MASTERS PROJECT DISSERTATION GUIDELINES

Project Requirement: Students are required to take up project work for the successful completion of the course. It should be an intensive study on a topic and explore the subject in depth and elucidate information about the problem investigated, the methods used to solve the problem, the results of the investigation and the conclusions inferred and a set of recommendations that can be implemented. Research can be descriptive or explanatory. In a descriptive study the study should be on an existing systems/ prevailing conditions of the topic under Research. In exploratory study the objective is to explore the area of study, by introducing new augments to the existing system and draw inferences and projections. The project taken for study can be related to a particular organisation, it can be comparison study of many organisations, or related to many organisations. All projects must be related to the Area of Specialisation either directly or indirectly. Before the Project study, the student should identify the problem he intends to study and know the subject under study. He can facilitate this by reading material on the intended study. A review of the literature i.e., the studies done so far, the topics studied, will give a comprehensive view to the student as to which area of study is found wanting or there is a lacuna. This enables a student to select the area of study that is most recent, and has most application value. This information can be acquired by reading periodicals and recent publications in materials management. The institute will not provide any assistance in the selection of guide or project supervisor or project topic Scope of Project: The project should be valuable for an organization and be capable for implementation by the organisation. The study should highlight in application in day to day functioning or in a specific area. The data collected could be primary i.e., gathered by own observation, or it may be secondary i.e. taken from other sources (proper reference should be mentioned of the source details). Students must ensure that the project undertaken must be an original study. Guide Selection: A project report must be conducted with the guidance of the Project Guide. A guide has to be competent person possessing vast experience and knowledge in the project subject and adept and well versed with the area of research undertaken. The student has to take the necessary permission from the current employer if he intends to conduct the study in the organisation he is working. The guide can even suggest to a student any relevant area for research. He/She should preferably be a senior member of the organisation, where the student is employed. The Institute will not provide any assistance in the appointment of a guide

Evaluation of project: The submitted project report will be sent for evaluation. The project report will be evaluated on the following criteria. 1. Clarity of objectives scope and coverage. Study methodology for data collection

2. Analysis of data, tools and techniques. Understanding of the subject and conceptualisation of the Key areas. 3. Innovative techniques/approach to problem scheme. Conclusions drawn. 4. Recommendations, usefulness implementation scheme. Linking of recommendations to the objectives. 5. Report writing and presentation. In case of a student fails in the project he/she has to complete / rewrite the project before being allowed to appear for the next semester exam or awarded degree. The project can be disapproved on the basis of it not being an original study. Important guidelines for writing the project: Students should use simple and good English while writing the report. Avoid grammatical errors. The problem and objectives should be specific and clearly stated. Avoid ambiguity. No aspects of the structure of the report should be omitted. Important to include Bibliography, List of tables, Certificate from guide and acknowledgments. The report should be, in about 100 - 150 pages. Acknowledgment - to all those who have helped the student complete the project. Certificate from the guide on his letterhead. Copies to be submitted : The candidate is required to submit one copy of the report to the institute, these copies will be retained by the institute. Another copy will be certified and sent back to the candidate. The final report should be submitted before the start of LAST SEMESTER EXAMS. Synopsis: Before starting the actual study, it is necessary to submit a synopsis of the intended work, for the approval of the institute latest by the third month of the first semester. The synopsis should mention the name and address of the guide. The synopsis should be brief- Not more than 2 to 3 pages. Synopsis must be submitted in a structured format indicated below: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. ITEM Name of Student Registration No. Address for correspondence Telephone and E-mail Name of Guide , Designation , Address Proposed title of project 6. 7. 8. 9. PARTICULARS Problem under study Scope Brief background Methodology

10. Conclusion

PHYSICAL FORMAT

a)
b) c) d) e) f) g)

The project should be neatly bound in hard cover, Spiral bound will NOT be accepted. The front cover should contain the following details. TOP: The Title of the report in block capitals, properly centred. CENTRE: Full name of the candidate in Block with Roll No. BOTTOM: Name of the Institute, Year of Submission. BLANK SHEETS - At the beginning and the end of the report two blank sheets of paper should be provided. TITLE SHEET - The title shall be the first sheet and shall follow immediately after the blank sheet. PAPER - The report shall be typed on white quarto bond paper A4 size.

h)
i) j) k) l)

TYPING Use font size of point 9 to 12, 1 1/2 or double spaced on one side of the paper only. MARGIN - The typed sheet shall have the following margins: left 35mm, Top 35mm, Right 20mm, Bottom 20mm. PAGE NUMBER - Shall be in Roman Numbers at 15 mm from the bottom of the page centrally located. BINDING - The report shall be rexine bound in black. Abstract of the study. It should not exceed 500 words. Table of contents, chapter wise with the appropriate page numbers. Actual project content. Bibliography - It is important for students to list the Books of reference. It should follow the order - Authors name, Title of the Book or Journal, Pg. Nos. and Year of publishing.

