PhD Thesis LaTeX Template Files

Here it is. I finally put on this web site the LaTeX template I used for writing my PhD. I have been looking for such a thing for a long time on the web before finally writing mine, using as an inspiration many web sites that proposed parts of what I wanted.

I originally made it to work with latex/dvipdfm combination. I have since changed it so that it should work with either latex/dvipdfm or pdflatex. I have now ended up with two versions corresponding to two languages. The first one is the English version which contains features like:

• Made for A4 paper
• Chapters and different sections always start on the page on the right
• Acknowledgment section included in main file
• A title page that fits the style required for University of Nice
• Links in the pdf file and bookmarks (hyperref package)
• Backward links in the bibliography section going to where the references were cited
• Some environments and commands that were useful for me (vertically centered page, partial derivatives, argmin, bullet list, etc.)
• Summary of the thesis at the end of the thesis (usually required in France)
• Use of minitoc (table of contents for each chapter)
• A bibtex style file modified a little from alpha style (references appear as [Commowick, 2007] which is much easier than numbers for the reader). I added recently a second style file (bst) allowing the references to appear as [Commowick et al, 2007] when there are more than two authors and as [AuhtorA & AuthorB, 2007] when there are two authors. This style file can be used by replacing the bibliographystyle included in Thesis.tex.
• And other things I forgot that you may discover in the formatAndDefs.tex file if you want to have a look.

The second version is a French version, which is why I will switch to French for a while. Go to the end of the page to get the templates and examples. La version française donc contient les mêmes caractéristiques que la version anglaise avec une francisation du style latex et bibtex. Là encore deux styles pour bibtex sont disponibles que je vous laisserai tester. Les macros des mois (jan, feb, mar, ..., dec) du style bibtex ont été redéfinies pour sortir les mois en français dans la bibliographie. J'inclus aussi les packages MyAlgorithm et MyAlgorithmic qui sont les traductions en français des packages algorithm et algorithmic (gentiment fournis à l'époque par Céline Fouard, merci à toi).

All right, now let's start the real thing. I put here two tarballs, one for each version. Each tarball includes several tex files that constitute an example of a PhD, showing what you can expect from this. Sorry, this is an example, I won't write your thesis... If you want to have a look at what a real thesis can look like with this template, see my thesis (even if it is in French, you will still see what it looks like). I also included a script to compile the example (compileThese or compileThesis). Other files are:

• These.tex or Thesis.tex: Main file, including the chapters and the acknowledgment section.
• Chapter1.tex: Example of a chapter
• Annexe1.tex or Appendix1.tex: Example of an appendix chapter
• These.bib or Thesis.bib: references file
• StyleThese.cls or ThesisStyle.cls: Main style file, largely inspired from book style file
• formatAndDefs.tex: Most important: Definition of commands, fancy headers, pdf options and various environments
• StyleThese.bst, ThesisStyle.bst, StyleTheseWithEtAl.bst or ThesisStyleWithEtAl.bst: Bibtex style files producing references either as [Commowick, 2007] or as [Commowick et al, 2007], uses names (much more readable and still relatively short), customized either for french or english.
• TitlePage.tex: Title page, fits the style required for University of Nice. I don't know for other universities but this will still be a good start I guess.

A reminder: I do not guarantee that it will work on every computer with every configuration (it has been used successfully on linux and Mac OS X). However, feel free to use, modify or diffuse these templates for whatever you want, let's be GPL. If you want to acknowledge, do not hesitate to put the link to this website somewhere in your thesis or on your website. If you do not want to acknowledge, no problem do whatever you want, I will be able to track you anyway (just kidding :-) )... So here we go now with the two templates (last updated on November 8, 2010):

> English version of the PhD Thesis template.
> Version française du template LaTeX de thèse.

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Frequently Asked Questions

I have had quite a lot of feedback on this template, and actually it is now generating half of the traffic to this website. I'm really amazed. So because of this high number of visits, I have had some questions and requests for improvements. Therefore, here is now the answers to questions section:

How do I remove the back-references to citation pages in the bibliography ?

Simply remove in the file formatAndDefs.tex any reference to pagebackref and recompile.

How do I change the way back-references look like in the bibliography ?

Simply modify in the file formatAndDefs.tex the lines after "nicer backref links" comment (thanks Francois and Vincent for the trick) and recompile.

How do I use the bibliography style displaying references as [Commowick et al, 2007] ?

Just replace in the main file (Thesis.tex or These.tex) the line \bibliographystyle{ThesisStyle} by \bibliographystyle{ThesisStyleWithEtAl} (\bibliographystyle{StyleThese} by \bibliographystyle{StyleTheseWithEtAl} for the French version).

How to add a list of abbreviations ?

It is possible using the nomenclature package (the glossary package may also be used but I found it more complicated). To use it and see an example, just uncomment the following lines: line 32 in These.tex or Thesis.tex, line 40 in Chapter1.tex (syntax example) and uncomment the makeindex in compileThese (or compileThesis) script. The \printnomenclature tells where to put the list in the document and the makeindex generates the list.

How to change the page margins ?

I used the package geometry to set the document margins for A4 paper. Feel free to change the margins by changing line 5 in formatAndDefs.tex.

How to change the page format ?

This might be tricky but the main things to do are to change the margins if needed (see above) and change line 1 of Thesis.tex or These.tex to replace a4paper by a supported paper type in latex (letterpaper and a5paper mainly, see the file StyleThese.cls or ThesisStyle.cls for a full list).

If you did not find your answer in this, or encounter any problem (file missing, compilation not working, idea of something to add), feel free to ask me by email (see my contact page).