Guidelines for licentiate degrees

Internal department guidelines for a monograph licentiate thesis

A licentiate thesis is normally a unified, cohesive single-author text, divided into chapters and addressing a single theme. The thesis should not exceed 150 pages (60 000 words) in length. A licentiate thesis written in a language other than English is to include a summary in English.

Internal department guidelines for a compilation licentiate thesis

A compilation licentiate thesis is to contain two to three research papers (articles or anthology chapters), as well as a summarising introductory chapter that clarifies the collective research contribution provided by the papers. Exactly as for a monograph thesis, a compilation licentiate thesis is assessed as a whole for its research quality.

At least one of the papers in the thesis should be individually authored, and one at most should be co-authored with the supervisor and/or assistant supervisor. In co-authored papers, the allocation of work between the authors is to be documented in some way. The papers do not need to be published but must be in publishable form.

The summarising introduction should be an overview, placing the individual papers in context and clarifying their collective contribution to the research. The recommended scope of the summarising introduction is at least 5000 words. However, this should be considered in the light of the content of the papers. A summarising introduction should attempt to deepen and broaden the aspects of the licentiate thesis’s theme that have not been given sufficient scope in the papers.

Further instructions are available in the General syllabus for third cycle education in political science and the Regulations for third cycle education at the Faculty of Social Sciences.