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BibTeX Thesis: @phdthesis and @mastersthesis

BibTeX has two entry types for theses, @phdthesis and @mastersthesis. Every other kind, from bachelor's thesis to habilitation, is one of the two with a different label in the type field.

On this page
  1. Which entry type to use
  2. Examples
  3. Fields
  4. How it is typeset
  5. Bachelor’s, diploma and other theses
  6. Common mistakes
  7. biblatex
  8. Related types

Which entry type to use

Use @phdthesis for a doctoral dissertation and @mastersthesis for a master’s thesis. The two types have the same fields and differ only in the label that is printed (“PhD thesis” or “Master’s thesis”) and in how the title is formatted. There is no @bachelorsthesis; see the type field below.

If a dissertation was later published by a publisher, cite that edition as a @book. A report issued by a university department is a @techreport.

Examples

A minimal @phdthesis with only the required fields:

@phdthesis{fielding2000rest,
  author = {Fielding, Roy Thomas},
  title  = {Architectural Styles and the Design of
            Network-based Software Architectures},
  school = {University of California, Irvine},
  year   = {2000}
}

A complete @mastersthesis:

@mastersthesis{torvalds1997linux,
  author  = {Torvalds, Linus},
  title   = {{Linux}: a Portable Operating System},
  school  = {University of Helsinki},
  address = {Helsinki, Finland},
  month   = jan,
  year    = {1997}
}

Fields

Both types use the same fields:

Field Required Meaning
author yes Author of the thesis
title yes Title of the thesis
school yes University or school that awarded the degree
year yes Year of submission or of the degree
type no Replaces the label “PhD thesis” or “Master’s thesis”
address no Location of the school
month no Month, e.g. jan
note no Anything else, printed at the end

A department can go into school ({University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science}). The field is plain text, so the comma is harmless.

url and doi are not standard fields. plain, abbrv, alpha and unsrt ignore them. To show a link with these styles, put it in note: note = {\url{https://...}}.

How it is typeset

The plain style prints the two examples as:

Roy Thomas Fielding. Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures. PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine, 2000.

Linus Torvalds. Linux: a portable operating system. Master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, January 1997.

plain treats a PhD thesis like a book: the title is set in italics and keeps its capitalization. The title of a master’s thesis is treated like an article title, in upright type and converted to sentence case.

Bachelor’s, diploma and other theses

For any other degree, pick the closer of the two types and set the label yourself with type. For a bachelor’s thesis that is @mastersthesis:

@mastersthesis{doe2026,
  author = {Doe, Jane},
  title  = {Title of the Thesis},
  school = {Example University},
  type   = {Bachelor's thesis},
  year   = {2026}
}

Jane Doe. Title of the thesis. Bachelor’s thesis, Example University, 2026.

The type text is printed as it is, so write it in the language of your document:

Thesis Entry type type
Bachelor’s thesis @mastersthesis {Bachelor's thesis}
German Diplom thesis @mastersthesis {Diplomarbeit}
Licentiate thesis @mastersthesis {Licentiate thesis}
Doctoral dissertation, other wording @phdthesis {{PhD} dissertation}
Habilitation @phdthesis {Habilitation thesis}

The standard styles lower-case everything after the first letter of type. Without the inner braces, {PhD dissertation} is printed as “Phd dissertation”.

Common mistakes

  • university or institution instead of school. BibTeX warns about an empty school and prints no university at all. (institution is the field of @techreport.)
  • type = {phdthesis}. That is a biblatex keyword. BibTeX styles print the text literally.
  • Lost capitals in a master’s thesis title. Protect proper nouns and acronyms with braces: {Linux}. See protecting capital letters.
  • @phdthesis for a published dissertation. If you used the publisher’s edition, with an ISBN, cite the @book.
  • @unpublished for a finished thesis. A thesis accepted by a university counts as a thesis even if it was never printed. Use @unpublished only for a draft.

biblatex

biblatex has one generic type, @thesis, with the required fields author, title, type, institution and year (or date). @phdthesis and @mastersthesis still work: they are aliases that set type for you, and school is read as institution. In type you can use the keywords phdthesis and mathesis, which are translated into the document language, or any free text:

@thesis{doe2026biblatex,
  author      = {Doe, Jane},
  title       = {Title of the Thesis},
  type        = {Bachelor's thesis},
  institution = {Example University},
  date        = {2026}
}

Don’t use @thesis with a classic BibTeX style. The type is unknown there and the entry is formatted like @misc, without type and school. With biblatex, url and doi are printed.