Ethical norms in research govern the rightness of conduct - honesty, fair attribution of credit, respect for the rights of others and responsibility towards the wider community. The odd item will be one that raises no such question.

Thesis format is not a matter of ethics. Margins, font, spacing, the ordering of chapters and the placement of tables are presentational conventions laid down by a university for the sake of uniformity and readability. A researcher who departs from the prescribed format has breached a procedural requirement, not an ethical norm, and no one is wronged by the deviation.

The other three are genuinely ethical matters. Copyright concerns the ownership of intellectual work, and using another's material without permission or acknowledgement is plagiarism or infringement - a clear ethical wrong. Patenting policy concerns who is entitled to the benefit of an invention, raising questions of inventorship, fair attribution and the balance between private reward and public access. Data sharing policies concern openness and verifiability: whether data are made available for others to check and build upon, how the confidentiality of participants is protected, and whether results can be independently confirmed.

The common thread among these three is that each involves obligations to other people, which is precisely what thesis format does not.

Hence ethical norms in research do not involve guidelines for thesis format.