5.2 Scientific paper

Completion of a TIL5060 thesis project requires two deliverables:
- A concise thesis report;
- A scientific paper based on your report (Appendix A). It is obligatory since 01-09-2017. It will also be graded.

The scientific paper is used to communicate the results of scientific inquiry. The purpose is twofold: To present information so that it is easy to retrieve, and to present enough information that the reader can duplicate the scientific study. A standard format helps readers to find expected information and analysis.

The scientific paper is not a copy of your thesis report summary. It contains the highlights of your thesis. Not everything has the same value. You could focus on the two most interesting/exciting examples, be it scenarios, models, vehicle or internal transport technologies, infrastructure etc. This allows a nice fill in of the research gap.

The paper helps to distinguish primary and secondary issues and to structure your final report and presentation. It increases the impact of your work. A more than average paper could be presented at a congress or transformed into a journal paper.

The paper could have the following structure:

• Title, authors, 10-15 lines abstract;
• Introduction: Purpose, scope etc.;
• Literature summary; theory, key topics and research gap (table);
• Methodology;
• Application in more detail (e.g., optimisation function);
• Results (e.g., of a simulation, mca, design);
• Conclusions and recommendations; science and practice.

The procedure for a scientific paper is described in the thesis manual (starting with section 2.1 about the mid-term meeting).

The mandatory TIL projects prepare you as follows:

-TIL4020-20 Research Project for selecting a research topic, carrying out a literature review and writing a project proposal, which could (theoretically) be used for your thesis project;

-TIL5050-20 Design Project for attracting a real project, writing a project proposal with a small literature section, carrying out a major project, writing a substantial report and successfully presenting and defending your results.

Here are a few examples of finished papers.

Paper 1    Paper 2    Paper 3    Paper 4     Paper 5

Visit the TUD repository for more recent examples.