Theses: Submitting your thesis to Research Online

What to provide in your submission:

• A completed online Thesis Submission for ECU's Repository form, outlining the level of access you are authorising.

ECUs Submit a thesis page offers further information to assist you in completing this form.

• One complete electronic copy of the thesis.
• An additional modified version for online access, if required.
• Additional files such as video or audio content, spreadsheets, software etc if required.
• Copyright permissions for any third-party content included in your thesis.

Images, tables, diagrams etc that you have not created yourself may not be made available in the online version of your thesis, unless you have written permission from the holder of the copyright. A copyright permissions template is available if you wish to request permission from the copyright holder. Alternatively, you can provide a version of your thesis with these items removed. The copyright information and identification table is available to help authors manage copyright content, and document material that can remain in the version provided for online publication in ECU’s repository.

Format requirements

• A template for your thesis title page is available in Research Training Procedure 7: Requirements of a thesis for archiving

NOTE: The date on the thesis title page should state the "year all graduation requirements are met" not the year of submission.

• PDF for the text component of your thesis.

• No security, password protection or digital signatures on the thesis files.

• Do not embed rich media ie audio or video in the thesis PDF.
  You may submit your thesis for assessment as a PDF with embedded media, but when submitting it to the Library, the audio and video content must be provided separately to ensure a better experience for researchers accessing your thesis, including streaming and download options.

• Additional files may be provided in other formats ie spreadsheets, software etc.

Thesis with publications

If your thesis includes article/s that you have previously published, and you have transferred copyright of the article to the publisher, you can check the publisher's author agreement and policies on sharing the various versions of the published paper. This will provide an indication of:

• what can be included in the online open access version of your thesis
• which version of the paper the publisher allows you to share on Research Online. Does the publisher allow you to share a copy of the "Author Accepted Manuscript" (post-refereed, pre-published version) of your article? - also known as "green open access"
• Whether the publisher requires an embargo period to expire before the Author Accepted Manuscript can be shared publicly

You may need to omit the published paper/chapter from the online public version of your thesis. If you are required to remove a chapter from the version that is made publicly available, it can be replaced with:

• a link to the published article

OR

• A link to the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version of a published paper, if it is permitted to be made available on Research Online in Research Student's Scholarly Works 

If you intend to publish parts of your thesis as journal articles, a book, or any other type of publication, you may need to embargo access to your thesis while waiting for items to be accepted for publication.

Many journals now use Turn-it-in or other plagiarism checking systems to see if journal articles have been previously published online, and may reject articles if similar text is already available within a thesis.

What else can be omitted from the online version of my thesis on Research Online?

• You may omit creative components of your thesis e.g. novel, artwork, etc and publish the exegesis only

• You may omit the parts of your thesis that contain commercial or sensitive material, or parts forming the basis of a patent

Ready to submit?

Masters and PhD thesis - Submitting your thesis to Research Online is part of the Completion of degree process.
Research Assessments, Student Administration will forward the thesis and completed form to Research Online.

First Class Honours thesis - please submit your thesis via the Thesis Submission for ECU's Repository form

Can 3rd party Copyright material be included in the thesis version that is published online?

Most materials embodying some form of human expression will be protected by copyright. These materials may include images, diagrams, tables, graphs, video, poetry, books, journals, essays, presentations, photographs, paintings, drawings, maps, scripts, song lyrics, musical scores, sheet music, films, sound recordings and computer programs.

You are not permitted to use (by copying, performing, reproducing etc.) another person’s material without the copyright owners’ consent or without a statutory exemption in the Copyright Act. If you do, you will have infringed copyright and may be sued by the copyright owner.

Written permission from the copyright holder is required to make the third-party copyright material available online within your thesis, unless:

If none of the three exclusions above apply to the material in your thesis, and you do not have written permission to make the third-party copyright material available online within your thesis, it must be removed from the version provided. A copyright information and identification table is available to help identify third party copyright material in your thesis, and document which material can remain in the version provided for online publication in ECU’s repository.

A copyright permission template is available. Please note that the author or creator may no longer be the copyright holder as the rights may have been transferred to a publisher or others. Some publishers provide links on journal articles to systems like the Copyright Clearance Centre RightsLink, which allow you to request permission by completing an online form.

These guidelines have been compiled in consultation with ECU’s Legal and Integrity team. Further information can be found at Copyright for students and researchers.

Other resources:

The University of Melbourne copyright information

MIT Libraries: Thesis content and article publishing.

Provides a list of links to publisher policies regarding graduate students’ reuse of their previously published articles in their theses, and policies on the acceptance of journal articles that have previously been released as part of a thesis

• Access to your research is improved
  Research Online is indexed by search tools such as Google, Google Scholar and the Digital Commons Network. Search Engine Optimisation is a high priority for the repository providers, ensuring outputs in Research Online feature prominently in search results. This can dramatically increase the rates at which your research is found and then subsequently cited.

 

• DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) are created for theses, allowing alternative metrics to be captured
  While citation metrics record how the research community is interacting with research outputs, alternative metrics like Altmetric and PlumX indicate the impact the output is having within the wider public. By tracking online mentions in a wide range of sources including the news, social media, library holdings etc, alternative metrics can give a more immediate indication of impact than citation data which can take time to become available. When discussing your research on social media always mention the DOI of the thesis to assist with the capturing of alternative metrics.

 

• Safe Archiving
  Repositories are a safe archival record of your research output. Strict backup and archival protocols are followed to ensure a lasting record of research output at ECU.

 

• Facilitate Research Sharing
  Requests for copies of your outputs can be referred to the repository saving you time and effort.

 

• Download statistics are available
  Research Online provides all authors with an Author Dashboard, a personalised reporting tool for authors with works published in Digital Commons. It allows easy access to up-to-date information on downloads for a body of work or individual output, as well as global insights into the sources of readership. It's simple to explore recent data, all-time, or choose a custom date range and to share data with others and export statistics for use in external applications.

 

To Access the Author Dashboard

• click on My Account in http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ and register if you don't already have an account
• once signed in, click on DASHBOARD TOOLS to view the readership (on a world map) and the table of hits and download stats of your Open Access outputs - select the date range of the statistics you wish to view (see top right hand corner)

If you have supplied Research Online with the open access versions of your outputs but they don't appear on your dashboard please contact researchonline@ecu.edu.au

Information for Research Students at ECU is available at For Research Students - Research journey