wits dissertation guidelines

• People/Staff

Choose a degree or diploma

09 Jun Afretec Healthcare Summer School Online Event 08:00

13 Jun The Global Academy of Liberal Arts (gala) Information and Networking Session Online Event 10:00

11 Jun Seminar: Older Persons, Care Needs and Social Grants Online Event 14:00

Sappi Chair marks a milestone year of climate action

The Wits research team is spearheading sustainability efforts to bolster climate resilience in the forestry industry. It’s been an eventful year since the Sappi Chair in Climate Change and Plantation Sustainability was established at Wits University. As we celebrate another World Environment Day on 05 June, the Forestry team at Wits reflects on a year of significant progress, characterised by collaboration and dialogue.

Wits In 60 Seconds

In this week's episode, Witsies defied the cold and long queues to cast their votes on 29 May. The Margo Steele School of Accountancy recognised its top-performing 2023 students, while exciting discoveries in Zimbabwe unveiled a new dinosaur species, Musankwa sanyatiensis. Wits hosted a workshop introducing the benefits of research at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France and Wits alumnus Peter Sarnak won the prestigious 2024 Shaw Prize for his work in number theory. Congratulations! Read more at www.wits.ac/news/.

WHSL Anaesthesiology: Theses and Dissertations

• Library Services
• All Databases listed alphabetically
• How to use My NCBI
• PubMed Simple Subject Search Using MeSH
• Journals and Articles
• Help with writing: Citations and reference managers
• Theses and Dissertations
• Guides to Essential Information Skills
• Where to Publish: DHET Accredited Journals
• Rate this guide

Finding Wits theses & dissertations

Wits Theses & Dissertations may be found by searching the University catalogue (eWits).  From 2006, theses and dissertations are also available in electronic format and may also be found by searching WIReDSpace.   There is a link below.

To use the catalogue to find a thesis , just look it up as if you were looking for a book. (e.g. look using a Medical subject heading) Then , when you have some results on the screen, open "Limit/sort search", and choose the material type "Theses". Submit and the results will exclude all books and journals, and you will retrieve only theses.

If you are looking for a print thesis to get an idea of how these are put together, look up the shelf number (eg WB 105 for Emergency Medicine) and browse the these shelves in the library. 

• ETD (WIReDSpace) Electronic theses and dissertations
• eWits Catalogue Print theses and dissertations

Electronic theses & dissertations (ETD)

Electronic Theses and Dissertations  (ETD) is one of the communities in the University's WIReDSpace (Wits Institution Respository on DSpace). This is a digital service that collects, preserves and distributes digital material. 

• Help with Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Preparation This is for those preparing a thesis for electronic submission in PDF format

Lancet articles on waste in research

Finding theses & dissertations in africa.

• Current & Completed Research An index of South African research projects covering the social sciences, humanities, economic and management sciences. It includes master s and doctoral theses of South African universities, as well as information on research projects from non-governmental organisations, private sector and government departments.
• NEXUS NRF (National Research Foundation) hosts NEXUS for current and completed research and other databases. Please contact Thuli Dhlamini on x71954 for the password.
• UCTD Theses and Dissertations at South African universities

Finding international theses & dissertations

Please note that you may not always be able to open the full text of the thesis you find. Post-graduate students and staff can ask for help from  Interlibrary loans (011 717 2350 or [email protected])

• Email WHSL's Interlending
• Google Scholar This is rather clumsy as you will find a huge amount of non-thesis material. If you include the word "thesis" in your search you will retrieve fewer hits.
• OpenGrey Grey literature fron Europe, which includes theses
• World Cat Dissertations All dissertations, theses and published material based on theses cataloged by OCLC members, including all subjects.
• << Previous: Help with writing: Citations and reference managers
• Next: Guides to Essential Information Skills >>
• Last Updated: May 22, 2024 4:02 PM
• URL: https://libguides.wits.ac.za/whsl-anaesthesiology

Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems

WITS2021 Review Guidelines

• Call For Papers
• Submissions
• Registration
• Program Schedule
• Editors’ Panel
• Review Guidelines

Suggested Guidelines for WITS Review

First, thank you for your contribution to the review process. We realize the time commitment involved in preparing a detailed review, and very much appreciate your willingness to contribute to the review process.

Please follow the guidelines below when preparing your review.

Guidelines for writing your review:

Elements to build your evaluation on

• Summarize the main claimed contributions.
• Relevance: What is the relevance of this paper to an Information Systems audience?
• Significance: We strive for WITS to present and bring into the community’s awareness novel, interesting, and potentially impactful ideas. Even if the work presented leaves much to be desired, if you find the problem and ideas to be novel and stimulating please consider such work favorably. Please consider the following questions: Are the results important? Is it likely that other researchers and/or practitioners will use these ideas or build on them? Does the paper address a challenging problem in a better way than previous research? Does the paper offer fairly novel knowledge or a unique theoretical or pragmatic approach? Note that a single paper need not offer all the above to be of significance.
• Technical soundness: Is the paper technically correct? Are the concepts correct and accurate? Are the measures used relevant for demonstrating the value and are the evaluations done correctly and sufficient details are provided to establish the contributions?
• Novelty: Are the problems or approaches sufficiently novel? Note that a novel combination of existing techniques is valuable if the combination is non-trivial (e.g., it is not a straightforward implementation or execution of existing solutions) and solves an important problem. Do the authors do a good job at describing clearly how this work differs from previous contributions? Is related work adequately described and referenced?
• Quality of Evaluation: Are the main claims well-supported by theoretical analysis or experimental results? Note that for a workshop paper, there may be unexplored strengths and weaknesses of the key ideas. Thus, the primary goal is to evaluate if reasonable and reliable evidence is provided to suggest the main idea is promising.
• Clarity: Is the paper clearly written? Is it well-organized? (If not, feel free to make suggestions that the authors may quickly undertake).

Guidelines on how to write your comments on the above elements.

Overall, we strive for WITS reviews to be respectful, conscientious, and constructive. When preparing your comments, please also consider the space limitation and scope that a workshop paper can undertake.

Papers should demonstrate solid and meaningful scientific contributions.  Whether or not you find the paper constitutes such a contribution because of weaknesses along one or more of the elements above, please provide the authors and review committee what contributions/limitations of the work are key in your assessment, and outline your rationale for why you find these contributions/limitations make the contribution (un)suitable for being accepted to WITS.

It is important that you provide sufficient details to support your assessment.  For example, if you find that the contributions have already been made elsewhere, please (a) provide relevant references, and (b) explain how the work you cite have already established the specific claimed contributions in the paper under review making clear that the similarity is not superficial but significantly limits the current paper’s contributions. If you find that the analytical/empirical evidence provided does not suggest that the main claims are promising, then point out why so, and include any relevant references if such are needed. Similarly, if you find that the problem the authors consider is not important and is unlikely to be built on, please offer the rationale for this assessment. If you find that the results/evidence provided is not satisfying, state what research questions/claims the evidence did not support.

Feel free to comment on how any issues may be corrected, when possible.

In general, please avoid asking the authors questions or suggest work that you are curious to see the result of without offering the reasoning underlying these suggestions, particularly if these comments underlie your primary criticism. 

Finally, please review your comments to ensure they are clear, well-thought of, polite and respectful of the authors and their effort. Be read your report at least once carefully before submitting it.

We thank you and are grateful for your conscientious service to the WITS community, and hope that the community will reciprocate and facilitate your work as much as you do for others.