Masters Thesis at IES - Kunnskapsbasen
Masters Thesis at IES
Information on this page is additional information applicable to the master’s thesis at the Department of Electronic Systems (IES)
General information about the master’s thesis at NTNU can be found at
Writing and submitting your master’s thesis
Choosing a master’s thesis
Master’s thesis proposals will be made available on the web at the end of November. Log in as “Guest”
It will often be possible to continue the master’s thesis on the same track as the project. The master’s thesis can then be tailored for a given student and reserved for the student. You also have the opportunity to propose an assignment yourself, or in collaboration with a company. It is a prerequisite that you find a professor at IES who approves the assignment and will be responsible for it professionally.
Students contact the professor directly to register their interest in the assignments and find out if they have sufficient prior knowledge. Professors can assign assignments to interested students after a specified deadline. If an assignment was reserved for you, you must confirm that you take the assignment before the same deadline.
Master’s thesis selection
Formal selection of the thesis takes place by completing and digitally approving the master’s agreement in SharePoint. See “ Writing and submitting your master’s thesis “ for the routine.
Risk assessment
Before starting the master’s thesis, a risk assessment must be carried out in collaboration between the supervisor and the student. The form Identification of hazards and risk assessment is delivered and signed by the student and supervisor together with the master’s contract. The supervisor is responsible for ensuring that the risk assessment is carried out. The assessment shall be included as an appendix to the master’s agreement.
- Risk assessment of master's theses at IES (pdf, Norwegian)
- Identification of hazards and risk assessment
ChatGPT (or similar)
Using ChatGPT is not allowed at invigilated exams. However, you can use ChatGPT or similar tools where all aids are allowed, for example in a master’s thesis. Be aware that:
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As with other aids, you need to clearly state that ChatGPT has been used and in which way. For example with a sentence explaining how ChatGPT has been used with a reference.
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Example: “ChatGPT [reference] has been used to generate first drafts for the program code used in…” or “The text in this section has been generated ChatGPT [reference] and reworked by the author…”.
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Just how ChatGPT should be referenced in the bibliography is currently subject to discussion, but many recommend that ChatGPT is referenced as personal communication, preferably with information about the prompt used to generate the text. See https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/chatgpt-and-generative-ai-tools for examples.
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You cannot get ChatGPT to generate the entire or parts of the thesis and hand it in as your own.
Sustainability
From the academic year 2023/2024, every master’s thesis needs to reflect upon the thesis’ topics relevance for sustainability, “The thesis must reflect on the sustainability relevance of the thesis based on the UN’s sustainability goals.”
Use of figures and rights
The master’s thesis is published publicly. Therefore, it is not unproblematic to use figures from other works in your thesis, for example graphs from journal articles, since someone else owns the rights to those figures. If you wish to use figures from the work of others, then there are two main options:
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Make a similar figure yourself and refer to the work where the original figure was published.
- Find out the rights associated with the figure and get permission from the publisher/author to reuse the figure where applicable. Generally, there will be information or a link on the article web page concerning the rights associated with the work. Here are some common cases:
- Open Access journals and articles
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Figures can be reused freely with reference to the original work and the Creative Commons license that gives you permission to reuse the figure. If you have made changes to the figure, then that needs to be stated.
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Example: “Figure taken from [reference], used under Creative Commons CC-BY license.”
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- Non-Open Access journals and articles
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Figures can be reused with permission from the publisher and reference to the original work. If you have made changes to the figure, then that needs to be stated.
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Example: “Figure taken from [reference], used with permission.”
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Ways to get permission from common publishers:
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IEEE journals – Click the © button at the top of the online version of the article. See https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/choose-a-publishing-agreement/avoid-infringement-upon-ieee-copyright/
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Nature-Springer journals – Look at Rights and Permissions, either below the title of the article, at the bottom, or in the tool menu. See https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/reprints-and-permissions/permissions-requests.
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Elsevier journals – Generally, you need to apply to get permission to use figures, but how to apply can vary from journal to journal. See https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/copyright/permissions for general information and https://www.stm-assoc.org/intellectual-property/permissions/permissions-guidelines/ for information on specific journals.
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- Open Access journals and articles
Use of materials from the project thesis
You can reuse materials and results from your project thesis as the master’s thesis. As with ChatGPT, you need to clearly state what is taken from the project thesis with a reference to the thesis.
Submission of master’s thesis
Submission of the thesis also takes place via Inspera, see Submit your MA thesis for more information
If the master’s thesis is to be tied up, you must check off this in Inspera. Submission otherwise takes place in the same way.
Practical information
- Necessary copying of literature in connection with the master’s thesis can take place on IES ‘copiers. The number of free copies is limited to 300 per student.
- If you have any questions regarding the master’s thesis, you can ask Kirsti Klemetsaune at the Department Office