Guidelines for Scientific Working at PTO/ENP #

1. Objectives & Scope #

These guidelines apply for the Bachelor’s Thesis 2 in PTO, (to a somewhat lesser extent, see Bachelor’s Thesis 1 Guidelines) Bachelor’s Thesis 1 and foremost the Master’s Thesis in ENP.

2. Scientific Scope #

The Bachelor’s and Master’s Theses are the first encounters of scientific working in a student’s academic endeavors. They should develop novel solutions for existing problems based on combinations of state of the art knowledge and methods. Hence, they presents original research results on a specific topic and contribute to prevailing discussions within the (scientific) community. It is not required that a thesis makes an independent and significant contribution to the further development of a theory, nor does it have to lead to a completely new technical innovation. However, the theses should introduce novel arguments to the (scientific) community in a specific field in order to strengthen or disprove state of the art theories or methods or to enhance the area of validity of specific theories or methods.

Important:

A Bachelor’s or Master’s Thesis demonstrates the student’s ability to depict the nucleus of a problem, to solve the problem based on state of the art theories and methods and to evaluate the results.

The theoretical part serves as a basis for the empirical work and defines the state of the art of the specific field of work. The empirical work uses the state of the art knowledge and methods to answer the research questions. This might well be a project in a professional environment. In this way, a common thread runs through the whole work.

It is important to know about the state of the art methods and theories before getting down to work. Once the work is started, it must reflect the latest in scientific discussions and developments in the given field. However, this does not imply that the work has to make an independent and significant contribution for the further development of a theory, or has to lead to a completely new technical product. Nonetheless, familiarity with the prevailing discussions is to be shown. This is achieved by using recent scientific papers, articles and other peer-reviewed sources of information.

3. Scientific Work #

As the Master’s (and to a high degree Bachelor’s) Thesis is the first scientific work in the academic life of a student, first, it needs to be clarified what is meant with the term scientific. Umberto Eco, a well known Italian novelist and philosopher, defines the conditions for a work to be scientific in his book “How to Write a Thesis” as follows:

The research deals with a specific object, defined so that others can identify it.
The research says things that have not yet been said about this object, or it revises the things that have already been said from a different perspective.
The research is useful to others
The research provides the elements required to verify or disprove the hypotheses it presents, and therefore it provides the foundation for future research.

To achieve the goals of a scientific work of a Master’s Thesis, it is useful to view it as being divided into two aspects:

The scientific work as a project (testing a theory, generation of knowledge)
The scientific work as a product (writing the thesis)

This enables to structure the work of the Master’s Thesis and to focus on the relevant aspects during the work in progress.

3.1. Scientific Work as a Project #

The aim of the scientific work as a project is to test a theory and/or perform a systematic pursuit of knowledge through:

formulation of a problem
research on the state of the art
formulation of research questions
clarification of sources of information to answer the reserach questions
definition of the research methods that enable the research questions to be answered
working on your project considering Standards of Good ScientificPractice as defined by the “Österreichische Agentur für wissenschaftliche Integrität ÖAWI” include:
1. Precise record keeping and documentation of the research process
2. Transparent and comprehensible handling of other persons ideas, texts and miscellaneous sources
3. Avoidance of the re-publication of texts (or parts of texts) previously published by an author without citing the earlier publication
4. Strict honesty with regard to the research contributions of other person

These rules are of utmost importance when publishing scientific content.

3.2. Scientific Work as a Product #

This aspect refers to formal requirements, content requirements and the structure of the thesis:

Formal requirements on the text
Citation styles
Style of writing (see Formal Aspects / Style Guide)
Content requirements
Orientation towards target audience / addressee
Red Line / Storyline
Readability (informative text, descriptive illustrations and tables)
High-quality content
Structure
Throughout the document, consistent formatting and a gender sensitive style of writing must be considered.

Important:

Gender sensitive language should be used according to the FH JOANNEUM guidelines on corporate wording. More information on gender aspects in English documents can be found here.

4. Artificial Intelligence #

Artificial Intelligence systems have become ubiquitous during the last years and highly influence scientific work and writing. Especially Large Language Models (e.g. ChatGPT) have become ever more popular to assist people in their work. Thus having said, keep in mind what these systems are: Language Models. They do not provide any factual knowledge about a certain topic, only statistical methods to craft the best possible result, be it text or an image, learned from other texts or images on the Web.

Therefore when deciding to use generative AI for/in you thesis several precautions have to be taken:

Ask you supervisor beforehand whether he or she allows the use of generative AI systems within your thesis
In the case of allowance: clearly mark any AI generated content as such, using the citation rules for online sources (see below)
Think twice whether the use of AI makes sense and most probably leads to correct results in your use case
- Summarization work, re-formulation of texts and similar tasks will usually be done very well by these systems. The same applies for translation work between common languages – but beware that there has been little training of these systems on not so common languages
- Programming languages are well supported, but the code developed by generative AI has to checked very thoroughly, it most probably contains flaws and security vulnerabilities
Never try to let generative AI systems solve (even parts of) your thesis’ problems and tasks. These systems are simply not (yet) suitable for that
Keep in mind that the way these systems are being trained, false information from sources the net might get multiplied and be presented more prominently as the correct answers to your problems/question

Info:

You find updated (keep in mind that due to the timelines of the topic, this is subject to ongoing changes) information concerning use of AI at FH JOANNEUM in this document issued by FH JOANNEUM’s Academic council (“Kollegium”) and additionally here. A summary for PTO and ENP teachers and students can be found here.

