I think length of the thesis hardly matters. The value of your thesis increases with the novelty lies with your contributory chapters.

It is a delicate balance. All details should be included. Since this is your doctoral thesis, it means that you have been working on a novel topic. Therefore, you should aim a document including everything necessary to reconstruct your work even if you leave this planet. However, there is a useful saying once I have heard from my own supervisor: "less is more". I would put myself in the shoes of my reviewers who have to go through your script from now and then. Be direct and to the point... Do not forget, it's not what you write, it's what people need and read.

Good luck!

Sometimes, we forget our objectives or lose our way. What is the objective. The research process not only should provide a significant novel achievement to human being and academic communities, but should enrich us to a confidence and reliable level of knowledge and science concern with the topic which we have involved in. I have been witnessed many thesis defense and I actually wasn't happy because the candid could defend his/her ideas robustly sometimes they were on doubt about the questions;

not enough matured, not a ripe fruit.

So the first parameter would be the learning and beside of that gaining the objective, no getting ride of investigation and searching for a job, going to market for business, and worst than all, responding to the requirements of some professors to finish the job, they like to gain their bonus, hurry on is not a good word if you like to provide a qualified result and roar like a lion in your thesis defense.

As a whole about the average time and length, it actually depends on the background of the student and the thesis topic, more familiar with topic and related background, it would finish sooner. I strongly believe that a PHD thesis specially in technology related topics in average shouldn't take less than five years, otherwise the result (thesis and human) normally wouldn't be confidence!

Length is not a important thing in thesis.Novel work, Way of delivery, structure of chapters, Experimental result and conclusion are all the essence of thesis. your work should be achieved the goal of your research. if your work is good, Don't worry about the length of the thesis. All the best. Deliver your work in your thesis with essences of research.

I've seen some fairly long theses, but I've also seen some relatively short ones. It's very easy, especially while completing a thesis, to overestimate its importance. Theses, like other academic writings, have a sort of long-tail distribution; there are those that will be cited quite a lot, but there are plenty more that might ever only be cited by the author in future work. A colleague once shared his perspective with me that a doctoral thesis is more a demonstration that the author is capable of competent literature review and analysis, and less about genuinely new results. (This is not to discount the importance of incremental results, of course, but the publication of most incremental results does not require a forty page literature review.) After it is completed, your desire is not that people read your thesis, but rather that they read the journal articles, books, and other publications that are written based on the research described in it. In short, I'd say it should as short as possible, not because novel results are not published, but because those novel results have their primary publication in journals, conferences, and books.

In specific word length: science, engineering or technology is about 40,000 words. Social sciences , humanities or education is about 80,000 words.

Anything, 10000 words would be more than enough, as far as contributions are clear, fair and progressive, for present and future use.

As has been ably said - long enough to make your point, to explain and demonstrate your work. I might re-enforce, that if you have developments, side projects or interesting applications, that go beyond the core original work, you should publish that work separately and refer to it in the dissertation.

@Maitri Patel "How not to write ..." provides a very nice link that, indeed, tries to define a line, which limits the material to be included. That line, in science and engineering, may be easier to define, since mathematical dependency may be easier to identify, if harder to explain.

Nowadays doctoral thesis are becoming an organized agglomeration of publications that the student made during the doctoral programme. So length is not a good evaluation field.

Length shouldn't be the main concern...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4800022/John-Nashs-PhD-Thesis

There is no limit. However, in my view, it should be around 150-200 pages in 12 pt, 1.5 line spacing in Latex (including bibliography). Roughly, 5-6 chapters of an average length 15-20 pages each (including introduction and conclusion).

Less is more for original research. Very bad up to 130 pages.

Remember Ockham's Razor, never add anything that could be left out.

I've seen ten page theses (in math, though, but you get the point).

Your thesis must be fairly length but length is not too important , the result , conclusion and future work suggestion are more important ...

Here in Hungary you should have four peer reviewed papers in international journals to be allowed to submit your thesis (in mathematics), and then the length is unimportant.

Science is about 50,000 words.

80,000 is the average in my experience in the UK and Australia for humanities and social science theses. I have however both supervised and assessed a few which were much longer than that.

