Disquisitions

As you prepare to graduate, you will be completing and defending your disquisition, filing forms with the Graduate School, and submitting your disquisition for format review. The disquisition review process involves making sure that necessary steps are completed for graduation and that your disquisition meets certain requirements in formatting and construction, to ensure a high standard of quality in the disquisitions that are published from NDSU.

Before you submit your disquisition to the Graduate School, your pre-submission requirements must be met and your disquisition must meet the formatting and construction requirements set out in the Graduate School Format Guidelines. Once you submit your disquisition, the Disquisition Coordinator will review it based on the Format Guidelines and send you a memo noting any required changes.

Our formatting guidelines are available throughout our website as well as in a downloadable PDF. You can access the online formatting guidelines through the navigation bar at the top, through the site map at the bottom of every page, or through the "In This Section" button present on the breadcrumb bar.

Accessibility Requirements

In accordance with Title II of the ADA and NDUS Policy 1203.1, all disquisitions are required to incorporate features that help people with disabilities access digital publications. These features, such as alt-text for images and document structure tagging, allow your disquisition to be parsed by screen readers and improve visual clarity for people with visual impairments.

See our page on Digital Accessibility for more information on creating a compliant disquisition.

Review times are expected to be significantly inflated, and submissions near the initial submission deadline will have a much longer lead time. Submissions after the initial submission deadline are unlikely to be reviewed at all.

We recommend students exercise diligence in observing the Format Guidelines in order to reduce the lead time on their reviews and to make a plan to submit their disquisition earlier in the semester in order to avoid the congestion following the submission deadline.

If you are using a Graduate School template downloaded from our site October 2025 or later, the styles found within the Graduate School templates can automatically handle most but not all of the new requirements; see our Document Accessibility page for more information on these requirements. (To see the date your document was updated, go to File -> Info and you should see "Updated [month] [year]" in the comments field. If the comments field is blank, you should see our conversion guide for more information.)

Notable changes to keep in mind are minimum size requirements for text within images (e.g., figures), color contrast requirements for all images, alt-text for images, and document structure tags (including a document title).

Documents drafted using templates older than October 2025 will require additional work to update them to meet the new requirements. If you began drafting your document before October 2025, you should see our accessibility conversion guide.

Current LaTeX classes will not produce compliant documents. While we are in the process of producing a conformant LaTeX class for students to use, we cannot guarantee it will be ready for Spring 2026 graduates.

As you prepare your disquisition, be mindful of our updated requirements, including minimum size requirements for text within images (e.g., figures), color contrast requirements for all images, alt-text for images, and document structure tags (including a document title).

Note that a LaTeX-produced PDF will not have document structure tags. As of 1/1/26, we are not aware of a PDF engine that will automatically tag your document; currently, your options are to use the PDF tagging package in Overleaf or manually tag the document yourself in a PDF editor such as Foxit or Adobe. NDSU does not have a site license available for either option, and you may need to purchase a subscription or find a free alternative.

Yes. Since your document will be published after the effective date for the new requirements, you will need to incorporate those new requirements into your disquisition.

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