Incase there are reason to believe that the work submitted by the student is not original and created by the student then the same will have to be repeated by the student on the topic / subject area of the institutes choice. No representation or request in this regard will be accepted. PRESENTATION OF DISSERTATION 1. Dissertations should be typed/printed on one side of white A4 paper and in 12 point type, using a clear font such as Courier, Times Roman or Arial. Good quality Executive bond paper of above 70 gsm of A4 size (210 x 297 mm) should be used. Margins should be not less than 40mm at the binding edge (so that the binding does not obliterate the text) and 20mm at the other edges. The text should be double-spaced; indented quotations within the text and footnotes or endnotes should be single-spaced. Use a spell checker. A surprising number of dissertations appear with unnecessary spelling or typing mistakes. 2. All good typists are taught to insert TWO spaces after full stops and colons. Pages should be numbered consecutively through the dissertation. The title page must give the full title of the dissertation, the name of the author, the degree for which it is submitted as well as the month and year of submission (see Appendix 2). A table of contents, indicating the chapters, sections within chapters and appendices with page numbers, must be included. A list of tables, figures and illustrations should be included. 3. An abstract of not more than 350 words stating the purpose, sources, methods, results and conclusions, should be included following the title page and content lists. A full bibliography must be included at the end (see below). 4. Two copies of the final dissertation should be submitted. These must be hard bound.

Style : Dates: 16 January 1990 not January 16, 1990. Numbers: numbers under 100 should be spelled out in letters except for: peoples ages; where there is a great deal of numerical information; or where the number is attached to a unit of quantity (e.g. 1mm, or 3 kg) or percentages (e.g. 3 per cent); numbers of 100 or more should be in digits except where the context makes this awkward (e.g. at the beginning of a sentence). Write numbers as 1-3, 113-14, 1003-14, 1003-4; write 0.5, 0.67, not .5, .67. Use commas in numbers with four or more digits: 1,000. Capitalisation: avoid excessive capitalisation. Quotation marks: use single quotation marks, reserving double ones for quotes within quotes, e.g. The noun "guerrilla" is variously spelt . If the quotation forms a complete sentence it should have its closing full stop inside the closing quotation mark; otherwise, the full stop should be outside the closing quotation mark. For points of omission within a quotation use three spaced dots, with a space either side of the set.

Quotations extending over four or more lines of text should be indented, with single spacing and no quotation marks. Abbreviations : An alphabetical list of abbreviations is generally useful in the preliminary pages of a dissertation, unless only completely familiar abbreviations are used. Structure the list in two columns, abbreviation on the left and expansion on the right. Align all of the expansions on the same Tab stop. You can also shorten your references considerably if you use abbreviations for titles which occur frequently, but you should include these in this list, e.g. EHR Economic History Review HJ Historical Journal SHM Social History of Medicine Explain all but the most familiar abbreviations used in the text on the first mention in the text, i.e. use the expanded version followed by the abbreviation in brackets: College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS). Per cent is usually spelt out in the text (15 per cent) but the symbol % may be used in notes and tables, and in the text itself if it occurs very frequently. Tables, Figures and other Illustrations: There should be separate sequences of Tables, Figures and Illustrations, e.g. Table 1, Table 2, etc.; Figure 1, Figure 2, etc; Illustration 1, Illustration 2, etc. Each table, figure and illustration should be numbered and have clear titles, with a note of their source. For example: Table 1. Number of Unsuccessful Attempts to Revive the Indian Film Industry 1965-1985 [Table] (Source: McGoldwyn, p. 6.) This would be a numerical table. Be sure McGoldwyn is included in your bibliography. Figure 1. Incidence of Crime in Indian states 1911-1931 [graph, bar chart, map, or other form of graphic representation] (Source: Parliamentary Papers, annual criminal statistics.) Locate tables, figures and illustrations as closely as possible to the relevant text, unless they are so bulky that they require a separate appendix. The text should call attention to the table, figure or illustration, e.g. (Table 1) or (Figure 2). 7. References: Footnotes should be numbered in a continuous sequence for each chapter and the number should appear both in the text in superscript and either at the bottom of the page or at the end of the text. Either position is acceptable, though footnotes at the bottom of the page are usually preferable from the readers point of view. Footnotes have three main uses: to cite the authority for statements in the text (specific facts or opinions as well as exact quotations). They enable a reader to find out exactly where you acquired your information; they should show the exact source of your information. to make crossreferences; to comment upon, to amplify or to qualify textual discussion to provide a place for material which the writer thinks it worthwhile to include but which would disrupt the flow of argument if introduced into the text. These should be kept to a minimum: if the information is important it should be in the text, if not, it probably can be left out. Reference footnotes (type a above) should be given as follows: i.e. Unpublished material: References should be detailed, especially if you are referring to a long document, or to a file which contains many documents. Use page numbers, if there are any, or dates, to give a precise location. For example, a reference to material in the Bombay City Archives or National Archives of India might appear like this: BCA D/HEW 16/12/1 Index and list of applicants for relief, Bombay 1900. NAS AD 24/17. C. Cook to the Editor of the IBR, 3 Jan 1934. Here BCA or NAS is your abbreviation of the location, which should appear in a list of abbreviations at the front of the dissertation. The numbers which follow are the archive number of the record, as listed in the archives, and the rest helps to identify it. Unpublished Theses Example: Dey, sunil, The Puritan Classical Movement in the Reign of Aurangazeb, PhD thesis, (University of Chennai, 1957), pp. 45-6.ii. Published material : It is conventional to give the source in full the first time it is cited in the footnotes. If it is cited more than once, then the reference can be shortened with the authors surname and a condensed version of the title. Book: Author [first name or initials followed by surname], Title (place of publication: publisher, date), volume number, if any, in roman capital numerals, page reference e.g. I. McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (Cam: CUP, 1988), pp. 40-3. subsequently: McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 10.

