Initialize PhD Thesis LaTeX structure

[weiji14]

This is a collection of resources that I've used to build up the LaTeX structure of my PhD Thesis. There's no real structure/flow to it, other than an attempt to go from the first page (titlepage) to last page (appendix), but hopefully the links will be useful to anyone else starting on their PhD journey!

Disclaimer: My PhD is Physical Geography, which has quite a bit of math (but not as heavy as Math/Physics PhDs), including some neural network stuff. I'm also a Linux user/big Open Source fan and that may bias my choices here.

Start here!

• Basic Template Structure https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/How_to_Write_a_Thesis_in_LaTeX_(Part_1):_Basic_Structure
• Page Layout https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/How_to_Write_a_Thesis_in_LaTeX_(Part_2):_Page_Layout

Preamble:

• Hyperlinks in LaTeX https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3167556/how-can-i-generate-a-pdf-index-from-pdflatex

Dedication/Declaration/Acknowledgements

• https://www.writeawriting.com/academic-writing/write-dedication-page-thesis-dissertation-research-paper/

Table of Contents, List of Figures/Tables/Symbols, Glossary, Abbreviations:

• Glossary/List of Symbols https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/348640/how-to-effectively-use-list-of-symbols-for-a-thesis/366282#366282
• How to get a transpose symbol (^T) printed https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/30619/what-is-the-best-symbol-for-vector-matrix-transpose#30632
• How to get a degree symbol (°) printed https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/384873/what-is-the-degree-symbol
• SI units package https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/21936/differences-between-siunits-and-siunitx-packages

Citations

• I highly recommend using Zotero because:
  • Has plugins in Firefox/Chrome to save pages with one click
  • Sync/Connect your bibliography to Overleaf easily https://www.overleaf.com/blog/639-tip-of-the-week-overleaf-and-reference-managers
• Bibliographies with BibLaTeX on overleaf https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/How_to_Write_a_Thesis_in_LaTeX_(Part_4):_Bibliographies_with_BibLaTeX
• BibLaTeX documentation http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex/doc/biblatex.pdf
• Make sure you install Biber!! https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/135484/still-biblatex-will-not-print-bibliography
• Creating a minimal .bib file https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/41821/creating-bib-file-containing-only-the-cited-references-of-a-bigger-bib-file

Miscellaneous tooling:

• .gitignore file for LaTeX git projects https://gist.github.com/kogakure/149016
• Hiding LaTeX metafiles like *.aux, *.log, etc https://texblog.org/2015/08/20/hiding-latex-metafiles-from-project-directory/

PhD Sanity

• Surviving a PhD Submission https://thesiswhisperer.com/2018/02/07/9-tips-for-a-fuss-free-i-e-survivable-phd-submission/