• 2-minute read
• 24th March 2021

How to Cite a Thesis or Dissertation in IEEE Referencing

Did you know you can cite someone else’s thesis or dissertation in your own work? In this post, we’ll explain how this works in IEEE referencing.

Citing a Thesis or Dissertation in IEEE Referencing

In-text citations in IEEE referencing use numbers in square brackets:

Reactive forensics focuses on an incident after it has occurred [1].

These numbers point to sources in the reference list, with sources numbered in the order you cite them (i.e. the first source is always [1], the second is [2], and so on).

For more on citing sources IEEE style, see our blog post on the subject.

Adding a Thesis or Dissertation in an IEEE Reference List

In an IEEE reference list, the basic format for a thesis or dissertation is:

[#] INITIAL (S). Surname, ‘Title of thesis or dissertation’, Qualification Type, Department Name, University Name, City of University, State/Country, Year.

If possible, you should abbreviate any commonly used terms from this list in the entry (e.g. ‘University’ is usually abbreviated to just ‘Univ.’).

You can see how this might look in practice below:

[1] C. P. Clark, ‘A digital forensic management framework’, MSc Dissertation, Dept. of Comput. Sci., Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 2020.

Make sure to include the hanging indent in all references as well.

Theses and Dissertations Accessed Online

If you accessed a thesis or dissertation online, give either a URL or DOI at the end of the reference. The exact format depends on which you give:

• For a URL (i.e. a regular web address), include ‘[Online]’ and the URL itself with no final punctuation at the end of the reference.
• For a DOI, add the DOI after a comma and end the reference with a full stop.

You can see examples of both styles below:

[1] C. P. Clark, ‘A digital forensic management framework’, MSc Dissertation, Dept. of Comput. Sci., Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 2020. [Online]. Available: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1923/

[2] B. S. Bello, ‘Reverse engineering the behaviour of Twitter bots’, PhD Thesis, School of Informatics, Univ. of Leicester, Leicester, UK, Year, doi: 10.25392/leicester.data.12662456.v1.

Otherwise, though, the reference format is the same as shown above.

Expert IEEE Proofreading

Hopefully, you now feel confident citing a thesis or a dissertation in IEEE style. If you’d like further help checking your references, why not submit a free sample document and select IEEE referencing on upload to see how our experts work?