Abstracts

Abstracts in German and English have to be included in the dissertation.

What is an abstract?

An abstract is an objective, complete and condensed description, summarising the contents of the document/work in question. Its purpose is that the reader can assess the relevance and content of the work without having to read the entire text.

What is part of an abstract?

• Topic (not only a repetition of the title)

• Subject area and objectives

• Hypotheses and applied methods

• Results

• Deductions/outlook

What is important?

• Objectivity: refrain from judgements.

• Completeness: For experts in the field, it has to be comprehensible without consulting the original document.

• Shortness: It should be as short as possible.

• Intelligibility: Used technical terms should be widely used. Abbrevations should not be used or at least explained.

• Accuracy: Contents, opinions and emphasis of the document should not be changed. Do not list topics/questions that are not part of the work.

Withholding access to a dissertation

In exceptional cases, authors of a dissertation may request a temporary withholding of access, restricting access to the dissertation in the university library. This is only possible if economic or legal interests are at risk. The embargo must be approved by the program director. The standard embargo period is one year, with a legally defined maximum duration of five years.

Information about withholding access

Plagiarism

All dissertations submitted for evaluation are subjected to plagiarism detection.

A work is considered to be plagiarized if it incorporates texts, contents, or ideas produced by someone else and passes them off as the author’s own. This is the case especially when another person’s intellectual property is incorporated into a work without marking the elements in question as quotations and referencing the original sources and authors. In particular, plagiarism includes:

• Quoting passages from other works without referencing the sources

• Downloading texts (or parts of texts) from the internet and passing them off as one’s own

• Passing off other people’s work (or parts of other people’s work) as one’s own (ghostwriting)

• Using translations of works (or parts of works) written in another language in one’s own text without referencing the sources

• Handing in the same text (or parts of the same text) more than once in different seminars or for different papers or theses (self-plagiarism)

Plagiarism can entail a range of consequences, depending on the severity of the misconduct and on the time at which the suspicions arise: detailed information 

If you have any questions on plagiarism or if you have detected a case of plagiarism, please contact the Study Information office by email.