It's related to a field. Thesis could have 100/200 pages in IT and other thesis have 500 in history, geography, literature etc.

I think length of the thesis hardly matters. The value of your thesis increases with the novelty lies with your contributory chapters.

150-250 pages are normal in CS. To ease readability, you can put some details (e.g. proofs or source code fragments) into the appendix. The main part without appendix is usually 100-150 pages.

Size really does not matter here. A good thesis is one that address related work and foundations (what can be done in few pages if you are economical), stressing the relevance of the presented contribution. It also has to describe the contribution in a comprehensive form, what may be just 20 pages, depending on the field of knowledge. Besides this, many works in engineering and computer science have between 100-200 pages, but this is not a strict rule.

Size does not matter. A Thesis should address objectives of the problem solved and need for solution for the problem considered. A good thesis should be well organized by capturing the details of study, theoretical foundation, experimental setup, result analysis and discussion on the results and recommendations.

I said "Less is more for original research. Very bad up to 130 pages". This is true for Electrical & Computer Engineering!!!

I'm not sure if you are referring to length as in the physical size of the thesis or the duration of time spend on creating the thesis but I'll assume you are referring to a word count or page count.

Some universities have a page-count requirement and therefore you would expect to see doctoral theses of over 150 pages. However, when a page-count requirement is not imposed, you would find shorter theses as well. One doctoral thesis that I read is only 60 pages.

The largest section would be the literature review and ensuring that all the relevant theories have been synthesized in the literature review tends to increase the page-count length.

If you can cover all of the needed literature to establish the context of the study and describe the analysis in a manner that the study can be replicated, you would meet the objectives of the thesis.

Hi

While I agree that there is no specific length, and the thesis depends on the quality of the work, however, for most thesis, the style (and length) of the thesis is important. In most science and engineering related thesis,

In general, a PhD thesis is expected to cover minimum of 3 full journal papers,- so you can work it out.

I will not be very happy with a thesis that is more than 75,000 words, simply because it appears to have too much of fluff. . On the lower extreme, I have found that examiners expect the thesis to be greater than 35,000 words. Thus, while there are no specific rules, unless there is a compelling reason to be different, stick to this, and your 'real' work will be noticed.

All the best,

The importance is in the content and the originality of the Ph.d thesis and not in the number of pages. However, depending on the area, the number of pages may vary from 25 to hundreds of pages. A known example: a Ph.d. thesis of 25 pages in mathematics areas.

i think it should not be less than 50,000 words

I think, it depends on subject field e.g. mathematics (may be very short ) to social sciences and literature. the main thing is how a researcher can achieve his objectives. 

it should not be less than 3 years, but then again, it should should not go beyond 5 years

Measure 10 PhD volumes on your CS library shelf to gauge what has satisfied the examiners previously.

No unique answer for any case. Is the length is really more important than the contents of a thesis?

I think the content and the theme of the PhD thesis is more important.

Mine was 238 pages, but it depends a lot on the length of the introductory chapters

Don't pad with program listings.

Generally the length of a doctoral thesis is between 130-230 pages.

A Computer Science PhD should be long enough, but not too long!

Work out what you have to say; say what you have to say; then stop.

There are different approaches but i have seen now a days some universities instruct PhD Students / Scholars to compile their research phase published articles in the form a thesis report chapters and 3-4 chapters of introduction, literature review , analysis / discussion and conclusions....if some one gets 4 publications / articles, it makes 4 chapters plus 3-4 chapters of  intro and review..... , the total turns out to be around 200 pages say .....  

I intend to make it 99 pages:

·         Chapter 1: Introduction- The nature of land rent and land value capture (14)

·         Chapter 2: HCMC Urban Development parallel with institutional change (14 pages)

·         Chapter 3: Commercial Real Estate Market in HCMC (12 pages)

·         Chapter 4: Assessing and addressing value capturing: The impact of privatization property rights on land development (15 pages)

·         Chapter 5: Assessing and addressing value capturing: Urban spatial reform and air rights (15 pages)

·         Chapter 6: Assessing and addressing value capturing: land for infrastructure (15 pages)

Chapter 7: Conclusion: privatization property rights for (8 pages)

93 pages + references( 6 pages)

Total: 100 pages

I think your university can guide you better in this regard

`The size of thesis is not a matter.  How is the work and accordingly the pages can be written to the satisfaction of researcher and guide.  But only required things to be incorporated and not run after to make thesis so bulky and heavy. 

