submission,  you will be removed from the degree list.

This is for the purpose of making certain the document is in compliance with MIT archive requirements. You will be contacted quickly if adjustments are needed and when the document has been approved. Before submitting your document ensure that:

• you make a final pass through your thesis document based on the  formatting/specifications  information;
• your advisor has seen and approved your final version that you are uploading to the Department’s  Thesis Submission website . No further changes can be accommodated;
• you don’t forget the additional  committee page  required by the Department of Architecture which is placed between your title and abstract pages (this page is not necessary if you only have a thesis advisor and no readers). Consult the Department’s  Faculty page  in the MIT catalog for proper academic titles for MIT instructors.

After submitting your document, ensure that you have  submitted your Thesis Information to the Library . There you must complete the the online form (Ensure that your thesis title is an exact match with what is listed on your  (approved!) title page  (click on “Online Degree Application”).

• Please complete the full form, including copyright info, thesis supervisor, and more.
• Dual degree students: list your PRIMARY department in the main fields of the form, and include the information for the secondary department and thesis supervisor in the NOTES section of this form.
• All grad students may also choose to OPT-IN to send your thesis to Pro-Quest.
• The Library WILL NOT publish theses that are formatted incorrectly, have incorrect copyright statements, or missing or incorrect table of content information. We don’t go through this process because we want to, it’s in order to ensure your thesis is publishable per Library standards. 

A note from an alum: While there are multiple reasons to write your thesis in a word document (including making citations easier, table of contents easier, and more), many of you will choose to format it in InDesign instead. If you do, please ensure you  package  your InDesign file before you graduate. If you are using a student Adobe license, when you graduate your student license will be revoked. An unpackaged InDesign file will mean your entire thesis document will become a jumble of words and images. Should you want to access your thesis again in the future (maybe to print? maybe because the Library has noticed an error and requires you to correct it before publishing your thesis to D-Space), you will have to reformat the entire document again.