Finalizing your thesis

Official regulations

The official regulations regarding the format and content of your PhD thesis can be found here (esp. Chapter 5 the doctoral thesis).

However, as any official regulations, there is lot of jargon in it. To help you, here are two key terms:

The Chairman of the Council of Deans = The Rector Magnificus = currently Han van Krieken.

The Secretary of the Council of Deans = The Registrar of Radboud University Nijmegen = The Pedel = currently Nico Bouwman

Designing your thesis

For the design of your thesis, you can choose to have an external party take care of the lay-out and/or your cover work. Once a year, PON hosts an information market where a range of printing companies and graphical designers present their services to you.

Alternatively, you can do the lay-out and/or cover of your thesis yourself using InDesign. InDesign is an alternative to Microsoft Word and runs on both Windows and Mac operating systems. The software is especially useful when you want to work on the layout of your thesis. Twice a year PON invites a printing company to host a InDesign workshop, covering the basic principles of designing your thesis in InDesign. Interested? Sign up for our mailing list so you can keep updates on all the events that we organize!

Getting an ISBN

You can get an ISBN here. You will need to register (i.e. create an account), then apply for an ISBN (“registeren en doorgaan met ISBN-aanvragen”). The website is only in Dutch, so you can ask the secretariat of your faculty for assistance. It costs 60 euros. You do not have to get an ISBN and you should not get one if you intend to publish your thesis later with another Publisher.