ETH-style Cumulative Thesis Template

A LaTeX template for a cumulative PhD thesis (memoir-based): a general introduction, several manuscript-style chapters (each a standalone paper with its own supplementary-information appendix), a concluding chapter, and a CV. Everything here is placeholder content — swap it for your own text and delete the parts you don't need.

It compiles out of the box: every figure is a small inline-TikZ placeholder box (no image files needed) and the bibliography is a handful of dummy entries in bibliographies/template.bib, so you can see the whole structure render before you've written a word of real content.

Compiling

latexmk -xelatex main.tex

XeLaTeX is required (the class uses fontspec and sets Optima as the main font via \setmainfont). If you don't have Optima installed, either install it or change the font in thesis.cls (search for \setmainfont).

In VS Code with the LaTeX Workshop extension, .vscode/settings.json is already wired up: open template.code-workspace and use the "Build with XeLaTeX" recipe. .latexmkrc configures biber-based bibliography builds.

Structure

main.tex                 top-level document: title/author, then \subunit
                          calls for each chapter, in reading order
thesis.cls                the custom document class — all styling, page
                          layout, chapter headings, and helper macros live
                          here (see "Macros" below)
front_matter/             title page, English/German summaries, table of
                          contents, acknowledgements, AI-use declaration
acknowledgements.tex       thesis-level acknowledgements (front matter)
cv.tex                    Curriculum Vitae (back matter, after appendices)
bibliographies/
  template.bib             dummy .bib entries; add more files here and
                          register them with \addbibresource in thesis.cls

chapter_1/ch1.tex          a "regular" chapter (general introduction) —
                          just \chapter, \section, a placeholder figure and
                          table
chapter_5/ch5.tex          a second regular chapter (concluding remarks)

chapter_2/                 a manuscript-style chapter: one paper, written as
                          if you were submitting it to a journal, plus its
                          own supplementary-information appendix in
                          chapter_2_sup/. Body text is split into
                          introduction.tex / results.tex / discussion.tex /
                          methods.tex / acknow.tex subfiles, each defining
                          its own \section.
chapter_2_sup/              the SI for chapter 2: SI_text.tex / SI_tables.tex
                          / SI_figures.tex, plus commands.tex for chapter-
                          local macros (e.g. \subpanel for multi-panel
                          figures).

chapter_3/, chapter_3sup/   a second manuscript chapter + SI, demonstrating
                          an alternative layout: section headings live in
                          ch3.tex itself, and each subfile (11_introduction.tex,
                          12_results.tex, ...) is just body text with no
                          \section of its own. Either pattern (chapter_2's or
                          chapter_3's) is fine — pick whichever keeps your
                          files easiest to navigate.
chapter_4/, chapter_4sup/   a third manuscript chapter + SI, same pattern as
                          chapter_3.

Each chapter is a subfiles document, so you can open e.g. chapter_2/ch2.tex on its own and compile just that chapter while you're writing it (it pulls in thesis.cls via ../main.tex as its root).

Macros (defined in thesis.cls)

• \subunit{path/to/file.tex} — used in main.tex to pull in a chapter. Wraps it in its own refsection (so each chapter/appendix gets its own bibliography, via the compactbib environment) and calls \subfile{...}.
• \manuscriptfront (+ \manuscriptauthors, \affil, \manuscriptabstract, \manuscriptpublished, \authorcontributions) — set these commands before \begin{document} in a manuscript chapter, then call \manuscriptfront right after \begin{document} to typeset the paper's title, author list, affiliations, contributions, and abstract in one go (see chapter_2/ch2.tex, chapter_3/ch3.tex, chapter_4/ch4.tex).
• \appendixfront — the equivalent front-page macro for an SI appendix (title + authors + affiliations + a "Supplementary Information" banner); see chapter_2_sup/ch2_sup.tex.
• \placeholderfigure[label]{width}{height} — draws a bordered placeholder box instead of a real image; swap for \includegraphics once you have a figure.
• compactbib environment — the tight, hanging-indent bibliography style used inside each \subunit and in the CV's publication list.

Adding a chapter

Regular chapter (like Chapter 1/5): copy chapter_1/ch1.tex into a new folder, write it as a normal subfiles document with \chapter{...}, and add \subunit{your_folder/your_file.tex} to main.tex.

Manuscript-style chapter (like Chapters 2–4): copy chapter_2/ (and its chapter_2_sup/ counterpart) as a starting point, set the paper metadata macros before \begin{document}, call \manuscriptfront, then add both \subunit{...} lines to main.tex — the chapter under \mainmatter, the SI under \appendix.

Not included

The original thesis this template was extracted from also demonstrates cross-referencing labels between a chapter and an externally, separately compiled journal-submission SI PDF, using the xr package's \externaldocument{...} (see \myexternaldocument in the original's chapter_4/settings/crossref.tex, alongside a separate SimpleTemplate.cls used only for that standalone journal compile). That's a fairly specific, journal-driven workflow, so it isn't reproduced here — if you need it, the technique is just: compile the external document once to get its .aux file, then \usepackage{xr} + \externaldocument{path/to/that/.aux} in the document that needs to reference its labels.