Tallinn University of Technology

Doctoral students

Dissertation requirements and formatting

The new “Requirements for doctoral theses and procedure for publishing doctoral theses” approved by Rector’s directive on 6 November 2020 is available in TalTech intranet. The new procedure applies to students enrolled in doctoral studies on 1 January 2021 or later. Students who were enrolled before the aforementioned date, must follow the procedure in the previous directive that was approved on 25 October 2017. The procedure in that directive will be applied until the end of the 2023/2024 academic year, after which the new, currently in force directive will be applied. The old procedure applies to students defending their doctoral thesis as an external student until 31.12.2021, after which the new procedure will be applied.

Both Word and LaTeX may be used to format a doctoral thesis.

The author of the dissertation must submit an electronic version of the manuscript and appendices to the Press House via the library’s page in TalTech Help Center or by e-mail  mirjam.piik@taltech.ee. The dissertation must be submitted as a Word file, appendices as PDF files. Images, drawings, etc. can be added as JPG, PNG, or TIFF files if needed. If the author has used LaTeX template, only one PDF file including all appendices must be submitted.

The Press House checks the formatting of the dissertation, edits the layout according to the required template, adds a serial number, ISBN and ISSN numbers, converts the dissertation to a PDF file and designs covers for the work. After that, the library will publish the electronic version of the thesis in the Digital Collection of TalTech Library. In the case of a doctoral thesis with restricted access, only the abstract of the doctoral thesis will be submitted.

An author’s licensing agreement must be filled out and signed by the doctoral student. The signed contract should be sent to mirjam.piik@taltech.ee. The contract may also be signed on paper. In that case, two copies of the signed contract should be submitted to the Press House room LIB-510, or sent there by internal mail (Document Management Division, U03-105). One copy of the contract will be returned to the author after library director has signed it.

A notice about the defence will be published on the university’s web site.

After defence of the thesis a link will be added to the electronic version of the dissertation in the electronic catalogue ESTER.

Printing the dissertation

A written order must be submitted to the Publishing before the dissertation is printed. The order must state whether the work is to be black-and-white or coloured.  The work can be ordered partially coloured, but in that case the student must include the number of coloured pages in the written order and present the page numbers of coloured pages the Publishing. The written order must include the number of copies – if 50 copies are required, then the number of copies is 50. The order must be signed by the head of the structural unit.

Printing the dissertation can take up to two weeks. The price of the dissertation depends on the number of copies, its volume and amount of coloured material.