digital copy of thesis

Open Access Theses and Dissertations

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About OATD.org

OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions . OATD currently indexes 7,241,108 theses and dissertations.

About OATD (our FAQ) .

Visual OATD.org

We’re happy to present several data visualizations to give an overall sense of the OATD.org collection by county of publication, language, and field of study.

You may also want to consult these sites to search for other theses:

• Google Scholar
• NDLTD , the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. NDLTD provides information and a search engine for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), whether they are open access or not.
• Proquest Theses and Dissertations (PQDT), a database of dissertations and theses, whether they were published electronically or in print, and mostly available for purchase. Access to PQDT may be limited; consult your local library for access information.

Librarians/Admins

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• Start your research
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• DynaMed Decisions
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• NoveList Blog

EBSCO Open Dissertations

EBSCO Open Dissertations makes electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) more accessible to researchers worldwide. The free portal is designed to benefit universities and their students and make ETDs more discoverable. 

Increasing Discovery & Usage of ETD Research

EBSCO Open Dissertations is a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs to increase traffic and discoverability of ETD research. You can join the movement and add your theses and dissertations to the database, making them freely available to researchers everywhere while increasing traffic to your institutional repository. 

EBSCO Open Dissertations extends the work started in 2014, when EBSCO and the H.W. Wilson Foundation created American Doctoral Dissertations which contained indexing from the H.W. Wilson print publication, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities, 1933-1955. In 2015, the H.W. Wilson Foundation agreed to support the expansion of the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses from 1955 to the present.

How Does EBSCO Open Dissertations Work?

Your ETD metadata is harvested via OAI and integrated into EBSCO’s platform, where pointers send traffic to your IR.

EBSCO integrates this data into their current subscriber environments and makes the data available on the open web via opendissertations.org .

You might also be interested in:

Dissertation and thesis submission (PhD, JSD, DMA, engineering master's)

Learn more about dissertation and thesis submission

Graduated and enrolled Stanford students may submit their dissertations and theses through Axess. The electronic submission process is free of charge. The service provides the ability to check your pre-submission requirements, and, when ready, you can upload a digital copy of your dissertation or thesis.  

Learn how to use the Dissertation and Thesis Center

Who is eligible?

The online Dissertation and Thesis Center in Axess is currently available to Stanford PhD, JSD, DMA, and engineering-degree students only.

What to expect

• After you have applied to graduate and have enrolled, you will see the Dissertation and Thesis Center in Axess.
• You’ll want to  prepare your work for submission , following the guidelines for format and title page.
• It may be helpful for you to check out  how to request to use copyrighted material , if you have questions.
• Next, you’ll submit your dissertation or thesis by following this helpful  checklist for submitting your dissertation or thesis .
• After submission, a  certificate of final reading will be created by your Final Reader, using the online submission workflow.
• In addition, you’ll need to  obtain approval from each member of your reading committee .
• After you have fulfilled all requirements and your dissertation or thesis has been approved by the University Registrar, it will be cataloged, preserved in the Stanford Digital Repository, and made available online via  SearchWorks , the online library catalog. 
• Please note: if embargoed, your dissertation or thesis PDF will be available only to Stanford affiliates for the duration of the embargo.

For more detailed information about submitting your dissertation or thesis online, refer to this set of dissertations and theses web pages provided by the Student Services Center.

Capstone and thesis submission (undergraduate honors, master's)

Check out the capstone and thesis submission (undergraduate honors, master's) page for information about submitting these types of theses.

Questions about the dissertation and thesis submission service? 

If you have questions about submitting your dissertation or thesis, please contact the  Student Services Center .

MIT Libraries logo MIT Libraries

MIT Specifications for Thesis Preparation

Approved November 2022 for use in the 2022-2023 academic year. Updated March 2023 to incorporate changes to MIT Policies and Procedures 13.1.3 Intellectual Property Not Owned by MIT .

View this page as an accessible PDF .

Table of Contents

• Thesis Preparation Checklist

Timeline for submission and publication

• Bachelor’s degree thesis
• Graduate degree thesis

Dual degree theses

Joint theses, what happens to your thesis, title selection, embedded links.

• Special circumstances

Signature page

Abstract page.

• Acknowledgments

Biographical notes

Table of contents, list of figures.

• List of tables
• List of supplemental material

Notes and bibliographic references

Open licensing, labeling copyright in your thesis, use of previously published material in your thesis, digital supplementary material, physical supplementary material, starting with accessible source files, file naming.

• How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries

Placing a temporary hold on your thesis

Changes to a thesis after submission, permission to reuse or republish from mit theses, general information.

This guide has been prepared by the MIT Libraries, as prescribed by the Committee on Graduate Programs and the Committee on Undergraduate Program, to assist students and faculty in the preparation of theses. The Institute is committed to the preservation of each student’s thesis because it is both a requirement for the MIT degree and a record of original research that contains information of lasting value.

In this guide, “department” refers to a graduate or undergraduate program within an academic unit, and “thesis” refers to the digital copy of the written thesis. The official thesis version of record, which is submitted to the MIT Libraries, is the digital copy of the written thesis that has been approved by the thesis committee and certified by the department in fulfillment of a student’s graduation requirement.

The requirements in this guide apply to all theses and have been specified both to facilitate the care and dissemination of the thesis and to assure the preservation of the final approved document. Individual departments may dictate more stringent requirements.

Before beginning your thesis research, remember that the final output of this research—your thesis document—should only include research findings that may be shared publicly, in adherence with MIT’s policy on Open Research and Free Interchange of Information . If you anticipate that your thesis will contain content that requires review by an external sponsor or agency, it is critical that you allow sufficient time for this review to take place prior to thesis submission. 

Questions not answered in this guide should be referred to the appropriate department officer or to the MIT Libraries ( [email protected] ).

• Final edited and complete thesis PDF is due to your department on the date specified in the Academic Calendar.
• Hold requests should be submitted to the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education or TLO concurrent with your thesis submission.
• Thesis information is due to the MIT Libraries before your date of graduation.
• Departments must transfer theses to the MIT Libraries within 30 days from the last day of class (end of term).
• One week later (30 days from the last day of classes + 7 days) or one week after the degree award date (whichever is later) the MIT Libraries may begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT.
• If you have requested and received a temporary (up to 90-day) hold on the publication of your thesis from the Vice Chancellor, your thesis will be placed on hold as soon as it is received by the Libraries, and the 90-day hold will begin 30 days from the last day of class (end of term).
• If your thesis research is included in a disclosure to the TLO, the TLO may place your thesis on temporary hold with the Libraries, as appropriate.

Submitting your thesis document to your department

Your thesis document will be submitted to your department as a PDF, formatted and including the appropriate rights statement and sections as outlined in these specifications. Your department will provide more specific guidance on submitting your files for certification and acceptance.

Your department will provide information on submitting:

• A PDF/A-1  of your final thesis document (with no signatures)
• Signature page (if required by your department; your department will provide specific guidance)
• Original source files used to create the PDF of your thesis (optional, but encouraged)
• Supplementary materials  (optional and must be approved by your advisor and program)

Degree candidates must submit their thesis to the appropriate office of the department in which they are registered on the dates specified in the Academic Calendar. ( Academic Calendar | MIT Registrar ). September, February, and May/June are the only months in which degrees are awarded.

Bachelor’s degree theses

Graduate degree theses, submitting your thesis information to the libraries.

Information about your thesis must be submitted to the Libraries thesis submission and processing system  prior to your day of graduation. The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis . See How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries section for more details .

The academic department is required to submit the thesis to the MIT Libraries within one month after the last day of the term in which the thesis was submitted ( Faculty Regulation 2.72 ). The thesis document becomes part of the permanent archival collection. All thesis documents that have been approved will be transferred electronically to the MIT Libraries by a department representative via the MIT Libraries thesis submission and processing system .

The full-text PDF of each thesis is made publicly available in DSpace@MIT . A bibliographic record will appear in the MIT Libraries’ catalog, as well as the OCLC database WorldCat, which is accessible to libraries and individuals worldwide. Authors may also opt-in to having their thesis made available in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.

Formatting specifications

Your work will be a more valuable research tool for other scholars if it can be located easily. Search engines use the words in the title, and sometimes other descriptive words, to locate works. Therefore,

• Be sure to select a title that is a meaningful description of the content of your manuscript; and
• Do: “The Effects of Ion Implantation and Annealing on the Properties of Titanium Silicide Films on Silicon Substrates”
• Do: “Radiative Decays on the J/Psi to Two Pseudoscalar Final States”

You may include clickable links to online resources within the thesis file. Make the link self-descriptive so that it can stand on its own and is natural language that fits within the surrounding writing of your paragraph. The full URL should be included as a footnote or bibliography citation (dependent on citation style).

• Sentence in thesis: Further information is available on the MIT Writing and Communications Center’s website . The full-text PDF of each thesis is made publicly available in DSpace@MIT .
• Footnote or Bibliography: follow the rules of your chosen citation style and include the full website URL, in this case http://libraries.mit.edu/mit-theses

Sections of your thesis

Required (all information should be on a single page)

The title page should contain the title, name of the author (this can be the author’s preferred name), previous degrees, the degree(s) to be awarded at MIT, the date the degree(s) will be conferred (May/June, September, or February only), copyright notice (and legend, if required), and appropriate names of thesis supervisor(s) and student’s home department or program officer.

The title page should have the following fields in the following order and centered (including spacing) :

Thesis title as submitted to registrar

Author’s preferred name

Previous degree information, if applicable

Submitted to the [department name] in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree(s) of

[degree name]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Month and year degree will be granted (May or June, September, February ONLY)

Copyright statement

This permission legend MUST follow: The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.

[Insert 2 blank lines]

Note: The remaining fields are left aligned and not centered

Authored by: [Author name]

[Author’s department name] (align with the beginning of the author’s name from the previous line)

[Date thesis is to be presented to the department] (align with the beginning of the author’s name from the first line)

Certified by: [Advisor’s full name as it appears in the MIT catalog]

   [Advisor’s department as it appears in the MIT catalog] (align with the beginning of the advisor’s name from the previous line), Thesis supervisor

Accepted by: [name]

[title – line 1] (align with the beginning of the name from the previous line)

[title – line 2] (align with the beginning of the name from the first line)

Note: The name and title of this person varies in different degree programs and may vary each term; contact the departmental thesis administrator for specific information

• Students in joint graduate programs (such as Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) should list both their MIT thesis supervisor and the supervisor from the partner academic institution.
• The name and title of the department or the program officer varies in different degree programs and may vary each term. Contact the departmental graduate administrator for specific information.
• For candidates receiving two degrees, both degrees to be awarded should appear on the title page. For candidates in dual degree programs, all degrees and departments or programs should appear on the title page, and the names of both department heads/committee chairs are required. Whenever there are co-supervisors, both names should appear on the title page.

Here are some PDF examples of title pages:

• Bachelor’s Degree – using a Creative Commons license
• PhD candidate – using a Creative Commons license
• Master’s candidate – dual degrees
• Masters’ candidates – multiple authors
• Masters’ candidates – multiple authors with dual degrees and extra committee members
• Bachelor’s Degree – change of thesis supervisor

Title page: Special circumstances – change of thesis supervisor

If your supervisor has recently died or is no longer affiliated with the Institute:

• Both this person and your new supervisor should be listed on your title page
• Under the new supervisor’s name, state that they are approving the thesis on behalf of the previous supervisor
• An additional page should be added to the thesis, before the acknowledgments page, with an explanation about why a new supervisor is approving your thesis on behalf of your previous supervisor. You may also thank the new supervisor for acting in this capacity
• Review this PDF example of a title page with a change in supervisor

If your supervisor is external to the Institute (such as an industrial supervisor):

• You should acknowledge this individual on the Acknowledgements page as appropriate, but should not list this person on the thesis title page
• The full thesis committee and thesis readers can be acknowledged on the Acknowledgements page, but should not be included on the title page

Not Required

Please consult with your department to determine if they are requiring or requesting an additional signature page.

Each thesis must include an abstract of generally no more than 500 words single-spaced. The abstract should be thought of as a brief descriptive summary, not a lengthy introduction to the thesis. The abstract should immediately follow the title page.

The abstract page should have the following fields in the following order and centered (including spacing):

• Thesis title

Submitted to the [Department] on [date thesis will be submitted] in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of [Name of degree to be received]

[Insert 1 blank line]

Single-spaced summary; approximately 500 words or less; try not to use formulas or special characters

Thesis supervisor: [Supervisor’s name]

Title: [Title of supervisor]

The Abstract page should include the same information as on the title page. With the thesis title, author name, and submitting statement above the abstract, the word “ABSTRACT” typed before the body of the text, and the thesis supervisor’s name and title below the abstract.

Acknowledgements

An acknowledgement page may be included and is the appropriate place to include information such as external supervisor (such as an industrial advisor) or a list of the full thesis committee and thesis readers. Please note that your thesis will be publicly available online at DSpace@MIT , which is regularly crawled and indexed by Google and other search-engine providers.

The thesis may contain a short biography of the candidate, including institutions attended and dates of attendance, degrees and honors, titles of publications, teaching and professional experience, and other matters that may be pertinent. Please note that your thesis will be publicly available online at DSpace@MIT , which is regularly crawled and indexed by Google and other search-engine providers.

List of Tables

List of supplemental material.

Whenever possible, notes should be placed at the bottom of the appropriate page or in the body of the text. Notes should conform to the style appropriate to the discipline. If notes appear at the bottom of the page, they should be single-spaced and included within the specified margins.

It may be appropriate to place bibliographic references either at the end of the chapter in which they occur or at the end of the thesis.

The style of quotations, footnotes, and bibliographic references may be prescribed by your department. If your department does not prescribe a style or specify a style manual, choose one and be consistent. Further information is available on the MIT Writing and Communications Center’s website .

Ownership of copyright

The Institute’s policy concerning ownership of thesis copyright is covered in Rules and Regulations of the Faculty, 2.73 and MIT Policies and Procedures 13.1.3 . Copyright covers the intellectual property in the words and images in the thesis. If the thesis also includes patentable subject matter, students should contact the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) prior to submission of their thesis.

Under these regulations, students retain the copyright to student theses.

The student must, as a condition of a degree award, grant to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license. The MIT Libraries publish the thesis on DSpace@MIT , allowing open access to the research output of MIT.

You may also, optionally, apply a Creative Commons License to your thesis. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. For more information about CC: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ . To determine which CC license is right for you, you can use the CC license chooser .