Article in a book edited by someone else: K. Lindley, The Part Played by the Catholics in Brian Manning (ed.), Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), p. 145. subsequently: Lindley Catholics, p. 145. Journal Articles: note the title of the article appears in single quotation marks, the name of the journal is in italics or underlined, and there are no p. or pp. before the page numbers. L. D. Smith, Industrial Organization in the Indian Carpet Trade, 1780-1850 Textile History 15 (1984), 75-100. subsequently: Smith, Industrial Organization, p. 79. Newspapers: references to newspapers should include the full date and page number and the title should be in italics or underlined, as follows: Indian Herald, 19 Sept 1943, p. 16. If you use such references frequently, you can abbreviate to IH, 23 Oct 1945, p. 2. But remember to put IH in your list of abbreviations.iii Website material : Any website material quoted or otherwise used in the dissertation should be cited in the same way as any other published material, including its URL address, e.g. University of Brighton School of Design, 'Representations of anatomy: life, death and skeletons,' URL http://www.adh.brighton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/LInfDes17.html Appendices : Bulky material, such as information about your methodology (e.g. the structure of a questionnaire, or a detailed description of how you constructed a database) or a lengthy series of tables, should be placed in appendices at the end of the dissertation. Each appendix should be numbered and given a concise title. Make sure that the text of the dissertation gives a cross-reference to the appendix, whenever the material from it is being used. Bibliography: Start thinking about your bibliography when you begin your research, because it shows how your work was put together, and it is the basis of your reference system. Your dissertation must include a full bibliography at the end, to show the sources you used. This should include both unpublished, or manuscript (primary) sources and printed (secondary) sources. The simplest way to keep a record of all the sources you have consulted is to enter each one on a card as you use it. You thus compile a card index, in alphabetical order, which is then easy to type out as a bibliography when your dissertation is finished. It is even better to keep compiling a bibliography file on disk as you go. This might be used instead of a card index, but the old-fashioned cards have the advantage of being easily taken into libraries and archives. They also provide a back-up! i. Headings in the Bibliography :The bibliography should be divided into sections describing the kind of material that has been used. An elaborate bibliography might include the following, in this order: a) Unpublished sources (company records, manuscripts, local government reports) b) Official printed sources (Parliamentary papers, reports of committees, etc) c) Contemporary newspapers and periodicals. This should be included if you have consulted a run of newspapers or contemporary periodicals for a specific period, e.g.Indian Herald 1880-1890 Chennai University Calendar 1850-1890 d) Printed contemporary sources. This should include books and articles which are themselves historical sources, e.g. Keynes, John Maynard, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936). e) Secondary sources. This includes the works of historians or other commentators, e.g. Hillard, J. (ed.), J. M. Keynes in Retrospet: the Legacy of the Keynesian Revolution (Aldershot: Elgar, 1988). Your headings should reflect only the types of source you have used. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY : It is the policy of the SAU that the intellectual property rights to any original work created by Students as part of their Programme will automatically pass to SAU. SAU undertakes to acknowledge appropriately the authorship and inventorship of such works created by Students. SAU may share the net income derived from the exploitation of such intellectual property rights with inventors, designers and/or authors who are Students at the time of the works creation. In line with our policy at the relevant time, these arrangements will normally continue after the end of the Students Programme. The

procedure for calculating and distributing the sums payable to individual creators is solely set out by SAU entirely at its discretion. The provisions of this clause shall survive the expiry or termination of the contract between the student and SAU however caused. PRESENTATION OF DISSERTATIONS Supplementary pages which may be useful PAGE Title page Contents Abstract Acknowledgements (compulsory) (compulsory) (compulsory) (optional) NOTES (see Appendix 1) 1 Details of Sections and Chapters with pages numbers. Up to 350 words on purpose, methods, results and conclusions. If any part of the work has already been published, and assistance given should be acknowledged. Normally a dissertation is made available to anyone who knows of its existence and who wished to consult it. Confidentiality of material may require some statement of restriction. List or index Abbreviations Text (compulsory) (compulsory) Material such as questionnaires, technical explanations of Appendices (dependent on text) methods or leaflets should be put in the appendix. The criteria for inclusion must be that it helps the readers understanding of the topic. Footnotes/Endnotes Bibliography Index Compulsory (compulsory) (optional) the subject matter. of special terminology, jargon or

Permission to consult

(compulsory)

abbreviations, only if extensive use of this is required by