The Defence

A complete version of your thesis in .PDF format by electronic transmission.

You must ensure the following before submission:

• Instructions to prepare the electronic thesis for printing
• The pdf format: accepted versions are PDF 1.4 to 1.7 or PDF/A (older versions such as pdf 1.3 are not accepted)
• The validity of your .PDF file with the online test available at http://facile.cines.fr/

In some cases, a version for dissemination (in the event you granted authorization for internet dissemination and have not yet obtained all copyrights).

Please note: The cover page of your thesis must include mandatory indications

Download:

• Model cover page in English (PDF) (last update: December 2021)
• Model cover page in French (PDF) (last update: December 2021)

Printed thesis: you must submit your thesis for printing by Sciences Po – which will cover printing costs (*) – at least two months before the date of your defence, taking care to comply with the instructions in order to print your thesis (PDF) . You will receive an email from your doctoral program specifying the steps to be followed.

It is your responsibility to send your thesis (containing the French summary if your thesis is written in a foreign language) to each member of your defence jury in either hardcopy or electronic format according to his preference.

If your thesis is co-supervised:add the co-supervisor's name to the cover page.

If you are submitting a joint thesis, please download:

• Model cover page in English (PDF) (last update: December 2021)
• Model cover page in French (PDF) (last update: December 2021)

The printed results slip from the FACILE test: http://facile.cines.fr/ (See model).

For other components that need to be provided, see the "For all theses" section.

When the thesis includes several volumes, whether the volumes are those of the thesis itself or those of appendices, the volume number should be included on the cover page: volume 1, volume 2, etc. It is recommended that the volume be mentioned right after the title/subtitle block, and therefore before the author's name.

Appendices must include the additional "appendices" label and can also note the appendices' sub-title. Besides these details, the cover pages remain identical. 

For example, for a thesis including two volumes within the thesis itself and two volumes of appendices, the cover page should include the following indications:

• for the 1st volume of the thesis: volume 1
• for the 2nd volume of the thesis: volume 2;
• for the 1st volume of appendices: volume 3 - Appendices;
• for the 2nd volume of appendices: volume 4 - Appendices.

Before submitting the electronic version of your thesis to the Doctoral School, you must send your cover page to the officer of your doctoral program so that she can verify its compliance.

• Summaries of your thesis (in French and in english), extracted from the Thesis defence form (including your name, the title of your thesis, the name of your research supervisor and the indication "Summary").
• Thesis defence form (.rtf format): an electronic version (must be in word or .rtf format) and one signed version, the summaries of this record, twenty lines maximum, are required in lowercase letters, maintaining the necessary uppercase letters.  

The research librarian Michaël Goudoux can advise you on the correct completion of this record. Tel. 01 45 49 56 86 – library office, 1st floor, 199 bd. Saint-Germain.

Publish your thesis online: for more information see Disseminating your thesis on the internet.

If the thesis is drafted in a foreign language (that is to say not in French), the student must also mandatorily provide: The digital version of a long summary in French (10 pages) in .PDF format. 

Please note: a French title must be provided.

Furthermore, this summary must follow the same presentation norms as the thesis: in particular, the cover page must include the same information as that contained in the thesis cover page; it must also be labelled "Summary". The student will also provide the required 2 to 3 page summary required for all theses.

As for the thesis, you must send the long summary to each member of your defence jury in either a hardcopy version or an electronic version according to his preference. 

You may, with the agreement of your supervisor, request confidentiality for a set length of time (Article 10, second paragraph of the ruling of 5 July 1984 on doctoral studies). In order to proceed in this manner you must contact your thesis supervisor via the administrative officer of your doctoral program.

We have included in the Sciences Po Thesis presentation guide (updated in March 2021) (PDF) recommendations on:

• The main presentation rules: text, title page, recto or verso, document structure, typographical rules, photographs, and paper selection.
• The presentation of bibliographical references and footnotes.
• Citation rules

Sciences Po's guidelines follow the guidelines of the Ministry of National Education on the presentation of theses, especially for the purpose of facilitating dissemination and archiving. These guidelines follow international norms.

On the website of the Bibliographical Agency for Higher Education (ABES), you can download the national Guide to drafting and presenting theses.

CNRS Delegation information systems offers a document presenting basic typographical rules for presenting a document - Download the document (PDF).

A style sheet is a model document offering functionalities needed to efficiently present a long and complex text. Word saves this model in .dot format in a particular folder.

Mastering this tool will serve you throughout your whole career as a researcher. Editors are increasingly frequently requesting that authors submit a structured electronic version of their texts: this trend will only strengthen in the coming years.

The style sheet enables the following:

• Unify and organize the appearance of different elements of the text (titles, footnotes, etc.). The appearance of elements is predefined. The level 1 title, used for chapter titles, is larger and bolder than the level 2 title, which is used for section titles within the chapter, and is in turn larger than the level 3 titles, which is for chapter sub-titles. Thus the style sheet's role is to ensure a homogenous layout: all chapter titles will have the same appearance.
• Automatically manage the display of pages (pagination, portrait or landscape format, for example, in the event you need to insert a large table),
• Automatically generate and update the table of contents or a table of illustrations. The styles applied to the titles allow for the automatic generation of a table of contents, which can be made "active" to enable easy navigation in the document. Finally, any change of title or pagination can be taken into account in the table of contents through a simple refresh,
• Ensure note consistency, their display (as footnotes or at the end of chapters), their numbering (you will be able to easily add a note without redoing everything), etc.  
• Produce an un index without having to go over the whole text,
• Finally, use of the style sheet is essential if you would like to disseminate the digital version of your thesis. The style sheet yields a quality PDF version: the PDF conversion of a pre-styled document creates a file that is smaller than the original. The bookmarks automatically open, enabling more efficient online viewing.

Sciences Po created a style sheet to offer the doctoral student a light and simple tool.

It includes all the styles needed to format the thesis and follows the guidelines of the Ministry of National Education.

It was tested with current computer equipment on long theses (1,200 pages and over 4,000 notes).

To install Sciences Po's style sheet, see Using Sciences Po's style sheet