You must include an appropriate copyright notice on the title page of your thesis. This should include the following:

• the symbol “c” with a circle around it © and/or the word “copyright”
• the year of publication (the year in which the degree is to be awarded)
• the name of the copyright owner
• the words “All rights reserved” or your chosen Creative Commons license
• Also include the following statement below the ©“ The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”
• Also include the following statement below the © “The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”

You are responsible for obtaining permission, if necessary, to include previously published material in your thesis. This applies to most figures, images, and excerpts of text created and published by someone else; it may also apply to your own previous work. For figures and short excerpts from academic works, permission may already be available through the MIT Libraries (see here for additional information ). Students may also rely on fair use , as appropriate. For assistance with copyright questions about your thesis, you can contact [email protected] .

When including your own previously published material in your thesis, you may also need to obtain copyright clearance. If, for example, a student has already published part of the thesis as a journal article and, as a condition of publication, has assigned copyright to the journal’s publisher, the student’s rights are limited by what the publisher allows. More information about publisher policies on reuse in theses is available here.

Students can hold onto sufficient rights to reuse published articles (or excerpts of these) in their thesis if they are covered by MIT’s open access policy. Learn more about MIT’s open access policy and opt-in here . Contact [email protected] for more information.

When including your own previously published articles in your thesis, check with your department for specific requirements, and consider the following:

• Ensure you have any necessary copyright permissions to include previously published material in your thesis.
• Be sure to discuss copyright clearance and embargo options with your co-authors and your advisor well in advance of preparing your thesis for submission.
• Include citations of where portions of the thesis have been previously published.
• When an article included has multiple authors, clearly designate the role you had in the research and production of the published paper that you are including in your thesis.

Supplemental material and research data

Supplemental material that may be submitted with your thesis is the materials that are essential to understanding the research findings of your thesis, but impossible to incorporate or embed into a PDF. Materials submitted to the MIT Libraries may be provided as supplemental digital files or in some cases physical items. All supplementary materials must be approved for submission by your advisor. The MIT Libraries can help answer questions you may have about managing the supplementary material and other research materials associated with your research.

Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine the best way to include supplemental materials with your thesis.

You may also have other research data and outputs related to your thesis research that are not considered supplemental material and should not be submitted with your thesis. Research materials include the facts, observations, images, computer program results, recordings, measurements, or experiences on which a research output—an argument, theory, test or hypothesis, or other output—is based. These may also be termed, “research data.” This term relates to data generated, collected, or used during research projects, and in some cases may include the research output itself. Research materials should be deposited in appropriate research data repositories and cited in your thesis . You may consult the MIT Libraries’ Data Management Services website for guidance or reach out to Data Management Services (DMS)( [email protected] ), who can help answer questions you may have about managing your thesis data and choosing suitable solutions for longer term storage and access.

• Supplementary information may be submitted with your thesis to your program after approval from your thesis advisor. 
• Supplemental material should be mentioned and summarized in the written document, for example, using a few key frames from a movie to create a figure.
• A list of supplementary information along with brief descriptions should be included in your thesis document. For digital files, the description should include information about the file types and any software and version needed to open and view the files.
• Issues regarding the format of non-traditional, supplemental content should be resolved with your advisor.
• Appendices and references are not considered supplementary information.
• If your research data has been submitted to a repository, it should not also be submitted with your thesis.
• Follow the required file-naming convention for supplementary files: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-type_supplemental.ext
• Captioning ( legally required ): text versions of the audio content, synchronized with the video: ways to get your video captioned
• Additional content, not required:
• For video, an audio description: a separate narrative audio track that describes important visual content, making it accessible to people who are unable to see the video
• Transcripts: should capture all the spoken audio, plus on-screen text and descriptions of key visual information that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible without seeing the video

For physical components that are integral to understanding the thesis document, and which cannot be meaningfully conveyed in a digital form, the author may submit the physical items to the MIT Libraries along with their thesis document. When photographs or a video of a physical item (such as a model) would be sufficient, the images should be included in the thesis document, and a video could be submitted as digital supplementary material.

An example of physical materials that would be approved for submission as part of the thesis would be photographs that cannot be shared digitally in our repository due to copyright restrictions. In this case, the photographs could be submitted as a physical volume that is referred to in the thesis document.

As with digital supplementary information and research materials, physical materials must be approved for submission by your advisor. Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine if physical materials should accompany your thesis, and if so how to schedule a transfer of materials to the MIT Libraries.

Creating your thesis document/digital format

You are required to submit a PDF/A-1 formatted thesis document to your department. In addition, it is recommended that original files, or source files, (such a .doc or .tex) are submitted alongside the PDF/A-1 to better ensure long-term access to your thesis.

You should create accessible files that support the use of screen readers and make your document more easily readable by assistive technologies. This will expand who is able to access your thesis. By creating an accessible document from the beginning, there will be less work required to remediate the PDF that gets created. Most software offers a guide for creating documents that are accessible to screen readers. Review the guidelines provided by the MIT Libraries .

In general:

• Use styles and other layout features for headings, lists, tables, etc. If you don’t like the default styles associated with the headings, you can customize them.
• Avoid using blank lines to add visual spacing and instead increase the size of the spaces before and/or after the line.
• Avoid using text boxes.
• Embed URLs.
• Anchor images to text when inserting them into a doc.
• Add alt-text to any images or figures that convey meaning (including, math formulas).
• Use a sans serif font.
• Add basic embedded metadata, such as author, title, year of graduation, department, keywords etc. to your thesis via your original author tool.

Creating a PDF/A-1

PDF/A-1 (either a or b) is the more suitable format for long term preservation than a basic PDF. It ensures that the PDF format conforms to certain specifications which make it more likely to open and be viewable in the long term. It is best for static content that will not change in the future, as this is the most preservation-worthy version and does not allow for some complex elements that could corrupt or prevent the file from being viewable in the future. Guidelines on how to convert specific file types to PDF/A .

In general: (should we simplify these bullets)

• Convert to PDF/A directly from your original files (text, Word, InDesign, LaTeX, etc.). It is much easier and better to create valid PDF/A documents from your original files than from a regular PDF. Converting directly will ensure that fonts and hyperlinks are embedded in the document.
• Do not embed multimedia files (audio and video), scripts, executables, lab notebooks, etc. into your PDF. Still images are fine. The other formats mentioned may be able to be submitted as supplemental files.
• Do not password protect or encrypt your PDF file.
• Validate your PDF/A file before submitting it to your department.

All digital files must be named according to this scheme: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-type_other.ext

• Thesis PDF: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-thesis.pdf
• Signature page: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-sig.pdf
• Original source file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-source.docx
• Supplemental file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplmental_1.mov
• Second supplemental file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplmental_2.mov
• Read Me file about supplemental: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplemental-readme.txt

How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries

Before your day of graduation, you should submit your thesis title page metadata to the MIT Libraries  prior to your day of graduation. The submission form requires Kerberos login.

Student submitted metadata allows for quicker Libraries processing times. It also provides a note field for you to let Libraries’ staff know about any metadata discrepancies.

The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis . Please have a copy of your completed thesis on hand to enter this information directly from your thesis. If any discrepancies are found during processing, Libraries’ staff will publish using the information on the approved thesis document. You will be asked to confirm or provide:

• Preferred name of author(s)as they appear on the title page of the thesis
• ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. The goal is to support the creation of a permanent, clear, and unambiguous record of scholarly communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and contributors. Read ORCID FAQs to learn more
• Department(s)
• A license is optional, and very difficult to remove once published. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. Read more information about CC .
• Thesis supervisor(s)
• If you would like the full-text of your thesis to be made openly available in the ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Global database (PQDT), you can indicate that in the Libraries submission form.
• Open access inclusion in PQDT is at no cost to you, and increases the visibility and discoverability of your thesis. By opting in you are granting ProQuest a license to distribute your thesis in accordance with ProQuest’s policies. Further information can be found in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Author FAQ .
• Full-text theses and associated supplemental files will only be sent to ProQuest once any temporary holds have been lifted, and the thesis has been published in DSpace@MIT.
• Regardless of opting-in to inclusion in PQDT, the full text of your thesis will still be made openly available in DSpace@MIT . Doctoral Degrees: Regardless of opting-in the citation and abstract of your thesis will be included in PQDT.

Thesis research should be undertaken in light of MIT’s policy of open research and the free interchange of information . Openness requires that, as a general policy, thesis research should not be undertaken on campus when the results may not be published. From time to time, there may be a good reason for delaying the distribution of a thesis to obtain patent protection, or for reasons of privacy or security. To ensure that only those theses that meet certain criteria are withheld from distribution and that they are withheld for the minimum period, the Institute has established specific review procedures.

Written notification of patent holds and other restrictions must reach the MIT Libraries before the thesis in question is received by the MIT Libraries. Theses will not be available to the public prior to being published by the MIT Libraries. The Libraries may begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT one month and one week from the last day of classes.

Thesis hold requests should be directed to the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) ( [email protected] ) when related to MIT-initiated patent applications (i.e., MIT holds intellectual property rights; patent application process via TLO). Requests for a thesis hold must be made jointly by the student and advisor directly to the MIT Technology Licensing Office as part of the technology disclosure process.

Thesis hold or restricted access requests should be directed to the Office of the Vice Chancellor ([email protected]) when related to:

• Student-initiated patents (student holds intellectual property rights as previously determined by TLO) [up to 90-day hold]
• Pursuit of business opportunities (student holds intellectual property rights as previously determined by TLO)[up to 90-day hold]
• Government restrictions [up to 90-day hold]
• Privacy and security [up to 90-day hold]
• Scholarly journal articles pending publication [up to 90-day hold]
• Book publication [up to 24-month hold]

In the unusual circumstance that a student wants to request a hold beyond the initial 90-day period, they should contact the Office of Vice President for Research , who may consult with the TLO and/or the Office of the Vice Chancellor, as appropriate to extend the hold. Such requests must be supported by evidence that explains the need for a longer period.

Find information about each type of publication hold, and to learn how to place a hold on your thesis

After publication

Your thesis will be published on DSpace@MIT . Theses are processed by the MIT Libraries and published in the order they are transferred by your department. The Libraries will begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT one month and one week from the last day of classes.

All changes made to a thesis, after it has been submitted to the MIT Libraries by your department, must have approval from the Vice Chancellor or their designee. Thesis documents should be carefully reviewed prior to submission to ensure they do not contain misspellings or incorrect formatting. Change requests for these types of minor errors will not be approved.

There are two types of change requests that can be made:

• Errata: When the purpose is to correct significant errors in content, the author should create an errata sheet using the form and instructions (PDF)  and obtain approval first from both the thesis supervisor or program chair, before submitting for review by the Vice Chancellor.
• Substitution: If the purpose of the change is to excise classified, proprietary, or confidential information, the author should fill out the  application form (PDF) and have the request approved first by the thesis supervisor or program chair, before submitting for review by the Vice Chancellor.

Students and supervisors should vet thesis content carefully before submission to avoid these scenarios whenever possible.

You are always authorized to post electronic versions of your own thesis, in whole or in part, on a website, without asking permission. If you hold the copyright in the thesis, approving and/or denying requests for permission to use portions of the thesis in third-party publications is your responsibility.

MIT Libraries Thesis Team https://libguides.mit.edu/mit-thesis-faq [email protected] | https://thesis-submit.mit.edu/

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Office of  the Vice Chancellor Room 7-133 | 617-253-6056 http://ovc.mit.edu [email protected]

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Theses & Dissertations

How Do I Find a Thesis or Dissertation?

Northeastern master’s theses and doctoral dissertations:.

Most Northeastern theses and dissertations published in 2008 or later are available online through the library’s Digital Repository Service. In addition to finding them in in Scholar OneSearch, y ou can also search the DRS directly which allows you to easily filter your search to a college, department, advisor, and more.

Prior to 2008, print copies are located in the Archives and Special Collections .

Theses and dissertations published at other universities

• Proquest Theses and Dissertations Global includes theses and dissertations from all major United States institutions of higher education and some international ones as well.
• Theses and dissertations may also be found in these research databases .

What Is an ETD program?

ETD stands for Electronic Theses and Dissertations. ETD programs replace the traditional practice of depositing print copies of theses and dissertations in the library. Northeastern University requires that you deposit your doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis electronically via ProQuest’s Dissertation Publishing service.

As part of this service, ProQuest will deliver an electronic copy of your dissertation or thesis to the library. The library will deposit this copy into its Digital Repository Service (DRS) . The DRS provides free online access to users worldwide, so your research will be widely accessible. You will hold the copyright to your work just as you would if it were made available in print. The electronic format allows you to include supplemental materials such as video, data sets, and presentation slides.

This program collects all of Northeastern’s dissertations and theses in an online archive and provides an excellent overview of the important research being conducted at the university. More information about the university’s ETD program is available in the university’s ETD Proquest agreement .

More FAQs about theses and dissertations are available in the University Library FAQ.

How Do I Submit My NU Thesis or Dissertation?

Congratulations, you’ve finally finished!

Each college at Northeastern University maintains its own individual requirements for the preparation and submission of theses and dissertations. Before submitting, students should contact their department or graduate school for those requirements.

Each college also has a unique link to submit theses and dissertations via ProQuest. Once you are ready to submit your thesis or dissertation, please choose the correct “ProQuest submission” link for your school or college:

• ProQuest submission
• Thesis guidelines

What Is an Embargo?

An embargo prevents readers from accessing the full text of a work for a designated period of time. Authors may choose to use an embargo to protect sensitive information, or because they have applied for a patent based on their work.

At Northeastern University, the maximum embargo permitted for a thesis or dissertation is two years. You may find that other institutions have embargoes of different lengths, or other restrictions. Embargos may be renewed with permission from your program administrator.

Generally, the citation and abstract are still available to readers during the embargo period.

How Does Copyright Apply to Theses & Dissertations?

At Northeastern University, copyright for your thesis or dissertation copyright belongs to you. Although it is not necessary to include a copyright statement, we recommend that you do so.

You may also choose to register your thesis or dissertation with the U.S. Copyright Office. This is not necessary as you already have copyright over your own dissertation, but registering it can protect you in legal situations where you may wish to collect statutory damages.  You can register your copyright during the ProQuest submission process for a fee of $75, or you may file yourself directly with the U.S. Copyright office (starting fee is $45 for single author).

Publishing your thesis or dissertation online through Northeastern’s DRS does not void or cancel your copyright. It allows your work to reach a wider audience and others must still ask your permission before reproducing or otherwise using your work beyond fair use .

Read more about copyright and theses/dissertations:

• “ Copyright and Publishing Your Dissertation ” by Rachael Samberg, University of California Berkeley Library
• “ Copyright Law & Graduate Research: New Media, New Rights, and Your New Dissertation ” by Kenneth D. Crews for ProQuest (PDF)
• “ So You Want People to Read Your Thesis? ” by Danny Kingsley, Australian Open Access Support Group

For help with specific questions related to copyright, please contact the Library’s Digital Production Services department .

