It is important to follow standard and good practices for your academic works, such as field trip reports, seminar works, project works, bachelor thesis, master thesis and dissertation. Below is a summary of the key point to which you will have to pay attention.

Code of Conduct

It is advisable to read the Code of Conduct of TU Wien before you start. It is available in the list of the guidelines and regulations of TU Wien.

Citation and references

Whenever you cite anyone else’s work or your own previous work, you will have to refer them in a coherent manner. Citations can be direct (word-to-word) or indirect (a summary in your own words), and they should be minimal to an extent that is needed for your analysis, critiques, discussions, etc presented in your scientific work. Direct citation should be made apparent in the text, for example by using the tab indent or the quotation mark, and reference has to be placed. Indirect citation has to have a reference at least. If you cite any work without proper references, your work may potentially be considered as a plagiarism.

It is important to use a coherent citation style throughout your writing. Use the standardized referencing styles, either the Vancouver or Harvard style. The Vancouver style is numerical, and each reference is numbered. The Harvard style is based on the author’s family name and the year of publication.

The Arctic University of Norway has an English-language comprehensive but compact summary, opens an external URL in a new window about citations in academic work.

If you cite an undated Internet resource (for example, a website), you will have to put your access date into your reference list. It is advisable to keep the record from the beginning so that you don’t have to “look back” the access date.

It is important to cite reliable sources whose author (either a person or an institutional author) is made clear. For example, Wikipedia and other similar anonymous sources are generally not accepted as references in a scientific work.

Citation management software would be a helpful tool for your scientific works. TU Student Software offers EndNote for Students. For further information, please visit a list on Wikipedia, opens an external URL in a new window.

Tables and Figures, and Copyright

All tables and figures you put in your scientific work must be referred to in the text.

If you insert figures and tables from copyright-protected works into your work, you will have to obtain a written permission from the copyright holder. This also applies to figures (images) and tables you copy from a website. Copyright information can be usually found in the first part of the publication in case of written forms, and under “who we are” or alike in case of a website.

Recently, more and more publications offer standardized forms of licenses, such as Creative Commons, opens an external URL in a new window license. Some works may be found in the Public Domain, for example the works which have already passed the protection period (generally 70 years after the death of the copyright holder), and the text of laws and regulations. In some countries (e.g., the United States), any publication from governmental institutions is automatically in the Public Domain.

Plagiarism

It is available to read the guideline about the handling of plagiarism in the list of the guidelines and regulations of TU Wien.