is anyone else writing a phd in classic science chapters (intro, lit review, results, discussion and conclusion)? if yes, how long are your chapters. im working in my overall discussion and my supervisor has advised that it only has to be 6 pages long (my results chapter is 90 pages) which I think is really short! i would like to know what everyone thinks of this and how long your chapters are looking?

Hi Tina

My overall discussion (Summary and Future Work) chapter was about 7 pages. However, my results were discussed in depth in each individual chapter.

My final discussion at the end will be about 2500 words (that is "normal" for my area - I was shocked when I found that out - so short). Like Ann, I have a separate discussion at the end of each chapter (separate to my results section) and those discussions are about 2500 words each. A whole chapter is about 7000 words (without references/figures), but a couple are actually published articles, so are concisely written and contain no unnecessary data.

What are you doing for an intro, Tina? When you say intro, lit review are they separate sections? Mine is: abstract (very brief summary of thesis), intro (which is the lit review), then launch into first results chapter with a methods section in there.

I find deciding how you will structure the whole thesis is a big decision and I have changed my mind numerous times. Hardest decision was should I have a separate methods chapter or put small methods section in each chapter? I went with latter. Sorry this is getting confusing and not really helping you at all, but I just wonder what others are doing.

Worried about my intro/lit review too. Friend of mine doing her PhD at another uni is currently writing her thesis and her intro/lit review is 70 pages, but mine is only 20 pages.

Other thing that bothers me is my supervisor said not to update my intro/lit review from when it was written when I started my PhD. He said it should be snapshot of the knowledge of my area at time when I started. Any new data from other researchers published since I started should be discussed in the final discussion of my thesis only. Other students seem to write a whole new intro/lit review at the end of their PhD and include all current literature...like my 70 page friend is doing. Sorry for this waffle, but I would appreciate other science peoples comments on thesis size and structure.

Sorry, more to say...

I know size doesn't matter - in fact, there is a famous example in my faculty of a guy getting his PhD in molecular biology with a 42 page thesis! I understand it was well done, just really really concise. 42 pages...I could submit now!

I also know of a mol biology PhD thesis of 100 pages. AFAIK, it's because the methods used are so established that they are simply referenced (it's only the application of the methods that is novel). Hence there is no requirement for a massive methods chapter (NB I'm not a molecular biologist so could be wrong about this!)

Ok my results chapter is now 95 (i have done alot of experimental work) pages long and only includes a brief description of the tables and figures. I just cannnot see how i can write a 6 page discussion on all of that! Sometimes I think my supervisor is crazy!

piglet: my intro is a few pages long briefly exploring the disease i am looking at and touching on the objectives of my lit review and experimental work. I therefore have a combined chapter of intro and lit review. my lit review does include recent studies. I suppose this is topic dependant.