How Do I Update My Thesis or Dissertation?

Updates to your thesis or dissertation must be made in two places: the Digital Repository Service (DRS) and ProQuest’s Dissertation Publishing . Most changes to a thesis or dissertation in the DRS require approval from your program administrator, for example:

• requests for replacing your paper with an updated or corrected copy
• applying a new embargo
• requesting an embargo extension.

To make the change, first get permission from your program, then contact DRS staff to implement the approved change. Changes to the information about your paper, like an update to your name or correcting a typo in the abstract, do not require program approval.

For help with theses and dissertations stored in ProQuest, contact ProQuest support: [email protected]

How Do I Get a Print Copy of My Thesis or Dissertation?

Although not required by the university, you may want one or more bound copies of your thesis or dissertation. You can order bound copies from ProQuest during the submission process. Locally, we recommend HF Group (formerly Acme Binding) in Charlestown. Many local photocopying businesses also provide this service with various types of binding.

Ask a Librarian

Launch a 24/7 Chat to ask questions and get information from your office, home, or dorm room.

Librarians from Northeastern and other libraries are standing by now to help you.

• Chat with a librarian 24/7.
• Drop in at the research help desk in the lobby of Snell Library: 11am-3pm, weekdays .
• Email the library . Please allow at least one business day for a response.
• Call us (617) 373-2356 .
• Text us (617) 934-7876 for quick questions.
• Contact your subject librarian or a library specialist for in-depth research support.  

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Graduate College

Electronic thesis & dissertation faq, uiuc acknowledgement heading link copy link, the uic graduate college would like to thank the uiuc graduate college for use of some of the following and for continued collaboration with the etd project., etd heading link copy link, what is an etd.

An ETD is an Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Instead of the traditional submission process, in which a student submits paper copies to be bound, catalogued, and disseminated in hard copy through the University Library, ETDs allow for the creation, submission, and dissemination of graduate research in digital form. The components and structure of an ETD are essentially the same as a traditional paper thesis.

What is UIC Indigo? Heading link Copy link

What is uic indigo.

UIC Indigo is the digital repository for research and scholarship produced at the University of Illinois at Chicago. UIC Indigo collects, disseminates, and provides persistent and reliable access to the research and scholarship of faculty, staff, and students at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Format & PDF Conversion Heading link Copy link

All UIC theses and dissertations must adhere to the Graduate College thesis requirements.  For ETDs there are a few differences from the paper submission.  Follow the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Format below for more information.

Additional requirements for ETDs include:

• The document must be submitted as a single Portable Document File (PDF).
• The PDF file must be named Lastname_Firstname.pdf, where “Lastname” and “Firstname” are that of the student.
• Security settings should not be applied to the PDF file.
• The PDF file should not contain embedded multimedia.
• Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Format

PDF Conversion Heading link Copy link

Pdf conversion.

MS Word and Adobe Acrobat are two options for converting files to PDF. Installing Acrobat onto a computer allows the user to generate a PDF file by selecting “Adobe PDF” as the printer from within the program. Computers containing both MS Word and Acrobat Professional are available in computer labs on campus.

Before beginning the PDF conversion process, however, you are strongly encouraged to embed the fonts you have used in your thesis into the file to be converted. Embedding fonts will help to ensure that the material in your thesis will display correctly when viewed or printed from the PDF file. To further ensure that material displays correctly in the PDF file, use of either a Type 1 or TrueType font is recommended. Times New Roman, Arial, and Calibri are among the numerous TrueType fonts that are available in popular word processing programs.

PDF conversion services may also be found online. Some of these online services are free and others are not. We have also included links below to LaTeX conversion resources.

Students are responsible for checking the PDF file of their thesis after the conversion process to verify that all material displays correctly.

• ACCC C-Stop Labs
• LaTeX to PDF
• How to make a PDF document from a LaTeX source

Submitting Your Thesis Heading link Copy link

Thesis size.

If any of your files are larger than 512MB in size, we recommend submitting them from a “wired” on-campus connection (e.g. any public computer lab on campus). It may also be possible to submit these files from off-campus if you are using a private, high-speed internet connection. However, it is not recommended to submit larger files from wireless internet available in coffee houses or bookstores, as these businesses sometimes limit the size of files you may transmit.

If you have any difficulties in uploading your thesis files, please contact the Graduate College Thesis Office at [email protected] or (312) 996-3958.

When to Submit Heading link Copy link

When to submit.

You should only submit your thesis for review by the Graduate College Thesis Office AFTER

• your defense has occurred, and
• your advisor and/or committee has approved the final version of your thesis with all content corrected, and
• you have made all format corrections requested by your departmental thesis reviewer.

Documents submitted prior to departmental approval will be rejected.

The Thesis Office will not review your submission until we have received notification of departmental approval. In most cases, format reviews will be performed within three or fewer business days of the latter of either (a) submission of the electronic document or (b) confirmation of departmental approval. If you submit close to the submission deadline for a semester, the approval process may take up to three weeks.  You will be notified by email of the outcome of the Graduate College’s review, including a list of required changes (if any) and instructions for completing the deposit of your thesis.  Review by the Graduate College may be more than three days at the thesis submission deadlines.

Supplemental Material Heading link Copy link

Supplemental material.

• For ETD submissions, students may upload supplemental electronic files as part of their thesis or dissertation. These files are considered appendix items, and an appendix page must be included as part of the thesis and should be numbered accordingly. This page should include brief information about the supplemental file(s), such as “Appendix A: Interview Transcriptions,” and a brief description of the material.
• The thesis or dissertation itself should be understandable without the supplemental appendix materials.
• As part of the thesis, it is the responsibility of the director of research and committee to review and approve appendix materials.

Submission Service Heading link Copy link

Submission service.

No. Departmental format review is an independent process, and your department may require either a paper or electronic copy of your thesis for review.

Submission Final Date Heading link Copy link

Submission final date.

Deposit deadlines are listed on the Graduate College’s Academic Calendar. Thesis Office traffic increases prior to deadlines, so it may take the Graduate College several days to reply to an electronic submission.  Keep in mind that revisions may still be required before your thesis is finalized by the Graduate College.  Additional Forms/Payments/Receipt should be received by the Graduate College Thesis Office by the thesis deposit deadline of your intended graduation term.  Any format corrections to the ETD after you have submitted it must be completed by the date given to you by the Graduate College after the initial review of the submission.

• Academic Calendar
• Additional Forms/Payments/Receipt

Thesis Acceptence Heading link Copy link

Thesis acceptence.

Your deposit will be confirmed in an email from the Graduate College Thesis Office after a correctly formatted thesis has been accepted and all required additional materials have been received.

Thesis Paper Copy Heading link Copy link

Thesis paper copy.

Effective with submissions for Fall 2011 and forward only electronic submissions will be accepted.

ETD Location Heading link Copy link

Etd location.

Following acceptance, your document will be electronically available via UIC Indigo. Doctoral dissertations will also be listed in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) database, the most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses in the world.

Department Copy Heading link Copy link

Department copy.

No. The library does not provide a print copy of your thesis to your department.  A printable PDF version of your thesis or dissertation will be available through the UIC Indigo web site.  However, your department may still require you to directly provide it with a print copy.

Thesis Contact Heading link Copy link

Thesis contact.

Please contact the Graduate College Thesis Office at [email protected] or 312-996-3958.

Copyright Heading link Copy link

The copyright to a thesis belongs to the student, according to the University’s General Rules. As a condition of being awarded the degree, however, the student grants the University the non-exclusive right “to retain, use and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis, together with the right to require its publication for archival use.”

• University’s General Rules

Intellectual Property Heading link Copy link

Intellectual property.

Please contact the University’s Office of Technology Management.

• UIC Office of Technology Management

Copyright Register Heading link Copy link

Copyright register.

You may register your copyright directly through the United States Copyright Office.

• United States Copyright Office

Registration Requirement Heading link Copy link

Registration requirement.

No. There are, however, certain benefits to registering your copyright. The U.S. Copyright Office provides a thorough explanation of these benefits.

Copyright Retention Heading link Copy link

Copyright retention.

It could be possible for you to negotiate which rights you transfer to a publisher before you sign a publishing agreement. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has developed an author addendum that students may find useful in negotiating the rights that they transfer.

• SPARC Author Addendum

Previously Copyrighted Material Use Heading link Copy link

Previously copyrighted material use.

The Graduate College does not advise students on what can or cannot be considered “fair use.” Students are urged to consult the U.S. Copyright Office’s explanation of “fair use.” Also, consult with your advisor and Director of Graduate Studies. Students may find the following resources helpful in making their own determination–and documenting that determination–of whether permission is required for the use of previously copyrighted material in a thesis:

• U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index

Protection of Anothers Copyright Heading link Copy link

Protection of anothers copyright.

Did you create the material? If not, you will need to identify the owner of the work’s copyright and determine whether the work’s copyright protection has expired. You may find the following publication of the U.S. Copyright Office helpful:

• How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work (PDF)

No Longer Owning Copyright Heading link Copy link

No longer owning copyright.

Yes. If your work has been published, you may have transferred the copyright to the publisher. Check your publishing agreement: if the publisher owns the copyright to your work, you will need to request permission to reprint it in your thesis and elsewhere.

Sample Permission Request Letter Heading link Copy link

Sample permission request letter.

Yes, a detailed example of the content that should be included in the permission request letter is provided on page 4 of A Student’s Guide to Copyrights and Fair Use   (see “Copyright”) a publication of the Office of Technology Management.

• A Student’s Guide toCopyrights and Fair Use

Permission Help Heading link Copy link

Permission help.

The Graduate College does not provide such assistance. Please note that it remains the student’s responsibility to determine what material requires copyright clearance.

Thesis Requirements Heading link Copy link

Thesis requirements.

Yes, an abstract is required of all theses and dissertations. The abstract must be written in English and will be submitted in a text field in the electronic submission process. There is no word limit although it is strongly recommended to keep the length to approximately 350 words.

Thesis Requirement List Heading link Copy link

Thesis requirement list.

See the Graduate College ETD format page.

• ETD Format Page

Deposit Process Heading link Copy link

Deposit process.

Upon final deposit, the thesis becomes part of the student’s academic record. No changes may be made to the thesis or dissertation after it has been approved by the Graduate College Thesis Office.

Degree Conferral Heading link Copy link

Degree conferral.

Students graduate in the three times a year, at the end of terms: Spring (May), Summer (August), and Fall (December).

Thesis Release Options Heading link Copy link

Thesis release options.

Submission of an electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) allows you a choice of the timing of the release of your thesis and the audience to whom your thesis is released.

During the creation of your ETD submission profile, you will have the opportunity to select one of three options for the release of your work.   Note that these options apply to UIC Indigo only.

• Option 1—Open Access: The thesis or dissertation will be publicly available through UIC Indigo soon after the date of degree conferral at the end of the graduation period for which the thesis or dissertation is submitted.
• Option 2—U of I Only: Access to the thesis or dissertation through UIC Indigo will be restricted to members of the University of Illinois community for a period of 2 years from the date of degree conferral of the graduation period for which the thesis or dissertation is submitted. The thesis or dissertation will also be available through the University Library’s Interlibrary Loan service during this period of time, after which the thesis or dissertation will become publicly available through UIC Indigo.
• Option 3—Closed Access: Access to the thesis or dissertation will be restricted such that it will not be available to anyone for a period of 2 years from the date of degree conferral of the graduation period for which the thesis or dissertation is submitted. Only author name and title information will be available during this period of time, after which the thesis or dissertation will become publicly available through UIC Indigo.

Restricted Access Extension Heading link Copy link

Restricted access extension.

Yes. Options for restricting the release of your ETD (Option 2—U of I only; Option 3—Closed access) are renewable in 2-year increments. It is the student’s responsibility to initiate a petition before the two year period is to end, including all justifications. Otherwise, the ETD automatically becomes open access on UIC Indigo at that time.

Change or Renew Release Option Heading link Copy link

Change or renew release option.

After the date of degree conferral of the graduation period for which your ETD is submitted, you may contact the Graduate College Thesis Office to change or renew your ETD release option.

Special Considerations Restriction Heading link Copy link

Special considerations restriction.

The three release options described above will accommodate the need to postpone publication for most UIC graduate students. However, due to publication norms in some disciplines, the Graduate College understands that occasionally students may wish to request other arrangements.

Petitioning an alternative release option for the ETD

• Students wishing to pursue other release options must make a formal request in writing via the Graduate College petition process.
• Students may petition for U of I Only Indefinitely release, in which access to the thesis or dissertation through UIC Indigo will be restricted to members of the University of Illinois community indefinitely. The thesis or dissertation will also have limited availability to off-campus users through the University Library’s Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
• Students should provide a clear justification of why distribution of their work should be limited.
• Completely limiting access indefinitely will be considered only in very exceptional circumstances.

Offering availability to the University of Illinois community as well as limited availability through ILL is consistent with the distribution practices of paper theses and dissertations. Before ETD, paper theses and dissertations were bound and catalogued by the University Library. These manuscripts are available for loan through the Library and are also available to off-campus users via Interlibrary Loan.

Submitting an ETD for deposit while a petition is under review

After submitting the petition to the Graduate College:

• Students should submit their ETD for review and deposit by creating an ETD submission profile and selecting from one of the three release options offered.
• The thesis or dissertation will be withheld from release into the UIC Indigo repository until the petition has been reviewed and a decision made.
• After the thesis/dissertation is released into UIC Indigo, it will become available according to the release option determined during the petition process.

Request Thesis Withheld for Patent Review Heading link Copy link

Request thesis withheld for patent review.

A student may request to have a thesis or dissertation withheld from public release while patentability is assessed by completing a Thesis Withholding Request Form and submitting it to the Office of Technology Management  (OTM) prior to deposit.

OTM will review the student’s request and notify the Graduate College Thesis Office that a thesis is to be withheld. Withholding a thesis for a patent review does not affect graduation or thesis deposit; all students are required to complete their thesis deposit by the deposit deadline.

• OTM Thesis Withholding Page

Request Patent Review Heading link Copy link

Request patent review.

After submitting the Thesis Withholding Request Form to the Office of Technology Management (OTM), you may create your ETD submission profile and select from one of the three release options offered. Your thesis will be withheld from release into the UIC Indigo repository until the release is approved by OTM. After the thesis is released into UIC Indigo, it will become available according to the release option you chose during the ETD submission process.

Indigo Deposit Agreement Heading link Copy link

Indigo deposit agreement.

