THESIS REQUEST PROCEDURE AND EDITORIAL GUIDELINES
All prospective graduates are invited to submit, by email to davide.domenici@unibo.it [mailto:davide.domenici@unibo.it], a thesis project of at least a couple of pages, including a title, keywords, a 500-word abstract, a description of the methodology and tools to be used in writing the thesis, and an essential reference bibliography. The Master's degree thesis project must be presented and agreed upon at least 6 months before the final thesis upload date.
Master's degree students may undertake a research stay abroad for the purpose of writing the thesis (see below). The Bachelor's degree thesis project must be presented and agreed upon at least 3 months before the final thesis upload date.
Please note that the thesis upload date precedes the actual thesis defense by about one month. It should also be emphasized that, at the time of upload, the thesis must already have been fully corrected and approved by the supervisor. This means that the various chapters must be sent by email to the supervisor over the preceding months. The supervisor will only read final versions of the chapters, not drafts or partial versions. Once the candidate has received all chapters corrected by the supervisor, and after making the necessary corrections, they must send the complete file (from the title page to the bibliography) to the supervisor AT LEAST 15 DAYS BEFORE THE UPLOAD. Once formal approval from the supervisor has been obtained, the candidate may then proceed with uploading the thesis within the established deadlines. The supervisor will not approve any thesis that has not been written and corrected in strict accordance with the above procedure.
Regarding deadlines for registering for graduation sessions, each student is required to check in advance the website of their degree program, under the "Studying" → "Final Examination" section.
Thesis abroad: Please note that the School of Arts and Cultural Heritage (Scuola di Lettere e Beni Culturali) issues an annual call for scholarships for Master's degree students to undertake research stays abroad for the purpose of writing their thesis.
Use of Artificial Intelligence: The use of artificial intelligence is recommended to be avoided or kept to a minimum; its use is permitted within the limits established by the University's guidelines:
https://www.unibo.it/it/ateneo/statuto-norme-strategie-bilanci/intelligenza-artificiale/intelligenza-artificiale
While the use of AI may be permitted to improve the wording of certain sentences, its use is strongly discouraged for structuring the thesis text into chapters and subchapters (which AI tends to multiply unnecessarily), as well as for conducting bibliographic research.
EDITORIAL GUIDELINES
Formatting:
Font: Times New Roman
Body text size: 12
Footnote size: 10
Text alignment: justified
Line spacing: 1.5
Left-right and top-bottom margins: 2.5 cm
NOTE: Neither the professor nor the University requires printed copies of the thesis.
Citations, notes, and bibliographic references:
Short quotations should be enclosed in quotation marks " ", always keeping the font size at 12. If a quotation exceeds three lines, it should still be enclosed in quotation marks, but the left and right margins must be reduced by 1 centimeter and a smaller font used, separating the paragraph from the preceding and following ones. Numbers should be written out in full (from one to ten, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions). Numbers at the beginning of a sentence must be written out in full (example: "Twenty-seven years later"). Numbers with limited arithmetic value should also be written out in words (example: "at the age of twenty"). Only days and dates are written in numerals (except for the first of the month, e.g., "January 1st").
When particular emphasis is to be given to a word, use double quotation marks " ". Italics should be used for: titles of books, articles, various types of documents, audiovisual works, etc. Care must be taken with the use of quotation marks and semicolons, and paragraph breaks should be used judiciously, as they indicate a change of topic. Please avoid separating paragraphs with a blank space or an empty line.
For citations and bibliography, use of the Chicago Manual of Style, Author-Date format, is recommended: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
It should also be emphasized that in-text references must be included not only when literally quoting a passage from another author in quotation marks, but also to indicate the sources used in writing a given sentence, paragraph, etc.
It is important to note that the "sitography" (web resources list) includes only those texts that are available online and that lack publication information such as author, year, publisher, etc. In such cases, the website should be listed in the sitography, along with the date it was last accessed. All texts of scientific articles, monographs, etc. that do include the aforementioned publication information — even if downloaded from the internet — must be treated entirely as printed publications and therefore included in the bibliography, not the sitography.
Online bibliographic research resources:
Catalogue of the Bologna Hub of the National Library Service:
https://sol.unibo.it/SebinaOpac/Opac?sysb=
University Library System:
http://www.sba.unibo.it/it
National Library Service Catalogue:
http://opac.sbn.it/opacsbn/opac/iccu/free.jsp
University Databases:
http://www.sba.unibo.it/it/almare/collezioni/banche-dati
University Proxy Service:
https://sba.unibo.it/it/almare/servizi-e-strumenti-almare/connessione-da-remoto
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/
JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/
Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net
