Information for thesis authors

Students completing Postgraduate Research programmes at the University of Birmingham are required to submit an electronic copy of their final thesis to the University. Please see the Steps to Deposit for Current Students below.

If you have gained a research degree (eg PhD, MPhil by research) from the University in the past, you are also welcome to submit your thesis to this repository.

Benefits for you as an author

Your research is readily available to others and you can expect to receive more readers for and citations to your work
It speeds up research sharing with academics and others, worldwide
Your thesis is stored in a secure central, searchable space, in perpetuity
The service is part of the national EThOS service, which is improving the visibility and accessibility of all UK PhD research, see http://www.ethos.ac.uk
In turn, you will find it easier to read the research work of other PhD students participating in similar initiatives worldwide

Copyright and confidentiality

You must ensure that your thesis or dissertation does not include any copyright material belonging to someone else, unless you have permission from the rights holder(s) to include their material in your e-thesis. See the Library's guidance on Copyright for guidance.

You must also ensure that your thesis does not include confidential material that should not be made available via the web.

All Doctoral theses in this Repository are automatically included in EThOS.

Steps to deposit

For current students preparing to graduate:

After you have completed all revisions and corrections to the satisfaction of your examiners, you will receive a letter of award. This letter will specify the deadline by which you must submit the electronic copy of your thesis.
Please convert your thesis to .pdf format, preferably compliant with the PDF/A standard. It is acceptable to submit multiple files (eg if your appendix is in a separate document).
If you still have an active IT account, please log into the repository and deposit your thesis. A detailed deposit guide is available on the library webpages.
We will contact you when your e-thesis submission has been received, usually within 2-3 working days.

If your IT account has expired, please provide your electronic thesis through our dedicated formstack deposit form.

In case of queries, please contact the Scholarly Communications Services Team in Library Services via ubira@lists.bham.ac.uk or phone on 0121 414 3397.

For former students who graduated before 2010:

If you are an alumni who gained a research degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil by research) from the University in the past, you will not be able to self-deposit without a current University of Birmingham login

Please contact the Scholarly Communications Services team at ubira@lists.bham.ac.uk where we will be happy to discuss options for depositing an electronic copy or for digitising your thesis and making it available electronically. Please note we are only able to digitise and disseminate theses held in hardcopy by the library, please check our library catalogue to see if a thesis is held in our collection: https://findit.bham.ac.uk.

ePrints developed at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, England.