All students depositing an ETD at the University of Illinois at Chicago are asked to read and agree to the UIC Indigo deposit agreement. Basically, your agreement to this non-exclusive license allows UIC Indigo to make your ETD available according to the release option you choose during ETD submission and to make backup copies of your ETD or to migrate it to future file formats as necessary for preservation purposes. Students retain the copyright to their own work.

ProQuest/UMI Agreement Heading link Copy link

Proquest/umi agreement.

ProQuest provides several useful services for the University, including producing the microfilm copy of your dissertation.

Thesis & Dissertation Contacts Heading link Copy link

Jim kollenbroich.

• Cambridge Libraries

Physical & Digital Collections

Theses & dissertations: home, access to theses and dissertations from other institutions and from the university of cambridge.

This guide provides information on searching for theses of Cambridge PhDs and for theses of UK universities and universities abroad. 

For information and guidance on depositing your thesis as a cambridge phd, visit the cambridge office of scholarly communication pages on theses here ., this guide gives essential information on how to obtain theses using the british library's ethos service. .

On the last weekend of October, the British Library became the victim of a major cyber-attack. Essential digital services including the BL catalogue, website and online learning resources went dark, with research services like the EThOS collection of more than 600,000 doctoral theses suddenly unavailable. The BL state that they anticipate restoring more services in the next few weeks, but disruption to certain services is now expected to persist for several months. For the latest news on the attack and information on the restoration of services, please follow the BL blog here:  Knowledge Matters blog  and access the LibGuide page here:  British Library Outage Update - Electronic Legal Deposit - LibGuides at University of Cambridge Subject Libraries

A full list of resources for searching theses online is provided by the Cambridge A-Z, available here .

University of Cambridge theses

Finding a cambridge phd thesis online via the institutional repository.

The University's institutional repository, Apollo , holds full-text digital versions of over 11,000 Cambridge PhD theses and is a rapidly growing collection deposited by Cambridge Ph.D. graduates. Theses in Apollo can be browsed via this link . More information on how to access theses by University of Cambridge students can be found on the access to Cambridge theses webpage.   The requirement for impending PhD graduates to deposit a digital version in order to graduate means the repository will be increasing at a rate of approximately 1,000 per year from this source.   About 200 theses are added annually through requests to make theses Open Access or via requests to digitize a thesis in printed format.

Locating and obtaining a copy of a Cambridge PhD thesis (not yet available via the repository)

Theses can be searched in iDiscover .  Guidance on searching for theses in iDiscover can be found here .   Requests for consultation of printed theses, not available online, should be made at the Manuscripts Reading Room (Email:  [email protected] Telephone: +44 (0)1223 333143).   Further information on the University Library's theses, dissertations and prize essays collections can be consulted at this link .

Researchers can order a copy of an unpublished thesis which was deposited in print form either through the Library’s  Digital Content Unit via the image request form , or, if the thesis has been digitised, it may be available in the Apollo repository. Copies of theses may be provided to researchers in accordance with the  law  and in a manner that is common across UK libraries.  The law allows us to provide whole copies of unpublished theses to individuals as long as they sign a declaration saying that it is for non-commercial research or private study.

How to make your thesis available online through Cambridge's institutional repository

Are you a Cambridge alumni and wish to make your Ph.D. thesis available online? You can do this by depositing it in Apollo the University's institutional repository. Click here for further information on how to proceed.    Current Ph.D students at the University of Cambridge can find further information about the requirements to deposit theses on the Office of Scholarly Communication theses webpages.

UK Theses and Dissertations

Electronic copies of Ph.D. theses submitted at over 100 UK universities are obtainable from EThOS , a service set up to provide access to all theses from participating institutions. It achieves this by harvesting e-theses from Institutional Repositories and by digitising print theses as they are ordered by researchers using the system. Over 250,000 theses are already available in this way. Please note that it does not supply theses submitted at the universities of Cambridge or Oxford although they are listed on EThOS.

Registration with EThOS is not required to search for a thesis but is necessary to download or order one unless it is stored in the university repository rather than the British Library (in which case a link to the repository will be displayed). Many theses are available without charge on an Open Access basis but in all other cases, if you are requesting a thesis that has not yet been digitised you will be asked to meet the cost. Once a thesis has been digitised it is available for free download thereafter.

When you order a thesis it will either be immediately available for download or writing to hard copy or it will need to be digitised. If you order a thesis for digitisation, the system will manage the process and you will be informed when the thesis is available for download/preparation to hard copy.

See the Search results section of the  help page for full information on interpreting search results in EThOS.

EThOS is managed by the British Library and can be found at http://ethos.bl.uk . For more information see About EThOS .

World-wide (incl. UK) theses and dissertations

Electronic versions of non-UK theses may be available from the institution at which they were submitted, sometimes on an open access basis from the institutional repository. A good starting point for discovering freely available electronic theses and dissertations beyond the UK is the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) , which facilitates searching across institutions. Information can also usually be found on the library web pages of the relevant institution.

The DART Europe etheses portal lists several thousand full-text theses from a group of European universities.

The University Library subscribes to the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses  (PQDT) database which from August 31 2023 is accessed on the Web of Science platform.  To search this index select it from the Web of Science "Search in" drop-down list of databases (available on the Documents tab on WoS home page)

PQDT includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations, representing 700 leading academic institutions worldwide from 1861 to the present day. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The University Library only subscribes to the abstracting & indexing version of the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database and NOT the full text version.  A fee is payable for ordering a dissertation from this source.   To obtain the full text of a dissertation as a downloadable PDF you can submit your request via the University Library Inter-Library Loans department (see contact details below). NB this service is only available to full and current members of the University of Cambridge.

Alternatively you can pay yourself for the dissertation PDF on the PQDT platform. Link from Web of Science record display of any thesis to PQDT by clicking on "View Details on ProQuest".  On the "Preview" page you will see an option "Order a copy" top right.  This will allow you to order your own copy from ProQuest directly.

Dissertations and theses submitted at non-UK universities may also be requested on Inter-Library Loan through the Inter-Library Loans department (01223 333039 or 333080, [email protected] )

• Last Updated: Dec 20, 2023 9:47 AM
• URL: https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/theses

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Dissertations and Theses: A Finding Guide: Cornell Theses

• Introduction
• Cornell Theses
• Non-Cornell Theses
• Open Access, etc.
• Cornell Dissertation Guidelines

Search ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global [PQDTG]

Nearly all Ithaca-campus Cornell doctoral dissertations are available in print form or on microfilm in one of the Cornell University Libraries. Some dissertations are now available online as well. Copies of masters theses and undergraduate honors theses are more fugitive, but some are also available at Cornell.

Recommended approach: Search  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global [PQDTG] .

For Cornell faculty, staff, and students, some Cornell dissertations may be available as digitized full text in PDF format for immediate free download. Do not search Dissertation Abstracts ; all these records and more are now in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

The full text of some Cornell dissertations is available online in PQDTG beginning with June 1954; a few pre-1954 dissertations are also available online. However, before 2009, many Cornell dissertations were not digitized. Since 2009, all Cornell dissertations--with the exception of embargoed titles--are also available as full-text online PDFs in the eCommons Cornell Theses and Dissertations collection (see the embargo discussion below). Anyone, including Cornell faculty, can purchase a scanned copy (PDF) of a dissertation, including their own, by using the Order a copy button on a citation in the search results or on the document record page for an individual dissertation.

This ProQuest LibGuide provides searching tips and lists searchable fields in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Check Cornell's Catalog

Searching and browsing:.

• The Catalog lists the dissertations available in the Cornell University Library. Note that some records do not have subject headings. These records are searchable by title and author words.
• The Thesis Distribution List is a useful aid for browsing Cornell theses by general subject. It shows the Library of Congress call number assigned to Cornell theses for each degree program on campus and which library houses that department's theses.

Coverage Limitations:

Some dissertation information is missing from our Catalog:

• the newest print dissertations that the library hasn't received yet or that are in the process of being bound and cataloged.
• some pre-1918 dissertations that are not cataloged (see the microfilm guide below for access to these titles).

Strategies for browsing theses records that lack subject headings:

Many theses and dissertations are organized by degree program using a general Library of Congress Classification.

For example, theses in the field of mathematics will begin with the call number Thesis QA 10 . Thesis Distribution List  for a list of degree programs with call number classifications. Knowing this classification, you can construct a call number browse in the online catalog to retrieve a list of theses by thesis call number. --> To browse a thesis call number classification, do a Call Number search in the Catalog . Enter the term Thesis and add the first two letters of the classification. Do not enter the number . For example, to find Thesis QA 10 , enter Thesis QA .

Important note:

After entering the Thesis 2-letter classification, it is usually necessary to scroll down or move forward through a number of pages to see all the theses classified in in a given subject area. Further, theses starting with the same letters but different numbers (QA 10 and QA 70, for example), may sort out of numerical order in the call number browse. In general, theses with the same beginning call number are sorted in chronological order from oldest to newest; the next part of the call number after Thesis QA 10, for example, is the year of the thesis (i.e., Thesis QA 10 1997...).

We also have a set of thesis catalog cards organized by department in a cabinet located in the hallway of the 106 Olin staff area. The department serves as a rough subject guide for these dissertations. This card set covers approximately 1918 up to about 1987. Cards are filed in chronological order within each department.

The print thesis collection in Uris Library is currently shelved on Level 3B before the Q to QA regular-sized volumes. Check with the library staff for the thesis shelving locations in other libraries (Mann, ILR, Fine Arts, etc.).

Weill Medical School Dissertations:

For citations to dissertations at Weill, select Tri-Institutional (Tri-I) Library Catalog from the  Weill Library advanced search page .

Citations and abstracts for Weill dissertations may also be found in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global (mentioned earlier) for 1957 to date.

Finding the Newest Dissertations/Theses

Beginning with 2017, the first place to check for newer Cornell dissertations is the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global (PQDTG) . Graduating students submit digital copies of their Cornell dissertations to ProQuest using the ETD Administrator submission tool. ProQuest's turn-around time typically averages about 4 to 6 weeks from receipt to online publication. A pre-published copy of the full text along with the metadata is delivered to the university repository (Cornell Theses and Dissertations collection in eCommons) within several hours of a submission being released to ProQuest for publication in PQDTG.

Although the full text of many dissertations is available via ProQuest, coverage in ProQuest is not complete prior to 2017.

The Cornell Theses and Dissertations collection in eCommons holds digital versions of many Cornell dissertations completed since about 2004, as well as a few earlier ones. Since 2009, Cornell dissertations have been routinely added to eCommons.

Here is brief timeline of the eCommons deposit history:

• Before 2004 : Digital versions of dissertations and theses (ETDs) were not routinely deposited in eCommons.
• 2004 to 2008 : Students may choose to deposit their own work to eCommons directly.
• 2009 to 2016 : Students submitted their ETDs to The Graduate School who then passed them to the library.
• 2017 to the present : Students submit their dissertations to ProQuest first and ProQuest then delivers the digital version to the library to be added to eCommons.

Exceptions:

• Authors may specify an embargo. Until 2017, this was five years, by default, renewable upon request. Starting in 2017, the maximum initial embargo is two years. Permission to view dissertations that are closed in eCommons may be requested by contacting the author, or a print copy may be requested through Cornell Interlibrary Lending .
• Some ETDs are withheld entirely to allow time for patent applications to be completed. See Exception for dissertations embargoed or withheld for patent reasons below.

Most embargoed dissertations still have a record describing the dissertation in eCommons, but it is not possible to view the full text of the dissertation until the access restriction or embargo has expired. If access to a thesis is restricted in this way, users will see "Access to Document Restricted" under the document thumbnail image. Below this will be a field labeled "No Access Until," which indicates the date when the full text of the thesis will be accessible. If the "No Access Until" field does not appear, the full text of the dissertation is available immediately. If there is a problem accessing a Cornell dissertation in eCommons after the embargo date has passed, contact Michael Engle at Olin Library Reference for assistance.

Exception for dissertations embargoed or withheld for patent reasons:

For Cornell dissertations that are being withheld or embargoed for patent reasons (dissertations that are unavailable in any format, print or online), verification that the dissertation exists can be obtained from the Center for Technology Licensing (CTL) . CTL has an in-house database that is not publicly available where this information resides. These dissertations have no records in either ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global or in our Library catalog, although citations to them may appear elsewhere online.

Recent dissertations not yet available online, but available in print format:

If a patron needs to read a dissertation and the full text is not yet available in Cornell Theses and Dissertations collection in eCommons , check the Library Catalog for a record with the location of a print copy or copies.

If the print copy is so new that it is not yet been processed, and there is no record in the catalog, the reference staff will contact Library Technical Services (LTS) to check on its availability. These unbound dissertations can be moved by LTS from storage to the Rare and Manuscript Collections Reading Room for use.

To help in tracking the newest dissertations, here is how the library processes new print dissertations: For many years the library has received two print copies of each dissertation--archival and circulating. We received copies of these unbound dissertations about six weeks after the conferral of degrees. The circulating copy was sent for microfilming by ProQuest. After microfilming, the archival copy that remained here and the returned circulating copy were paired and sent to our bindery, seventy-five titles every two weeks. Turnaround time was about two weeks (but note the changes in turnaround time due to the pandemic, below). We then cataloged them in the order that they were bound, usually in alphabetical order. The archival copy went to the Rare and Manuscript Collections section of the Library Annex. The circulating copy went to the stacks.

As of August 2020, moving to e-only for Cornell dissertations (no print copies) was being discussed in the Thesis and Dissertations Advisory Group in the Library. In the meantime, as of November 2020, the library was still receiving and processing print copies of Cornell dissertations, although the processing of these print copies has been understandably slowed by the restrictions on in-person work in Olin Library due to the pandemic.

Advanced Degrees Conferred (ADC)

Advanced Degrees Conferred is a list of all the graduate degrees granted at Cornell since 1932. ADC lists dissertations when required for the degree; there have been degrees that do not require a dissertation or thesis. This list is published by The Graduate School three times per year -- for the January, May, and August degree-granting events. The printed version, covering 1932 through 2010 is organized by the degree granted: Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Arts, Master of Science, Master of Arts in Teaching, Master of Engineering; the order has varied over time. If you are trying to verify information for an individual dissertation title or author in a given year, you may need to look at all three lists in the print version.

Use Advanced Degrees Conferred to verify dissertation authors, titles, years, degree awarded, and departments. Additional information may be available (i.e., thesis advisors).

Print version (1932 - 2010) . Call number: Olin Reference Z 5055 .U5 C81 + [called Candidates for Advanced Degrees from 1932 - 1943]. Online version (May 2011 to recent) . The link to the online version, https://intranet.gradschool.cornell.edu/data-solutions/operational-reports/degree-reports/ , requires Cornell authentication followed by re-entering this URL. Links to individual PDFs on this Degree Reports page are listed in the "Advanced Degrees Conferred (PDF)" section. Currently available PDFs start with the January 2011 conferral date and end with August 2020.

Updated 22 January 2024. MOE

Finding the Oldest Dissertations/Theses

The oldest (pre-1932) cornell dissertations: identifying and locating:.

• A two-volume printed list of the known theses from 1871 through 1911 is shelved behind the Olin Reference desk in ready reference : The call number is Olin Ref Z 5055 .U5 C809+.
• 1911-1923 : Film 8229 is shelved at the Library Annex. (It was previously shelved in the microfilm section of the Microform Area on the Olin B level). Film 8229 is the call number of the Cornell University Dissertations Microfilm Project which consists of 59 reels containing 410 dissertations submitted from 1911 to 1923. Each thesis is identified by a reel number and a thesis number. For example the call number "Film 8229 reel 1 no.10" is the tenth thesis on reel 1 of this microfilm set. These 410 theses have individual records in the Cornell Library Catalog and are searchable by author and title. An archival print version of nearly all these dissertations is also kept at the Library Annex; these versions can be paged from the Annex by Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections staff.

Another resource for identifying older Cornell dissertations and theses (including undergraduate theses which were not distinguished from advanced degree theses in the early days) is the  Cornell University Library Theses Records, 1872-1940 , Collection # 13/4/896 in the University Archives in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections on the 2B level of Kroch Library. The catalog record gives this description: "Manuscript volumes listing authors and titles of their work; lists of candidates; shelf list; and related records of theses work at the University."

The full text of some Cornell dissertations, especially those dating from the 1890s through 1922, are available in the  Hathi Trust Digital Library . Online access to the full text may be limited to individually authenticated Cornell users. Use the Log In button to sign in.

Finding Masters Theses and Undergraduate Honors Theses and Papers

Professional degree in mechanical engineering project papers.

The full text of Papers written for the Professional Degree in Mechanical Engineering is available in eCommons@Cornell .

ILR Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations, 1946-2006

On the Digital Collections@ILR website, Catherwood Library hosts ILR School Theses and Dissertations: A Listing , an online bibliography of masters theses and doctoral dissertations that is searchable and browsable. Cornell Library Catalog . -->

Masters of Professional Studies Theses

Theses for MPS (Masters of Professional Studies) programs that are shelved in Mann Library and the Library Annex (for older titles) have M.P.S. in the notes field along with the phrase "project report".  To browse a list of these MPS theses , go to the  Catalog  and enter this All Fields search: "m.p.s." and "project report". Over 1,000 MPS theses are listed, primarily from 1978 to date.

The Africana Library maintains a searchable database of all the theses for the Masters of Professional Studies Program at the Africana Studies and Research Center since 1973. Each thesis has an entry that gives bibliographical info as well as committee chairperson, degree date, call number, and an abstract.

Locating Cornell Undergraduate Theses

Information on a collection of College of Arts and Sciences undergraduate honors theses held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections is available from this catalog record: College of Arts and Sciences Honors Theses . Click on the Finding aid link in the Availability box to get a full author and title list for the honors theses in this collection (College of Arts and Sciences honors theses, 1978-2019, Collection Number: 14-4-4115).

eCommons@Cornell has the full text online for some undergraduate honors theses . Coverage begins in 2006. The following colleges and schools have separately searchable sections in eCommons:

• College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (highest number of honors theses)
• College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
• College of Arts and Sciences
• College of Engineering
• College of Human Ecology
• School of Industrial and Labor Relations
• Science of Earth Systems (SES)

Some undergraduate honors theses are individually listed in our Catalog . Olin and Uris own relatively few of these; other libraries have more. Using the All Fields search, enter "honors thesis" and Cornell.

Access to additional Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections holdings of undergraduate theses:

• The New York State College of Human Ecology Honors Theses,1970- finding aid lists honors theses titles and authors for the print copies held in RMC (Kroch Library Rare & Manuscript Archives Collection # 23-11-3264) for the years 1970-1975, 1982, and 1986 to date.
• The finding aid for Department of History senior honors theses, 1978-2007 . Limited to honors theses under Michael Kammen's direction. (Kroch Library Rare & Manuscript Archive Collection # 14-17-3649).
• Department of Government honors theses, 1991- . (Kroch Library Rare & Manuscript Archive Collection # 14-16-3477). A finding aid for this collection of Government undergraduate theses.
• The Division of Nutritional Sciences Honors Theses, 1974-2015 finding aid lists honors theses titles and authors for the CD-ROM copies held in RMC. (Kroch Library Rare & Manuscript Archives Collection # 29-6-3419).
• While not honors theses, RMC has digitized a selection of papers written by Cornell undergraduates for Mary Beth Norton's class (2006-2017) on aspects of the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials along with background information, commentary, and a precis by Professor Norton for each paper in this online collection.

The Fine Arts Library has two categories of undergraduate theses in print form: Bachelor of Architecture theses (NA 38) and senior honors City and Regional Planning theses (NA 9002). These do not circulate because there are no additional copies at the University. To find catalog records for the B.Architecture theses, search B.Arch in All Fields and then limit to Theses in the results.

Catherwood Library . The Digital Collections@ILR lists a collection of "student works" . The full text is available for download from each entry. Coverage begins in 2000, but is extensive beginning in 2013.

Requests by Cornell Alumni for their Own Dissertations or Masters Theses

Cornell graduates who want to request an electronic copy of their own dissertation can contact Author School Relations to receive author pricing, by phoning 1-800-521-0600 ext. 77020 or emailing [email protected] . (Outside the U.S. and Canada? Contact ProQuest directly for assistance.)

Alumni wishing to purchase a reproduction of a Cornell master's thesis can request a scanned copy by e-mailing [email protected]. More information is on RMC's Reproductions & Permissions page .

Requests for Cornell Dissertations or Theses by non-Cornellians

The borrowing option for non-cornellians:.

Patrons from outside Cornell wishing to borrow a copy of a Cornell PhD thesis should check our interlibrary loan service page . Individuals wishing to borrow a thesis must work through the ILL service at their local library.

The Purchase Option for non-Cornellians:

Cornell dissertations from June 1954 to the present are available for purchase from ProQuest only. Patrons wishing to purchase a reproduction of a Cornell Ph.D. dissertation that is too old to be handled by UMI Dissertation Express (pre-June 1954), or any Cornell master's thesis, can request a scanned copy by e-mailing [email protected]. More information is on RMC's Reproductions & Permissions page .

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• Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 2:22 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/dissertations

Copying Oxford theses

Anyone consulting a physical Oxford thesis is required to sign a copyright declaration. This states that you recognise that the thesis’ copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the author’s prior consent. Some Oxford theses cannot be consulted without the author's permission. Permission may be in the form of a signed letter, or an email sent from a verifiable (ie institutional) email address.

Digital copies

You can request digital copies of theses held by the libraries. The author’s permission is always required. Please contact [email protected] for a permissions form. Scanning is carried out by the Mediated Copying team at the Weston Library. A scan of a whole thesis costs £100. 

Many Oxford theses held in digital form by the libraries are available for download via the Oxford Research Archive (ORA) . Where ORA holds a digital copy of a thesis but it is not yet available for download – due to an embargo period or other restriction – a record for the thesis will exist in ORA, and you can request access via the ORA contact form.

The request will be passed to the author for permission to share a digital copy with you under the ORA terms of use. 

Finding theses

University of sydney theses, higher degree by research theses.

We hold theses written by the University’s Higher Degree by Research (PhD or Masters by Research) students in our collections.

You can find a University of Sydney thesis by searching the  Library catalogue . Select the “Advanced search” and then select “USYD Theses” from the “Material type” dropdown menu.

You can also find digital theses by searching directly in the Sydney eScholarship repository .

Access a digital or digitised thesis

Many of the University’s digital and digitised theses are openly available for download through the Sydney eScholarship repository .

Theses marked “University of Sydney Access” are only available to current University staff and students. Libraries and private researchers can request to purchase a copy of a University of Sydney Access only thesis for AUD$18.50 (incl. GST, within Australia) or AUD$40.00 (international requests).

To purchase a digital thesis, you need to complete one of the relevant request forms below and submit it to [email protected] :

• Individuals requesting a thesis, or library requesting on behalf of an individual
• Libraries requesting a copy to be included in their collection

All requests for copies of material held at the University of Sydney Library must comply with the  Copyright Act of 1968 .

Access a hard copy thesis

Theses that are only available in printed format can be viewed in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library , Level 1, Fisher Library.

We are currently running a project to digitise hardcopy theses. You can request an update to find out where a particular thesis is in our digitisation queue by emailing [email protected] .

We don’t digitise theses on request.

Honours or postgraduate coursework theses

Search for an honours or postgraduate coursework thesis in the repository , then use the filters on the left side of the results page to narrow by “Type”.

You can also search the Honours and Postgraduate Coursework theses collection for a faculty, school or discipline (if available).

There are limited numbers of honours theses in the Sydney eScholarship repository as we have strict requirements for submission of honours theses . If you can't find the thesis you're looking for, we suggest contacting the relevant faculty office.

Theses from other Australian and New Zealand universities

Find a thesis from other Australian or New Zealand universities by searching:

• Australian theses via Trove
• Libraries Australia for Higher Degree theses awarded from 1989 onwards
• Education Research Theses for citations and abstracts from theses submitted from 1919 onwards.

If you’re interested in a thesis that isn't available online, you can request the item through our Resource Sharing Service .

International theses

For theses written and submitted at universities outside of Australia, try the following resources:

• Open Access Theses and Dissertations
• DART-Europe E-theses Portal
• British Library Electronic Digital Thesis Online Service (EThOS)
• EBSCO open dissertations
• French Thesis-On-Line Repository
• History Online – postgraduate theses in History submitted in the UK since 1995
• Index to Theses – listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations – North American theses
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global

Related information

For more help finding and accessing theses, speak to our friendly library staff.

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Answered By: Dartmouth Libraries Last Updated: Aug 20, 2023     Views: 14395

Try to find the dissertation online:

First, check the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database to see if it is available in full text. Dissertations from 1997 to present are available in full text from ProQuest. In addition, most Dartmouth dissertations from 1993 to the present will be available online in ProQuest.  You may find some pre-1997 dissertations in ProQuest as well.

Dissertations may also be available at no cost from the issuing institution's website. In addition to checking their web site, try using search tools such as Google Scholar or the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations .

If you still haven't found the dissertation, try checking ROAR to see if the university where the dissertation was written has a digital repository. If it does, try searching the repository for the thesis or dissertation.

Find out if the dissertation was published:

Some dissertations are subsequently published by academic presses. A quick way to find out is by searching for the author in WorldCat . Remember, the title of the published book may be different than the dissertation.

Requesting Dissertations:

If the dissertation was submitted to one of the Ivies, try requesting it through Borrow Direct .

Foreign dissertations are often available at the Center for Research Libraries. If you find the dissertation you need in the CRL Dissertation Catalog , you can request it through Interlibrary Loan .

All other requests for dissertations should be made through Interlibrary Loan .

• The Library will first try to borrow the dissertation directly from the holding institution.
• If it is unavailable for loan, the Library will try to purchase an electronic copy from a commercial supplier, such as ProQuest.
• The average cost for a dissertation is $32.  Any costs exceeding $35 will be chargeable to you, provided that you agree to move forward with the purchase and pay the additional charges.

See also the Library's Research Guide for Dissertations & Theses.

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the journal of electronic publishing

Excerpted: electronic theses and dissertations: digitizing scholarship for its own sake.

Permissions : This work is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please contact [email protected] for more information.

For more information, read Michigan Publishing's access and usage policy .

For most scholars, the graduate thesis or dissertation is the first major work of scholarship they produce. To make those works more readily available to other scholars, as well as to save money, many universities and libraries are now making digitized (or electronic) versions available. Following the lead of Virginia Tech, some institutions, moreover, are even beginning to require that all graduate theses and dissertations be submitted and published electronically; some even go so far as to completely eliminate printed copies.

Electronic theses and dissertations, or ETDs, are defined as those theses and dissertations submitted, archived, or accessed primarily in electronic formats. That includes traditional word-processed (or typewritten and scanned) documents made available in Print Document Format (PDF), as well as less-traditional hypertext and multimedia formats published electronically on CD-ROM or on the World Wide Web. In this paper we briefly look at the move toward making theses and dissertations available in electronic formats and discuss some of the proposals that have been advanced for dealing with problems of production, storage, and dissemination of those works.

The Move to ETDs

Many libraries are now in the process of digitizing information in an effort to preserve it and to make it more widely available. The Library of Congress's National Digital Library Project plans to digitize five million items by 2000, and many university, public, and private libraries worldwide are currently working on digitizing their collections as well. The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, is a collection focused specifically on digitized versions of theses, dissertations, and technical papers that began in 1996 at Virginia Tech. The NDLTD reports that more than twenty universities around the world have become official contributing members of the Initiative within just the past year, and nearly twice that number have expressed interest or are taking steps to participate.

Traditional methods of archiving and storing theses and dissertations are inefficient and unwieldy. Many theses and dissertations lie moldering in library basements, with no efficient way for researchers to locate the information that may be contained in them. Further, the time and costs involved in procuring copies of those works may often be prohibitive. One effort to make those works more readily available has been to register them with University Microfilms International (UMI), a commercial service that, according to its Web site (1997), "publishes and archives dissertations and theses; sells copies on demand; and maintains the definitive bibliographic record for over 1.4 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses." Today, however, most theses and dissertations are available from UMI only on paper, microfiche, or microfilm, at prices ranging from $29.50 to $69.50, depending on the format. Copies ordered through UMI's Web site using a credit card arrive in no fewer than four days. Archiving theses and dissertations electronically can help to alleviate some of the problems involved in storage, and making full-text versions available either on the Web or as e-mail attachments would make access almost immediate. Electronic versions on disk, CD-ROM, or other digital electronic media could be cheaper as well. Universities may opt to publish theses and dissertations produced at their own institutions on the World Wide Web, or individual scholars might publish their own works on the Web, thus allowing free access to full texts. Even if libraries decide not to offer the text of the ETD free, they could help scholars by allowing full-text searching. That would allow researchers to be sure that the documents they order or download actually contain the information they seek.

"Many theses and dissertations lie mouldering in library basements, with no efficient way for researchers to locate the information that may be contained in them."

Writing with new technologies has already become more than just plain text; many writers are beginning to take advantage of the flexibility offered by new technology to include multimedia elements such as hypertext links, video and audio, and interactive elements in their electronic publications. And many students want the freedom to experiment with these new forms. One particularly innovative example of a work that would have been impossible without new electronic technologies is the University of Arkansas Online Writing Center , designed by Paula Puffer in fulfillment of her master's thesis requirement in English. That writing center allows students worldwide to submit writing assignments electronically to tutors who will evaluate and critique them online.

More examples of ETDs can be found at the Virginia Tech Library Collection of ETDs or the Directory of ETDs Currently in Progress at the University of Virginia.

Although some schools have allowed students to produce theses and dissertations in non-traditional forms, most still require that students submit them on paper as well, thus either precluding the use of multimedia or hypertextual elements altogether, or else forcing students to, in effect, produce two entirely different works for two entirely different media. As Daniel Eisenberg, assistant to the dean for information technology at Northern Arizona University, noted in a listserv discussion on ETDS,

I had a student who wanted to do a digital edition of a text for a thesis but the university insisted on a paper copy of the digital edition. . . . Almost every dissertation now, in the U.S., is done in some type of digital format. These disks are erased and recycled, or sit in the hands of the new Ph.D. This is a waste of a resource that future generations may well take us to task for. . . . (Eisenberg 1997)

Some scholars fear that as new definitions of "writing" are developed, writers may be seduced into using new technologies to produce documents that offer more sensory appeal than substance. Most ETDs, however, are still produced for print; multimedia applications are used only to enhance or supplement the arguments. One reason is that graduate departments and committees remain fairly conservative so even those scholars who take advantage of electronic formats, including multimedia, hypertext (or hypermedia), and/or virtual reality components, produce theses and dissertations that will be approved by their committees and graduate departments. Simply allowing or requiring that theses and dissertations be submitted electronically, therefore, is unlikely to effect radical change in the substance or the form of those works in the near future.

As electronic technologies develop, however, reading and writing may also change in as-yet-unforeseeable ways. We don't know how much new technologies will change our conception of scholarship. Only by allowing graduate students and their committees the flexibility to experiment with new forms, and by developing guidelines that can sustain change, will we find out.

More Problems to Consider

There are, of course, problems as well as opportunities in allowing or requiring electronic submission, distribution, and archiving of theses and dissertations, including problems of access and distribution , archiving and storage , and copyright and publication issues.

Access and Distribution

In order to access ETDs, people need a computer. And, since reading lengthy works online is still a formidable task unless you have very good eyes, access to high-speed printers (or plenty of time) may also be necessary. Printing large documents, moreover, can still be a costly venture. The cost of paper and toner can add up, and paying a commercial print shop to print out an ETD file can be as costly as (or perhaps more costly than) ordering a printed copy through UMI. Further, ETDs that make heavy use of audio and video may require faster processing speeds and expensive software or hardware. To serve those without Internet access, it may be necessary for librarians or archivists to produce copies on disk or CD-ROM, which could require purchase of high-speed drives to facilitate duplication. Mailing disks or CD-ROM copies, too, takes time, the same amount of time now required to send paper copies. And interactive ETDs (such as the Online Writing Center) cannot easily be converted to paper without subverting the very nature of the author's intentions.

"The move from paper to electronic versions of theses and dissertations has been possible only through expenditures of time and/or money on the part of library and information sciences programs."

Currently, in order to access the full text of a print thesis or dissertation, researchers need to procure it from the library of the university where it was produced, either in person or through interlibrary loan. Some schools, however, do not participate in interlibrary loan, forcing some researchers to travel great distances to access those scholarly works. Where dissertations and theses are archived by UMI, researchers can buy them in print, microfiche, or microfilm formats for a fee.

Electronic publication of theses and dissertations can make access and distribution faster and less expensive for most scholars. NDLTD, for example, makes theses and dissertations available free on the Web, and many libraries and universities offer computer access to the World Wide Web. Most universities also provide printing. As projects like the National Digital Library Project make more information available online, it is likely that the trend toward providing faster, cheaper, and easier public access to ETDs will continue.

ETDs can help to make information more readily available to scholars and researchers by allowing quicker and more thorough search capabilities. For example, the University of Virginia has begun testing and adapting a distributed storage and retrieval system [formerly http://www.ncstrl.org/Dienst/htdocs/Info/ncstrl.html] developed by Jim Davis of Xerox and Carl Lagoze of Cornell University that will allow researchers to use the Web to browse the entire Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations by author, subject, keyword, department, or year of publication. That system will also allow users to search and retrieve chapters or sections of a thesis or dissertation to home in on specific sections that are of interest to them. The NDLTD continues to add to its current base of both participating schools and documents, with more than five hundred selections now available at Virginia Tech alone. Many scholars are already taking advantage of the service: During the 1996-97 academic year at Virginia Tech, ETDs were accessed "almost two orders of magnitude more than the number of circulations of the library copy." (Fox et al. 1997).

Archiving and Storage

In all of the universities participating in the ETDs Initiative, libraries are responsible for maintaining accessibility by ensuring that files produced by outmoded or obsolete applications are translated into newer media as necessary. That has resulted in the creation of new positions or added responsibilities for many library staff members and administrators. The move from paper to electronic versions of theses and dissertations has been possible only through expenditures of time and money on the part of library and information sciences programs. That need for more resources, however, is not unique to ETDs. Libraries are devoting resources to digitizing all kinds of information, not only ETDs, but traditionally published works as well. While some fear that all the work being done to digitize information will be lost with the next major change in technology, in fact, software publishers in recent years have been careful to assure that newer versions of software usually accommodate files produced by older versions. Thus it is not likely that changes in technology will make ETDs inaccessible.

ETDs are easily backed up, so the risk of losing information is minimal. ETDs stored electronically are less likely to be damaged than their print counterparts, since they have no physical form to yellow and decay with age, and since loaning out a copy does not include relinquishing the original. And advances in technology have made possible increases in electronic storage capacity (such as advances in file compression technology and the availability of larger hard drives) that substantially lower costs. The storage potential of libraries may increase exponentially. IBM recently donated a server with four terabytes of hierarchical storage (or 40,000 gigabytes) to the Virginia Tech pilot project on ETDs, "enough for about 40 million average-sized ETDs" (Fox et al. 1997). That one server could accommodate all existing theses and dissertations worldwide in just a fraction of its memory capacity.

Copyright and Publication

Publishers are concerned about the relationship of ETDs to other forms of publication. Often a dissertation becomes the basis for a scholar's first book. While most of those works are considerably revised for publication, some are published with relatively few changes. Even though paper theses and dissertations are available, most academic presses are not as concerned that they represent prior publication, probably because of the barriers of time, distance, and cost. However, the prospect of having full texts available on the World Wide Web, given that the market for scholarly books is very small, may worry some publishers. On the other hand, greater access might be seen as a way to induce readers to preview a book. According to a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (Winkler, 1997), some academic publishers consider online publication to be "great advertising": "For each of our electronic books, we've approximately doubled our sales," says Marney Smyth, electronic-productions editor of the MIT Press. "The plain fact is that no one is going to sit there and read a whole book on line. And it costs money and time to download it."

The National Academy Press has already put nearly 2,000 of its books online, and has found that the electronic publication of some books has boosted sales of paper copies often by as much as two to three times previous levels.

Universities in other countries are also looking at copyright as they move to put theses and dissertations in electronic formats and publish them online. Kerstin Olofsson, head of the Teacher Education Library at Umea universitetsbibliotek in Sweden, writes,

[T]he copyright issues are the most complicated part of the project. I guess you have the same problem in the States, that the author of the thesis or dissertation also sells the rights to it to a commercial publisher as well. So you would have to negotiate with every publisher for each commercially published thesis. Then you have the problem with the other type of dissertation, mostly in science and medicine, which usually are made up of articles already given to scholarly journals. (Olofsson 1997)

To address potential conflicts over copyright, Virginia Tech has established a system where access to an ETD can be delayed temporarily to allow an article or book to be the only source of the author's material. Holding back electronic publication of an ETD can allow the paper publication to come out first. Too, access to an ETD from outside the author's university can be blocked, ensuring the economic incentives required by many publishers (Fox et al. 1997). Those solutions, while not entirely foolproof, nonetheless offer a protection for both authors and publishers concerned with the risks of electronic access to ETDs. Another concern is the use of copyrighted material in an ETD. Scholars had sometimes included graphics and other copyrighted material in their theses and dissertations without acquiring permissions unless the work was accepted for commercial publication. If ETDs are published on the Web, however, authors will need to ensure compliance with copyright law and fair-use guidelines. That may include acquiring permission to use copyrighted material, which can sometimes be costly. Although UMI and other services have long made theses and dissertations available to the public, the access was limited enough that inclusion of copyrighted materials did not seem to have been an issue in most cases. However, copyright issues and fair-use guidelines are being debated hotly in light of the explosion of electronic publishing. (See, for example, the list of pending copyright legislation at http://www.copyright.gov/legislation ). ETD authors must consider the impact of that debate on their ability to use copyrighted materials.

"Most students already prepare their theses or dissertations electronically, using computers and word-processing software."

Formats for ETDs

Most students already prepare their theses or dissertations electronically, using computers and word-processing software. Formats proposed to make ETDs easily viewable through different platforms include the use of PDF (or Print Document Format) files created with Adobe Distiller . That software creates an exact, digitized picture of a document, page by page, including any graphics and fonts. The file can then be downloaded and viewed using the Adobe Reader, available free on the Web. PDF documents retain all formatting and graphics and also allow the author to include links to other sites on the Web or annotations within the article. In addition, Adobe files can be indexed easily and searched by keywords specifically chosen by the author or indexer. PDF documents available on the Web may also be searchable using words or phrases found anywhere within the document, thus greatly facilitating a researcher's task. For larger and more complex documents, Virginia Tech encourages submission of ETDs in LaTeX or TeX format. LaTeX and TeX are device-independent document formatting systems that use PostScript fonts. They are particularly useful for formatting complex mathematical equations in electronic documents. Those files are then converted to PDF format.

ETD-ML, or Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Markup Language, is another format used by Virginia Tech for submission of ETDs. ETD-ML is actually a form of SGML, or Standard Generalized Markup Language, which uses tags to embed formatting codes in a document. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the language of Web documents, is a variety of SGML that uses similar specialized tags. SGML allows for the "exchange of information at any level of complexity among software, hardware, storage and presentation systems (including database management and publishing applications) without regard to the manufacturer's name on the label" (SoftQuad). That makes it portable across platforms. The strength of SGML for publishers is its use of document-type definitions, or DTDs, which allow a publisher to specify exactly what the document will look like by defining tags for that particular document type. The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia already makes available thousands of text files marked up with SGML, which are automatically converted to HTML when accessed by the user so they can be read online with a Web browser such as Netscape.

ETDs are still placed with UMI, giving researchers the option of accessing them in print or microform. While interactive ETDs cannot easily be reproduced with print and microform, those options ensure access to many important works by a wide variety of researchers. UMI now makes electronic versions of journals and other publications available online and via other electronic means, and it is likely that the company will one day provide full-text copies of ETDs as well.

Like print, electronic publication has limitations:

• PDF files can be created and read only with Adobe software. If the Adobe reader becomes the standard for publication of ETDs, there is no guarantee that Adobe will continue to offer it free. That could mean that either scholars will again have to face cost prohibitions or that libraries will have to pursue other means of making ETDs freely available.
• Learning to use markup languages such as SGML adds additional layers of complexity to the already complex task of producing scholarship.
• Access to technology is still limited, limiting the availability of ETDs to some scholars.
• The costs of gearing up, including the costs of training scholars, researchers, and staff to implement the ETD initiative, are substantial.
• Theses such as Paula Puffer's are interactive and cannot be accessed without a computer, modem, and Internet connection. Many scholars may want to include interactive components, CGI-scripting elements (such as HyperNews forums), external links, virtual-reality components (i.e., live MOO conversations), and other elements that are becoming common on Web sites, elements that are not easily archived because they may change with each "reading."
• Access to hardware and software, access to telephone connections, and knowledge of protocols can limit access to important information if it is available only online.

While electronic publication can make works more accessible to students, researchers, and others who lack the time, search capabilities, finances, or other resources to locate them in traditional print formats, the system works only if they have access to the necessary computer resources and know-how.

As we move beyond thinking of scholarship as print-based, however, we need to consider how we make our works of scholarship available. We need to consider how we can foster scholarship that is innovative as well as substantive.

Print forms also have limitations: they cannot include multimedia elements, they cannot include interactive elements, and accessing them through interlibrary loans or repositories such as UMI can be time consuming, expensive, and limiting. Just as the invention of the printing press wrought changes in how scholarship was produced and disseminated, technological innovations are having an impact on our conceptions of reading, writing, research, and publication. Electronic theses and dissertations are only one small part of the move to make information available through electronic means to as wide an audience as possible, and to allow scholars to continue to do what they have always done: participate in the creation of knowledge.

Christian Weisser teaches professional writing, computer-assisted composition, and computer-assisted technical writing at the University of South Florida (USF). He is currently co-editing a book on Electronic Theses and Dissertations. He is a member of the USF Task Force on ETDs, and has delivered presentations on computers and writing at several international conferences. Christian has authored or co-authored several publications in the field of Rhetoric and Composition.

Janice R. Walker is the Coordinator for the Computers and Writing Program at the University of South Florida where she teaches courses in Composition, Professional Writing, Technical Writing, and Expository Writing in the multimedia computer classroom. She has authored several articles on electronic research and documentation, scholarly publishing, and copyright issues. Her book, The Columbia Guide to Online Style (co-authored with Todd Taylor), is scheduled for release in 1998. She is currently working on an article on copyright issues for an upcoming special issue of Computers and Composition Journal.

Works Cited

Eisenberg, Daniel. 1997. "Re: Electronic Dissertations." Digital Libraries Research Mailing List . [email protected]. (23 January). Also at [formerly http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/papers/etds/etdsmail.html] (1 November).

"ETD Initiative Homepage." 1997. http://etd.vt.edu/ (10 October).

Fox, Edward A., et al. 1996. "National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: A Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Unlock University Resources." D-Lib Magazine (September). Also at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september96/theses/09fox.html (18 July 1997).

Fox, Edward A., et al. 1997. "Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: An International Effort Unlocking University Resources." D-Lib Magazine (September). Also at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september97/theses/09fox.html (10 October).

Kipp, Neill A. 1997. "Document Type Definition for Electronic Theses and Dissertations. http://etd.vt.edu/etd/etd-ml/dtdetds.htm (1 November).

Library of Congress. 1997. "National Digital Library Program." http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/dli2/html/lcndlp.html (25 October).

National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. 1997. "NDLTD Project." http://www.ndltd.org/index.htm (1 November).

Networked Computer Science Technical Reports Library. 1997. "A Brief Description of NCSTRL." [formerly http://www.ncstrl.org/Dienst/htdocs/Info/ncstrl.html] (25 October).

Oloffson, Kerstin. "Citing (off-list)." 1997. 24 January 1997. http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/papers/etds/etdsmail.html (27 October).

Puffer, Paula. "Electronic Thesis." 1997. http://ww w.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/papers/etds/etdsmail.html (27 October).

Savage, William. "1986-96 Publishing Stats." Personal e-mail. (21 October 1997).

SoftQuad, Inc. "The SGML Primer." 1995. http://www.sq.com/sgmlinfo/primbody.html (9 November 1997) [Editor's note: Link removed August 2001 because article no longer exists.]

University Microfilms International. 1997. "UMI's Online Dissertation Services." http://www.umi.com/hp/Products/Dissertations.html (9 November). Winkler, Karen J. 1997 "Academic Presses Look to the Internet to Save Scholarly Monographs." 1997. The Chronicle of Higher Education (12 September): A18.

Product of Michigan Publishing , University of Michigan Library • [email protected] • ISSN 1080-2711

WPI Theses & Dissertations: For Students

• For Students
• For Faculty
• Find WPI Theses and Dissertations

Information for Students on Submission Process

Submitting your thesis or dissertation this year?

Please review the Five Steps below to prepare to submit your ETD for approval by your advisor and committee.

• Be sure to check submission deadlines: https://www.wpi.edu/academics/calendar
• For information about researching and writing your thesis or dissertation , please see this guide on research and scholarly publishing for graduate students. 

STEP 1: BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR THESIS OR DISSERTATION

​ S TEP 2: PREPARING YOUR FILES

STEP 3: SUBMITTING YOUR FILES

STEP 4:  GETTING APPROVAL

​ STEP 5: GETTING BOUND COPIES

STEP 6: AFTER SUBMITTING YOUR WORK

STEP 1: BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR THESIS OR DISSERTATION:

• Be sure that you are clear on your advisor's expectations.  
• Consult with your advisor or department about scheduling your defense.  
• Check with your department or advisor on how and when you should get copies of your thesis or dissertation to your committee members before your defense.  
• Present or defend your work . 
• Open to all: default option – maximizes access and impact of your work
• Embargoed: access restricted to WPI only for 1 - 3 years (due to intellectual property, grant, or publication plans); or  no access to your thesis or dissertation by anyone for 1-3 years (due to intellectual property, grant, or publication plans; or pending redaction due to classification or disclosure constraints).   
• Make any necessary changes to your document following your presentation/defense.

STEP 2: PREPARING YOUR FILES:

Recommended document and file formats.   At this time, WPI doesn’t have a required thesis template. Please consult with your advisor or department regarding preferred formats. Your primary documents will be submitted as PDF files. For information on  creating PDF files , please see:  https://helpx.adobe.com/reader/using/create-pdf.html

If you are interested in using LaTeX to create your thesis/dissertation documents, WPI now offers an institutional subscription (standard subscription plan) to Overleaf.  Overleaf is a collaborative LaTeX editor used for writing,editing, and publishing scientific documents. Active faculty, staff, and students can request an Overleaf account by emailing [email protected].  For more information, see: https://hub.wpi.edu/software/637/overleaf    An example of a dissertation template (created by former WPI graduate student Saad Islam) is at:  https://www.overleaf.com/read/smrpckjqfpff

Prepare your complete thesis or dissertation, with  unsigned  title page, converted to PDF. You will upload this file via the ETD Submission Website ( eProjects 2.0) .   Your primary thesis/dissertation document must be submitted as a single PDF file. Please do not break up your document into multiple files. ​

Your title page will contain the following information:  Title of dissertation or thesis; full name of author; degree; department/program; date; advisor's name; co-advisor's name - if applicable; names of committee members - if applicable; name of the head of department/program  - if applicable.  This information will also be used in the submission process through eProjects 2.0. 

Prepare a separate, digitally signed approval form, or a digital copy of your signed signature/title page.  You will submit this online through eProjects 2.0  at the time you submit your thesis or dissertation.    You can download a digital approval form here, instructions for its use, and examples of cover pages:

​​​ Blank Approval Form for Digital Signatures 

Use this form to create a digital Approval Form and collect digital signatures from committee members.

Guide to Approval Form with Digital Signatures 

10 step process for filling out the Digital Approval Form and obtaining digital signatures from your committee members.

Title_Cover_Page_examples_Dissertation 

Title_Cover_page_examples_Thesis 

Supplementary files: You are welcome to attach supplementary files to your ETD when you submit it online.  Your files may be in any file format, but please consider using file formats with a higher probability for long-term preservation .    If you do include supplementary files, such as a computer program simulation, data set, image, or video, be sure your thesis adequately describes it.  For example, for a program or simulation, you might also include any source code with your PDF so that someone could recreate the work later.

Note:  Current file size limit for submission through eProjects is .5GB. If your file is larger, Digital WPI can accept files up to 1GB, please work with [email protected] to submit your file. 

STEP 3: SUBMITTING YOUR FILES:

• Review the process : You will submit your revised thesis or dissertation via the online ETD submission system .   
• Submit your ETD online by going to  (login required) :   https://eprojects.wpi.edu/  
• Required: Enter identifying information about your work, including your name, department, the category of the work (e.g. thesis or dissertation), the title and abstract, and list your advisors. 
• Recommended: Add keywords that describe the topic, methods, or other important ideas reflected in your work.
• Optional: Choose United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) supported by your work. The  17 SDGs are goals defined by the United Nations , used globally to identify information, projects, research, and other activities that address global sustainable development challenges.
• Optional: Specify a  Creative Commons  or other license to specify how your work can be used by others.
• Optional: Specify an embargo period of 1-3 years as described in Step 1, for reasons of intellectual property, grant, or publication plans; or pending redaction due to classification or disclosure constraints.

If you need to modify or manage your ETD submission online before submitting (login required):

• Go to:    https://eprojects.wpi.edu/
• You can modify and manage your thesis files until you submit them for approval .

STEP 4:  GETTING APPROVAL:

• Only submit a revised final draft. Once your ETD is approved you will not be able to make further changes .
• Once submitted, the file goes to your advisor for approval.    
• Email:  [email protected]
• Office:  Daniels Hall

When the Registrar has approved your ETD, you and your advisor will be notified via e-mail.

STEP 5: GETTING BOUND COPIES:

Check with your department to see if they require a bound copy of your thesis or dissertation.  You may wish to retain a bound paper copy of your thesis or dissertation for yourself as well.

To get a bound copy of your thesis or dissertation, contact HF Group Binding Services . Using HF Group's Thesis On Demand service, you can order thesis and dissertation printing directly, online. Thesis On Demand offers a range of cover and printing options. and you can use their online calculator to get an estimate of your costs before placing your order. You can do as many or as few copies as you want.

Once your ETD appears in Digital WPI, you will be able to view, retrieve, download, and share it. Correction and revision   Once a submitted ETD has been accepted, it is considered an academic record and cannot be edited. Any corrections to submitted works should be submitted in the form of a correcting addendum, to be approved by the Dean of Graduate Studies. 

Changing names or other descriptions of submitted works (metadata) The WPI Library routinely corrects, amends, adds, or otherwise revises metadata describing works in Digital WPI, including student works, to enhance accuracy and improve retrievability of the works.  All users of Digital WPI including authors are welcome to suggest such changes by contacting Digital WPI at [email protected]. 

We recognize that personal names used in Digital WPI descriptive information may not reflect preferred, lived, or corrected names. We welcome requests for changes in displayed names in the descriptions of works, from all authors, advisors, or contributors to materials in Digital WPI.  No justification is required for a requestor’s name change to be implemented. The change does not need to reflect the requestor’s past or current legal name(s). 

To request that your name be changed in the description of materials in Digital WPI, email the Digital WPI administrators at [email protected] ) with the following information:

1.    Name(s) currently listed on your works in Digital WPI, and role (ie author, advisor, contributor) 2.    Complete list of materials with the previously used name on them, with a link to each item 3.    The new name that you would like to be used in describing the materials 4.    Whether you want us to retain the previous name in addition to the new name

Once we receive a request, we will change the name as requested on the item record(s). This can usually be done quickly (within a few days or weeks at the most). 

It is also possible for us to add a preferred, new, or lived name but also to retain a previously used name in the metadata for your work.

You are responsible for contacting your coauthors, advisors, or others, if you want them to know about the change(s) you’ve requested. 

Digital WPI administrators will keep a private record of the change(s) made, as part of our archival responsibility, but we will not share this information with others without permission from the requestor.

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STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP SUBMISSION

Students should submit a digital copy of their thesis, dissertation or honors project to be digitally archived in Adams Library Special Collections. Beginning in Spring 2021, these student works are maintained in the DigitalCommons@RIC institutional repository.

Students have the option to make their work accessible to the general public, or to limit access to RIC campus and the RIC community. With their advisor’s approval, students also have the option to place an embargo on their work to prevent all online access for a certain period of time.

To submit, please use the Student Scholarship Submission Form . This form requires you to enter basic information about your thesis or honors project, and then upload the following documents:

• Signed Deposit and Access Agreement Form . This is where you select access options and grant Adams Library Special Collections permission to archive the work.
• PDF or Word Document of your thesis, dissertation or honors project.
• PDF of your approval page, signed by your project advisor(s), committee members, and Department Chair(s).

Questions? Email [email protected] or call 401-456-8380.

FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS

• Honors Projects and Master’s Theses – please see these instructions ( Word  or  PDF Version) with Model Title and Approval pages.
• Doctoral Dissertations - The URI Graduate Manual , Section 11, gives full instructions.

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All SOAS PhD theses can be found through the Library catalogue and this will tell you if there is a digital copy which can be viewed online.

• Search by author or title if you know the details of the particular thesis you would like to see
• To browse our PhD thesis collection enter ‘Thesis’ in the search box and select ‘Classmark’ in the drop-down menu
• To limit your search of theses to a particular subject then click on ‘Advanced’ select ‘Add Search Field’ and enter keywords into the new search box
• If a digital copy of the PhD thesis is available for you to view online there will either be a note in the catalogue record or a separate entry for the digital copy

Using Printed Copies of SOAS PhD Theses

• SOAS keeps printed copies of all PhD Theses and they can be consulted in our Special Collections Reading Room on Level F
• All printed PhD theses need to be ordered before you visit the Reading Room. Once you have found the PhD thesis you need you can fill in an online order form through the ‘Order archive material’ link from the catalogue record of the PhD thesis. Alternatively you can fill in an order form available from the Library Enquiry Desk or Special Collections Reading Room
• Before you consult any SOAS PhD thesis in the Special Collections Reading Room you will be asked to fill in a Data Protection Declaration
• You are permitted to photograph a maximum of 5% of a PhD thesis or one complete chapter (whichever is the greatest) for personal research purposes only

Using Digital Copies of SOAS PhD Theses

• A significant number of SOAS PhD theses have been made available freely online (with permission from the author) through SOAS Research Online since 2011
• You can browse the latest PhD theses via SOAS Research Online or you can search by author or title if you know the details of the thesis you need
• Some PhD theses in SOAS Research Online are restricted for a period of time at the request of the author. They will only become available digitally once this restriction period has expired
• A number of our PhD theses (dated before 2011) are available via the British Library EThOS service. You can search the EThOS database to check if a PhD thesis is available

Finding PhD theses from Other Institutions

To find PhD theses produced at other institutions we recommend you use the following resources

• British Library EThOS Service
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: Global (access via Senate House Library)
• EBSCO Open Dissertations
• DART - Europe E-Theses Portal
• Shodhganga - Indian Theses
• Theses Canada Portal
• SOAS Interlibrary Loan Service
• Other Library Catalogues

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Thesis preparation, submission and examination

Rules and procedures for your thesis.

It is important that you understand your responsibilities and the relevant procedures you need to follow during the thesis submission process.

Nomination of examiners

The University requires nomination and selection of graduate research thesis examiners to be based on the principle that students receive an impartial examination by high-quality examiners in the relevant field of research.

The examiners must not have had any involvement in the preparation of the thesis, as a member of the supervisory panel or as an academic advisor for the student. The University expects all supervisors, faculties and examiners to report all actual or potential conflicts of interest.

The University applies the Conflict of Interest Guidelines [PDF 28MB] of the Australian Council of Graduate Research.

PhD/MPhil students

You should discuss possible examiners with your Principal Supervisor and other supervisors at least three months in advance of your thesis submission date. Your supervisor will contact the possible examiners to ascertain their availability to examine your thesis.

Once confirmed, your supervisor will submit an electronic examiner nomination via the HDR Thesis Examination portal to the Thesis Examination Subcommittee for review and approval. This normally includes a list of:

• Five examiners for a doctoral degree
• Four for a Master of Philosophy degree

You will have to electronically confirm the selection of the nominated examiners.

For further information on the nomination of examiners, see Schedule 2 in the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy.

Master of Research (MRes) students

You should discuss with your Principal Supervisor the names of any persons that you do not wish to examine your thesis at least two months before your expected thesis submission date.

Your supervisor will contact possible examiners to ascertain their availability to examine your thesis. Once confirmed, your supervisor will submit an electronic examiner nomination via the HDR Thesis Examination portal to the Thesis Examination Subcommittee for review and approval.

For further information on the nomination of examiners, see the Master of Research - Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Procedures and Schedule 2 in the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy .

Thesis preparation

Before you submit your thesis, it is important to ensure you are following all content, presentation, formatting, and length requirements. These may vary depending on your faculty, department or examiner’s needs. While your supervisor can guide you, it is ultimately your responsibility to ensure you follow University standards.

Your thesis must showcase the results of your original research during your candidature, with Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) theses requiring a distinct contribution to knowledge.

Unless agreed under a formal Joint or Cotutelle enrolment contract, a student may not submit as the main content of the thesis any work or material which has been previously submitted for any degree successfully completed at Macquarie University or elsewhere. However, they may incorporate that work or material in the thesis if the student specifies the work or material which has been so incorporated. At least half of the work done towards the thesis must be undertaken while formally enrolled as a graduate research student at Macquarie University.

While the presentation of research may vary, it generally includes a written component. Non-written thesis formats and media must be approved by your Faculty Executive Dean.

Your thesis must be written in English and be of satisfactory literary presentation. Theses written in full or in part in another language require approval by the Thesis Examination Subcommittee, which must be sought as soon as possible by your supervisor. If you are on a joint enrolment contract, you will not require separate approval for submission in a language other than English.