5. Citation Rules: #

Generally the IEEE rules apply. Useful information on how to implement these rules con be found here as well as here.

Important:

Be aware that compliance to the rules set up in the guide is probably not enough to imply best practice. E.g. it is no good practice to write a whole paragraph and then put a reference mark to some source at the end of the paragraph, just because all or part of the paragraph’s content can be found somewhere there. Be as precise as possible. Again, refer to what you’ve learned in your courses on scientific writing!

It is highly recommended to use literature management software like

Zotero (highly recommended, fits in nicely in all relevant text processing systems, like MS-Word, Open Office Writer, LaTex, etc.
Citavi or
JabRef

instead of (e.g.) Word’s built-in, rather lame, facilities for managing your sources (see below), as these provide easier and advanced reference support.

6. Plagiarism #

Plagiarism:

According to the University of Oxford plagiarism is defined as:

“Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition, as is the use of material generated wholly or in part through use of artificial intelligence (save when use of AI for assessment has received prior authorisation e.g. as a reasonable adjustment for a student’s disability). Plagiarism can also include re-using your own work without citation. Under the regulations for examinations, intentional or reckless plagiarism is a disciplinary offence.”

Source: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism

The above statement can be regarded as a short summary of the rules set forth in the previous chapters of this guide, especially those on Scientific Work, AI and Citations.

To prevent plagiarism, all theses handed in at FH JOANNEUM have to undergo a plagiarism check, involving the software PlagScan. The software is provided by the university. Every student handing in a thesis will get a license key at the administration desk to upload their thesis on JOANNEUM|online for the plagiarism check. The result of this check has to be handed in together with the thesis, usually when handing for approbation (1^st submission).

See PTO /Bachelor’s Thesis 2 and ENP / Master’s Thesis guidelines for further details.

7. Resources #

Be aware that the careful choice of resources makes up for a good deal of the quality of your scientific work (i.e. your thesis). As a reminder (you should have learned about this in the respective courses “Scientific Writing”/PTO and additionally “Scientific Working”/ENP), some useful rules for selecting sources for your work:

7.1. Printed vs. Online Resources #

The distinction between printed and/pr online resources is nowadays insignificant as most relevant literature is available online or at least in some electronic form (eBooks, etc.). So the main distinction in that area should rather be between books and scientific papers on the one hand side and websites, company brochures etc. on the other hand side. And even this differentiation will not hold considering the huge amount of self-published books as offered e.g. by Amazon and others.

So your main task selecting appropriate sources will be to check the quality of these. As this is somewhat depending on the field of research and expertise only some common rules will be laid out here.

7.2. Encyclopedias #

Use of encyclopedias (e.g. Wikipedia) per se is not strictly prohibited, but you must not cite the encyclopedia text itself, but refer to the original source thereof. If there is no original source for the respective information available this might be a benign hint that you’d probably better not trust (and cite) the information, unless you are an expert in the field (in which case you wouldn’t need to cite an external source at all) or you can figure out who authored the article in question. In case it’s a respected expert in the field you will find most probably also find appropriate original sources from this person.

7.3. Websites, generally #

Information gathered from websites is probably the hardest to verify. Keep in mind that most of the online content never went through any peer review, i.e. you rely solely on the authors words. Moreover website content usually is marketing content therefore not objective.

Again, if you are an expert on you thesis’ topic and are be able to qualify the content in question, or if you can make sure the site’s author is an expert on the respective topic the same remarks as above apply. Of course, in the latter case it makes a lot of sense to cite content from this website.

7.4. Peer Reviewed Papers #

One ofo the best sources for scientific work are peer reviewed papers, i.e. scientific papers that have been published only after a strict review procedure by other experts. You can (and should) use the scientific databases provided by FH JOANNEUM’s library. You find some of these below in section ???, Sources of Literature.

7.5. Journals #

Article published in journals from renowned publishers (scientific or engineering societies like IEEE, VDE, etc.) are always acceptable as sources. Avoid popular magazines and journals as well as company publications (see below) unless you really know what you are doing.

7.6. Books #

No matter whether electronic or printed, books will make up the majority of your sources. Again, book from renowned publishers will be a good source of information. Keep in mind which books your teachers used in their courses – they might be a valuable resource. Avoid self published books and books from unknown publishers.

7.7. (Company) Brochures #

Always avoid, unless they contain absolutely crucial information about you practical work (i.e. company project).

7.8. Other Sources #

Several other possible sources exist (see IEEE guide mentioned above), one that is often forgotten is eMail. Of course eMails exchanged with an expert are a viable source of relevant information and can be referenced in your thesis. The same applies for discussions in (professional) online chats.

8. Sources of literature #

This is a (non-exclusive!) list of sources to search for peer-reviewed literature:

Online #

Patents: #

Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt