Im currently writing-up and my endnote says i have 356 references for my 80,000-word PhD. Just out of curiosity (and fear that i dont have enough!), how many have others cited by the time theyve reached the end? whats the average? (mine's a qualitative study, which may or may not make any difference).
I'm doing an computer science PhD and my institution has a maximum of 50000 words (as opposed for 80000 for humanities). Looking at 5 example PhDs I have, they average about 130 (though one has 350).
Its not about how many, but whether you have made your point. There is a danger that they might ask you a question on a reference that you might not have read.
PC_Geek - the documentation states that references and appendices aren't counted - maybe that is why?
I hope I'm right! I would be gutted to find that another 40000 words are expected! I think its because a lot of 'science' PhDs at my University (Bham) are experiment based, as opposed to humanities, so a lot of background work is expected to have taken place that wouldn't necessarily be written in full detail - eg I'm sure I have several tens of thousands of lines of code, but I wouldn't include that.
I am doing a qual too (heavy political theory), and it depends on your approach. I am focusing on four authors and how their work contrasts/complements so referencing is relatively high, but the number of works is actually quite low. I normally get only 100 pieces of work, but around 500 references.
'PC_Geek - the documentation states that references and appendices aren't counted - maybe that is why?'
Different Unis, different rules... including my appendicies and references it comes to 98,500
I imagine yours will be more concise than mine.. mine was a lot of waffle
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