Note: The use of Generative AI to wholly generate a research output for examination is prohibited. Text-based Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT fall within the broad definition of contract cheating services according to the TEQSA Act 2011 (Cth), s5. Refer to the ' Using Generative Artificial Intelligence in Research' Guidance Note for further information.

Thesis by publication

A thesis by publication may include relevant papers, such as conference presentations, which have been published, accepted, submitted or prepared for publication for which at least half of the research has been undertaken during your enrolment. The papers must form a coherent and integrated body of work, which focusses on a single thesis project or set of related questions or propositions. The papers are one part of the thesis, rather than a separate component or appendix.

As a general rule, you will need to have enough papers to support the important findings from the research, presented in a logical and coherent way. Most theses by publication have between 2 and 8 papers in combinations of sole and co-authored papers.

You must complete (and submit with your thesis for examination) an  Authorship Contribution Statement  to document the contribution of all authors to each of the proposed or published research papers. This requirement is in accordance with the  Macquarie University Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research and the  Authorship Standard . If there are multiple authors (5+) on the Authorship Statement, the contribution of each author must be noted but the form can be signed only by the student and supervisor (and corresponding author, if not supervisor). You may also choose to include the details of the contribution of all authors in the footnotes/endnotes or cover page for each experimental chapter.

In addition, section 1.6.55 of the Research Training Program (RTP) Guidelines sets out the requirement that the Commonwealth's contribution is acknowledged in research publications by RTP students where related to a research project.

The acknowledgement must include mention of the student's support through an 'Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship'.

An example acknowledgement statement would be:"This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship."

For further information on thesis by publication, see Schedule 1 in the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy and the Examiner Guidelines [PDF 202KB].

Creative component

If you are including a creative component, you must specify its size in relation to the critical component. Creative components must be submitted in a form which enables further examination/re-examination and allows for Library deposit.

Students may also choose to merge their creative and critical components, as in ficto-critical writing or essay films. In this case, you still have to include an explicit critical analysis in written form. Its length is based on Faculty expectations but is often 25,000 words for an MPhil thesis and 50,000 words for a PhD thesis.

For further information on theses with creative components, see Schedule 5 in the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy and the Examiner Guidelines [PDF 202KB].

Relationship between Master of Research (MRes) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The research project undertaken in the MRes is intended as a gateway to your PhD or MPhil project. However, the MRes thesis does not form part of your MPhil or PhD directly but works to help you better understand your research area and demonstrate your research ability.

If your topic for your PhD or MPhil thesis is related to your MRes, you must include a clear statement outlining what work was done for the MRes. If you must include any text or data from your MRes thesis in your PhD or MPhil thesis, you must identify this as such, as it is non-examinable. Failure to do so is a breach of Academic Integrity.

Presentation and formatting

The written component of your thesis should be presented:

• in A4 pdf format
• double or 1.5 spacing
• margins no less than 3cm on the left border, 1.5cm on the right border and 1.5cm on the top and bottom
• pages numbered consecutively

If one of your examiners requests a hard copy of your thesis for examination, you will have to submit a copy with a temporary binding of a stitched and glued soft cover or in hardback form (spiral binding or a loose-leaf binder of the spring-type or screw-type is not acceptable). During binding, the edges should be trimmed.

Preliminary pages

A thesis should incorporate the following pages in order:

• the thesis title
• your names and degrees
• your university department
• date of submission/re-submission.
• If applicable, the name of the organisation, institute or laboratory where the research was conducted
• a table of contents
• a summary of approximately 200-300 words for MRes/MPhil and 300-500 for PhD
• a signed statement [DOCX 16KB] indicating that:
• the work has not been submitted for a higher degree before
• you have referenced all sources and the extent to which you used them
• your Ethics Committee approval and protocol number (if applicable).

Cotutelle students should submit a statement [PDF 115KB] indicating that the thesis is being submitted in accordance with their Cotutelle agreement. If you have completed a thesis by publication , you must also specify your specific contribution to the conception, data collection, analysis and writing of each paper. The contribution of others to the preparation of the thesis or to individual parts of the thesis should also be specified in the thesis.

• Impact of COVID-19 changes on the thesis (if applicable). If you have had to make changes to your research due to the impact of COVID-19, you may want to include a statement [DOCX 28KB] about the impact of COVID-19 in your thesis. Note that this form should be used only to explain changes to the expected experiments or thesis direction. As the standard for thesis award remains the same, this form should not be used to justify the submission of poor quality work.
• Acknowledgements (if applicable).
• The written component of the thesis.

Diagrams, figures and tables

These may vary depending on your department.

These are general suggestions for normal practice:

• Diagrams and figures should be inserted in the appropriate place in the text.
• All figures should include a legend either at the bottom or next to the figures.
• Small tables should be inserted in the text. Lengthy or bulky tables should appear as an appendix.

Thesis length

Note: the maximum thesis length does not include footnotes or references.

The editing process for research students is governed by the ‘ Guidelines for Editing Research Theses ’ as set out by the Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd). As per the Guidelines, professional editing services can assist research students with copyediting (including language and illustrations) and proofreading to ensure that all thesis components are complete, consistent and correctly placed.

Whether you engage a professional editor or ask someone you know who is a good writer to check your manuscript, they will need to abide by these Guidelines and should be acknowledged in your thesis.

For more information about getting your thesis edited, check out our ‘ How do I get my thesis professionally edited ’ guide.

Thesis submission

Before you submit your thesis, it is important to ensure you prepare any additional required documents required.

Required documents

In addition to your thesis, you may also be required to submit other documents with your submission. You should prepare these documents before you commence the submission process.

Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement

The Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement (AHEGS) is provided by Australian higher education institutions to graduating students on completion of the requirements for a particular higher education award. It provides a description of the nature, level, context and status of studies that were pursued by the individual named. Its purpose is to:

• assist in both national and international recognition of Australian qualifications
• promote international mobility and professional recognition of graduates.

For the Statement to be issued, you have to provide a thesis abstract of strictly no more than 100 words.

You must upload the abstract as part of your thesis submission in the HDR Thesis Examination Portal .

Ethics approval

If you were required to obtain Ethics approval for your research, you will need to provide a copy of the Macquarie University Ethics Committee letter with your thesis.

You must upload the approval letter with your thesis submission in the HDR Thesis Examination Portal . You should also have this information on hand to complete the required fields in the portal.

Unofficial academic transcript - PhD/MPhil students only

If you had to complete coursework units ( HDRT units ) during your candidature, you will need to upload an unofficial copy of your academic transcript with your thesis submission. You can download a copy of your transcript from eStudent .

Six Digit Field of Research (FOR) codes

You will have to provide at least one Field of Research (FOR) code on your thesis submission form. You can review the FOR codes on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website . If you are unsure which code to list, contact your supervisor for advice prior to commencing your thesis submission.

Submitting your thesis

When your thesis is complete and appropriately formatted, you must submit your thesis via the HDR Thesis Examination Portal . For more information view the instructions for submitting your thesis via the HDR Thesis Examination Portal [PDF 684KB].

Note for Master of Research (MRes) students: If your thesis is submitted late, you will be penalised one percentage point from your final MRes thesis grade per calendar day until your thesis is submitted. Submission will be taken as the date your thesis is submitted electronically via the portal.

If your supervisor is unable or unwilling to approve your thesis submission, the matter should be referred to the Faculty’s Associate Dean, Research Training and Partnerships for resolution.

Once your thesis is submitted, your candidature is considered to be 'Under Examination' (UX).

For information about the examination process, see the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy .

Cotutelle and Joint Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) students

If you are enrolled in a Cotutelle or Joint PhD program, refer to your agreement for additional information relating to your examiners and thesis examination. Joint PhD students with a lead university that is not Macquarie University must provide the following information to [email protected] to ensure your enrolment is not ceased:

• evidence of your thesis submission
• 100 words abstract for your Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement
• a point of contact at the partner university

Celebrating your thesis submission

Then it’s time to promote yourself!  Join the Graduate Research Academy Network LinkedIn group and share a short statement of the most interesting, unusual or exciting thing about your research (no more than 25 words). Don’t forget to upload your selfie too!

Professional Portrait

To better equip you during your future job searches and improve your online profile, the GRA is also offering you the opportunity to have your professional portrait taken for free . Having a great-quality professional headshot is a fantastic way of showing confidence in your professional capabilities. You can use the images on your social media profiles, your resume, your website or blog, your business cards and even marketing collateral.

The next photo session dates will be advised soon. Keep an eye out here.

If you have any questions about this service, please contact  [email protected] .

Examination and completion

After your thesis is submitted and your examiners finalised, your thesis will be sent for examination. Each examiner is sent your thesis together with examination instructions guidelines. Your examiners are required to complete their examination and provide their report within four weeks for MRes theses and five weeks for PhD and MPhil theses. Students and supervisors should not contact examiners during the examination process.

For detailed information about the examination process, see the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy .

Examination outcomes

• Award: The thesis meets all required standards in terms of the nature and quality of work undertaken, and the degree can be awarded without any further work by the student, other than the correction of typographical errors and small lapses of expression and presentation in the final copy.
• Award (after Corrections): The thesis meets all required standards in terms of the nature and quality of work undertaken, and the degree can be awarded without further examination once the student has made a number of corrections and clarifications in the thesis. The corrections are to be completed to the satisfaction of the Thesis Examination Subcommittee and are required to be completed within one month for MRes students and two months for MPhil/PhD students.
• Revision and re-examination: The thesis does not yet meet all required standards for the award of the degree and the student should complete a further period of research and writing. Normally, under this category, a student would re-enrol for a period of up to one-year full-time (or equivalent). The thesis will then be submitted for re-examination.
• Not award: The thesis does not meet the required standards for the award of the degree, and does not warrant a further period of research and writing.

MRes students will also be awarded a percentage score for their thesis. The maximum mark a thesis can receive after re-examination is 64%.

For further information about examination criteria and outcomes, see the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy.

Revise and resubmit

In some cases, you may be advised to revise and resubmit your thesis for re-examination. During re-examination, examiners are requested to determine whether or not the revised thesis now meets the requirements of the degree as specified.

Re-submission must occur within one year from the date of the decision for revision for PhD and MPhil students and three months from the date of the decision for revision for MRes students.

For re-submission, you will need to submit your thesis in accordance with the relevant submission requirements. You must also include documentation that addresses the matters raised in your initial examination. This documentation must not be examiner-specific.

• Initial examiners will receive an invitation to re-examine your thesis. Re-examiners are allowed access to your unrevised thesis, along with all reports from the University and initial examiners (subject to privacy requirements).
• If your initial examiners are unavailable, there may be new examiners appointed. You should make no direct contact with your examiners – any contact you wish to make must be approved by the Research and Research Training Committee.
• If you do not complete your re-submission in the determined time-frame, you will be deemed to have failed the requirements for the award of your degree.
• If you fail to meet the requirements of the degree on re-examination, you cannot apply for further re-examination.

Note that revision of your thesis requires you to re-enrol and pay any required fees.

For further information about the resubmission process, see the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy .

Final thesis submission

All graduate research students, including PhD, MPhil and MRes students must submit a final digital copy of their thesis for inclusion in the in Macquarie University Theses which is Macquarie University’s open access digital collection. Access to graduate research theses is facilitated through the University Library.

Macquarie University Theses is designed to promote globally, preserve locally and provide open access to the research theses of Macquarie University's students. Records from Macquarie University Theses are also accessible from sources such as Trove Australia, Google and Google Scholar. The Macquarie University’s open access digital  theses collection gives your research greater potential readership, ensures your research is protected from destruction and provides security through adherence to metadata standards and access rights. The Library and the GRA work together to implement, manage and oversee the submission of digital theses for inclusion in Macquarie University Theses.

Further information and FAQs can be found Theses @ Macquarie University .

Once the thesis has been examined and passed by the Research and Research Training Committee, you have to submit  a ‘HDR Thesis Submission to Library Request’ eForm accompanied by the final digital copy of the thesis.

To submit, you must:

• Log in to  eStudent
• Click in the Forms tile
• Search for the ‘HDR Thesis Submission to Library Request’
• Complete the form

After submission of the eForm, your request will go to the Graduate Research Academy. You will receive an email notification confirming that your request has been completed.

The Library will accept your digital thesis in PDF, Word and RTF format. The final display format on Macquarie University Theses is PDF and the Library will convert your thesis into this format as required. If you intend to submit your thesis in PDF format, security protection or password access should not be applied.

Parts of your thesis may be subject to copyright. If you are concerned about copyright issues related to your thesis, check Macquarie's  information on copyright , talk to Macquarie University's  Copyright Coordinator or speak to your Research Librarian.

The University recognises that in particular cases commercial and confidentiality issues may necessitate a moratorium on the digital version of a thesis. This needs to be addressed at the earliest point during the candidacy. Approval from the Research and Research Training Committee (RRTC), with support from the Head of Department, is required for such access restrictions to be imposed on a thesis. For further information, please email [email protected] .

If your thesis contains material you have written and have published or is in the process of being published, you can request an embargo on your thesis. For further information about embargos, please contact the Library by emailing [email protected].

A thesis may include supplementary files, e.g. creative component or data files, that you wish to restrict from full open access. If this is the case, please email the Library at [email protected] to discuss options for managing restrictions to supplementary files.

Hardbound guidelines

If your faculty requests a hardbound copy of your thesis, you should prepare the thesis in accordance with the following requirements:

• The spine should state the title of the thesis (abbreviated if necessary), your family name, and the date of submission or re-submission.
• The words should be in gold lettering of suitable size.
• When published papers are submitted as additional evidence, they should be bound in the back of the thesis as an appendix. When they form part of the thesis body, they should be bound into the thesis itself.

International students

If you are an international student Visa holder, your visa date will be checked by the University when your thesis examination outcome has been finalised. If your visa is found to have more than 4 weeks’ validity, the Graduate Research Academy will report the thesis submission to the Department of Home Affairs (DIHA) . You are responsible for contacting DIHA regarding your change of visa status. If you wish to stay in Australia to wait for examination results, DIHA will need to be consulted. Contact DIHA directly for advice.

For further information about thesis preparation, submission and examination, see the HDR Thesis Preparation, Submission and Examination Policy .

Celebrate your achievement!

Then it's time to promote yourself again by sharing your success and selfie photo on the  Graduate Research Academy Network LinkedIn group!

• Graduate Research Academy
• Level 2, 16 Wally's Walk
• Macquarie University NSW 2109
• T: +61 (2) 9850 4741
• E: [email protected]

Submit your thesis

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Upload Your Thesis Here (A New PhD Thesis Submission System)

On successful upload, you will receive an acknowledgement email, a printout of which should be submitted along with your thesis. Please NOTE that the uploading file can have a maximum of 2.0 GB size.