The adequate length of PhD thesis normally is between 70,000 up 100,000 words includes all attachments.Rule of thumb for  the length of each chapter can be as follows;

Introduction: %5 of total words, Literature Review and Theoretical perspective : %30, Methodology : %20,   Analasis of Results and Findings: %25,   Discussion %15 and Conculusion 5%.

The length of a PhD thesis varies along the novelty, study area and expertise in writing the adequate report. Since this is a scholarly report, the chapters of contribution normally vary in sizes. Chapter One provides the adequate preambles and thus it should contain a little briefing and the organization of the entire thesis. Literature chapter of Chapter Two as obtainable in many schools contribute the highest number of pages. Chapters of Methodology, Experiments, Analysis and presentation of results could be divided as a half of the literature chapters. 

Basically, I see a thesis in computing science and Mathematics amounting to about 200; so as not to bore the examiners with unnecessary reporting of other peoples work. My opinion. 

There is no strict bound on a thesis length, neither from above nor below as long as the overall length of the document stays reasonable. We can define a "reasonable" length as depending on the field in which the doctoral thesis is written and as depending on the individuals involved in its composition, that is, the supervisor and PhD student.

The length is not the most important criterion although thesis below 50p and above 600p in length is likely to make the readers aka committee suspicious, I think.

A PhD thesis serves as a test to assess the student's aptitude to perform science on a level that is deemed to meet the overall standards in the field. Whether one documents this aptitude in little space or in a more lengthy document is of subsidiary interest.

Personally, I think a thesis should be readable by people entering your field as new graduate students or Master students. This is my reason to include more details.

A PhD thesis should have as many pages as it takes to explain the problem, give adequate background, present the results and give adequate evidence of "goodness". The form the evidence takes can make a huge difference in length. I've seen theoretical theses well under 100 pages, because the evidence took the form of mathematical proofs.

Your institution, through your supervisor can guide you better. I believe your institution will have a blueprint for that.

Between 120-230 pages I think is more than enough.

Length of a thesis is not really matters.What matters are the content of your thesis. But normally for full reserach thesis, page between 280 - 300 is acceptable as it covers all aspects of the research.

It really depends on the field and the topic of your dissertation

Someone compiled the number of pages of doctoral and masters dissertation and categorized them by field of study and you see that for a Maths PhD, the median length is less than 100 pages, while for a history PhD the median is closer to 280 pages.

https://www.r-bloggers.com/average-dissertation-and-thesis-length-take-two/

I am finishing up my dissertation (stats/math with a bit of comp sci) at the moment, and I am at 180 pages (including preamble excluding appendix). When I read through my thesis I realized how much I rambled while the key points are not well developed because I was focusing more on describing rather than explaining the implications of my findings. (mainly because I was making the mistake of thinking more pages = more content...)

In our country Kenya, we are guided by the Commission of University Education which states that a PhD thesis should at least be 50,000 words. This could translate to 180 to 260 pages depending on whether the document has many tables and figures.

However, this is just a policy guideline since its rarely implemented. Most researchers here dont even hit 40,000 words and those who hit 50,000 words are discouraged being told that their document is too bulky

The CUE in Kenya demands a minimum of 50,000 words PhD thesis and stipulates that it must be undertaken in at least 3 years. The size therefore will depend on the nature and rigour of data analysis based on the objectives and the depth of the discussions of the findings. Again, this may apply more in social sciences

http://www.openculture.com/2018/07/john-nashs-super-short-phd-thesis-26-pages-2-citations.html

The way to go is to align with the institutional blueprint or Standard where there is one. The length of your thesis should adequately address all the critical aspect of your research. This is by no means one size fits all. John Nash had 26 pages because he was more or less pioneering an area. If I am not put a number I would say 150 is enough unless there are lots of data.

80,000 words max seems okay. Mashed in with tables and graphs etc 250-275 pages. The thesis is not necessarily the definitive work and you can always consider publication with augmented data and discussion. The important thing is to finish the thesis and move on.