Thesis submission

Find out more about the thesis submission process and requirements.

Entry form for examination

You should initiate the process of approving the examiners for your final examination by submitting an Exam entry form request via your Surrey-Self Service research programme record. Your supervisor will nominate an examination panel which will be scrutinised and approved at a faculty level and then by the Admission, Progression and Examination Sub-committee. 

The Exam Entry form must be completed and submitted at the same time as the request for transfer to completing status is made. If no request to transfer to completing status is made then you must ensure that the Exam entry form is submitted no later than two months before you intend to submit your thesis. Failure to submit the form in time will delay your viva voce examination.

Thesis submission for examination

You must submit an electronic version of your thesis to researchdegrees@surrey.ac.uk by the end of your registry end date. Most postgraduate research students submit in advance of their submission deadline.

Please ensure that you include a signed statement of originality which can be downloaded from the useful documents page on MySurrey.

For submissions containing multiple files, folder structures and/or multi-media files such as videos and music - please contact researchdegrees@surrey.ac.uk in advance, and we will set you up with an alternative method of submission.

The Research Degrees Office do not routinely provide a hard copy of your thesis to the examination team. External examiners can contact the Research Degrees Office to discuss options for provision of a hard copy.  

Format of your thesis

Title page

This will include your project title, your name, the degree for which you are registered and the year the thesis is presented.

Summary

Following the title page you are required to include a summary of the work not exceeding 300 words.

Acknowledgements

It is good practice to include an acknowledgements page.

Referencing

Conventions vary from discipline to discipline and there are many to choose from: Harvard, MLA, APA etc.

You should discuss which convention is best suited to your project with your supervisors and use it consistently throughout your thesis. Your supervisors will be able to help you with the referencing convention and point you in the direction of guidance.

For one-to-one help and advice on referencing styles for your particular discipline contact your Academic Liaison Librarian.

Word limit

We do not enforce a minimum word limit for the doctoral thesis. However, we recommend that the thesis does not exceed the maximum word limit of 100,000 words in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. The maximum word limit is exclusive of documentary or statistical appendices, references and bibliography, and is inclusive of footnotes and all other appendices.

Some doctoral programmes specify a different maximum word limit. You should always refer to your programme handbook for information on word limits. If in doubt, ask your supervisor.

Deposit of your electronic thesis

All doctoral degrees and MPhils are examined by thesis and an oral examination commonly known as the viva voce examination.

Once you have done your viva and your corrections have been signed off, you must deposit an electronic copy of your thesis via the E-theses Deposit form. The description of your thesis and the file will be open and accessible as possible in the Open Research portal.

How to deposit your electronic thesis

Complete the E-theses deposit form

You can add any supplementary files, e.g. video, photographs, etc. This should not include any materials which already appear in your thesis

Please note: the Research Degree Committee will not proceed to award the degree until you have deposited the version of record of your thesis and have received confirmation that the deposit has been done correctly. The e-theses team at the library will check your deposit and confirm its status by email.

The thesis will not appear on the public website until you have been awarded your degree.

Using copyrighted materials in your thesis

When researching and writing your thesis you need to be aware of copyright issues. The Internet makes copying very easy but, unless there is an explicit statement to say otherwise, works on the web including texts, images such as photographs, film stills, diagrams and illustrations are covered by copyright and you will usually need the permission of the copyright owner to include them in your thesis.

Is permission always necessary?

In certain cases you can include materials in your thesis without obtaining permission. Even if these cases, please make sure that you fully acknowledge the creator and the source for every piece of material you have not created yourself or for which you do not own the copyright.

Cases when permission may not be necessary include:

  • When the work is out of copyright.
  • When you use small amounts of the work for specific purposes permitted by law: exceptions that may apply include illustration for instruction or criticism, review and quotation, for example if your thesis discusses a work of art, reviews and compares different texts or you are using a diagram to illustrate a point. Use is permitted provided that the use is fair dealing i.e  the extent of the quotation is no more than is required by the specific purpose for which it is used, and the quotation is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement. All types of copyright work, including images, are within the scope of this exception
  • When the material is under a licence allowing you to use it in your thesis. See Copying without permission: Creative Commons licences.

Also see the section about Copyright for images, film and music.

Help and advice

If in doubt about whether you need to get permission to include any material within your thesis it is always best to err on the side of caution an assume that you do. If you have specific queries or need any help contact openresearch@surrey.ac.uk.

When you need to seek permission

Unless your use falls into one of the above categories you will need to seek permission from the copyright holder if you want to include third party copyright material. Ideally you should do this as you go along rather than at the point of writing up your thesis.

If you intend to include material that you yourself have published, e.g. journal articles, you need to check whether the publisher will permit you to include these as part of your thesis. The easiest way to do this is by contacting the publisher directly and checking: most publishers will permit this. Template 1 below is a sample template for seeking permission to include material you have published yourself.

To seek permission to include third party material in your thesis you need to contact the rights owner. This may be the author of a work, a publisher, an illustrator, a photographer etc. In the case of material from books and journals your first course of action should be to contact the publisher. Many publishers give details on their website of how to seek permission and whom to contact. Look for information on rights / permissions / copyright clearance. If the publisher does not hold the rights to the work they should forward your enquiry to whoever does. You should allow plenty of time: it can be difficult to track down the right person and publishers may take several weeks to reply. Also bear in mind that the copyright owner may impose conditions or charge a fee for use of the material.

Once you have established whom to contact you can use Template 2 below to form the basis of a letter or email to the rights holder asking permission to include the material in your thesis. 

  • If the rights holder does not reply immediately you may choose to contact them again. However please note that you may not deem a lack of response as permission to go ahead
  • If a copyright holder grants permission you should indicate this at the appropriate point in your thesis, e.g. ‘Permission to reproduce this ... has been granted by ...’. Keep a copy of any letters or emails you received from rights holders
  • If you are refused permission or do not receive a reply you should not include the material but look for alternative sources.

Template 1 - Seeking permission to include in your thesis material you have published:

I am the author of the following work published by (insert publisher's name):

[Provide a full citation for your work]

I wish to include this work in my thesis, which I am required to deposit in the University of Surrey’s open access repository (http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/). The repository is non-commercial and openly available to all.

I would be grateful if you could advise if this will be acceptable.

Template 2 - Seeking permission to include third party copyright material in your thesis:

I am contacting you to seek permission to include the following material in my PhD/MPhil (insert relevant level) thesis:

[Provide full details of the material you intend to include]

The thesis will be made available in the University of Surrey’s open access repository (http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/). The repository is non-commercial and openly available to all.

If you are not the rights holder for this material I would be grateful if you would advise me whom to contact.

Restricting access to your thesis

When to restrict your thesis

The University of Surrey is a designated public authority under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This Act gives a general right of access to all information held by the University, including theses. 

However, under special circumstances, your thesis can be embargoed. If an embargo is in place, only information in the record, such as title, author and abstract will be available on the University’s open access repository, SRI Open Access, and EThOS, the British Library Electronic Theses Online Service.

You may want to restrict access to your thesis if:

  • The material is due for publication as a monograph/as an article in a journal that considers an open access e-thesis as a ‘prior publication’ or you are actively seeking to publish this material as a monograph/as an article in a journal that considers an open access e-thesis as a ‘prior publication’.
  • The material includes confidential information.
  • The material contains personal information about you or a third party.
  • Release of the material would substantially prejudice the commercial interests of the University or your sponsor.
  • Release of the material would substantially prejudice filing a patent or a patent is associated to a thesis.
How long to restrict your thesis for

The recommended embargo period for each case is:

  • Due for future publication – one year
  • Confidentiality – three years
  • Personal information – three years
  • Commercial interests – two years
  • Patent – two years.
How to request an embargo
  1. Print, complete and sign the restricting access to thesis form (docx).
  2. Your principal supervisor must sign this form to indicate that the supervisory team agree with your decision to restrict access to your thesis:
    1. If the requested embargo is due to publication of material derived from the e-theses as a monograph, this must be specified in the restricting access to thesis form, along with the name of the publisher. When concerning a journal article, you must provide evidence that the journal in question considers an open access e-thesis as a ‘prior publication’. Such information can usually be found on the journals website, in which case you can simply add the link to the relevant webpage.
    2. If the requested embargo is due to commercial interest or patent, your principal supervisor will send the form to the Director of Technology Transfer.
    3. The Director of Technology Transfer will sign it and return to you.
  3. Once the PDF form is duly signed and complete, upload it in E-theses deposit form.