Electronic Submission of the Thesis

Electronic Submission of the Thesis for MPhil, PhD and Professional Doctorate Students

Starting at the beginning of Semester A 2012/13 you will be required to submit submit an electronic version of your doctoral thesis after your viva, unless a second viva is required. You will be expected to submit three paper soft bound copies of your thesis prior to the viva, however all subsequent submissions can be electronic.

For more information on when it will be necessary to submit electronically please see Submitting Your Thesis.

The electronic version of the thesis will, after any necessary amendments and approval by the examiners, be lodged in the UEL repository and with the British Library. It is important that you be aware of this when submitting the electronic version, ensuring that the thesis meets with UEL Regulatory criteria. For further information please see: Research Degree Regulations (Part 9) and the Code of Practice.

Electronic submissions will only be accepted with a completed EThOS form, and where necessary, a Thesis Access Declaration – Confidential Status Request Form.

Completing and submitting the EThOS form will indicate that you are happy for the electronic version of your thesis to be made available within the UEL repository and the British Library. For more information on EThOS including copyright and plagiarism concerns please see the EThOS Toolkit.

If you wish for some or all of your thesis to remain out of the public domain you must put in a request for Confidential Status.

Please note that after the beginning of Semester A 2012-2013 the examinations process cannot be concluded and an award cannot be made until an electronic version of the thesis and relevant documentation has been lodged with the Graduate School.

How to Submit Electronically

Before final electronic submission you should ensure that:

• You have made efforts to contact rights holders to use 3rd party copyright material in your thesis.
• You have spoken to your supervisor to discuss if there is any need to request confidential status.
• You have checked with any sponsoring organisations that you are permitted to make the thesis available in the public domain.
• The thesis is in the required PDF/A format.

You should submit a PDF/A version of the thesis via UEL File Transfer to Caroline Lake c.lake@uel.ac.uk.

For further information please see: Research Degree Regulations (Part 9) and the Code of Practice.

All relevant forms and guidance are available from the Graduate School Document Library.

Benefits of Electronic Submission

After consultation with representatives of postgraduate research activity in our academic Schools and research into best practice in the HE sector, the University has decided to move to electronic submission of the final version of a doctoral thesis. This was phased in during Semester B of the 2011-12 academic year.  From September 2012 the University began to only accept the final version of a doctoral thesis in electronic form.  

Electronic submission holds many benefits both for the researcher and the institution:

1. Student’s work is easily available to a wider academic community through the UEL repository and the British Library
2. Most doctorial theses are available on demand
3. Student’s research is likely to be seen by more people thus enhancing their, and UEL’s,  reputation
4. The number of citations is likely to increase
5. Electronic submission can accommodate the increasing amount of multi-media and non text theses.
6. Eliminates the cost of submitting a hard bound final version.

For further reading on electronic submission and the British Library E-Thesis, please see:

http://www.rsp.ac.uk/documents/etheses-briefing-papers/EthesesSurveyReport.pdf

http://ethos.bl.uk/About.do

http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/tiki-index.php