At the end of the examination process all successful PhD candidates are required to submit the final version of their thesis to the Doctoral College via the PhD Manager platform.
Submission of PhD theses is electronic only - no hard copy is required.
The Library team will upload the final version of your thesis into the university's institutional repository which is hosted in Pure. Once it has been uploaded to Pure, it will become open access, i.e. visible on the Ulster University Research Portal, unless you have requested a period of embargo which will delay the public visibility of your thesis.
Most of the training available for PhD researchers is delivered via the Researcher Development Programme.
Sessions on Open Access delivered by academic and library staff are available throughout the year. You can book places on workshops and events here.
Pure Support Team delivers online training sessions every two weeks - book a place here.
Open Access training for the academic year 2024/2025 has ended. More sessions will be delivered in Semester 1 of the academic year 2025/2026.
If you need advice on the final submission of your thesis, related copyright issues or embargoes, or if you would like to publish something in Open Access, you can book a meeting online with the Open Research Librarian.
You can also email our team with any queries.
Please get in touch if you are receiving UKRI funding - we can help you comply with the UKRI Open Access Policy requirements.
What is copyright?
Unlike patents or trademark, copyright is free and automatic.
Copyright is the legal right that protects the use of your work once your idea has been physically expressed - your thesis is a physical expression of your ideas, so you are the copyright owner, unless you have agreed to transfer it, for example to a sponsor.
Note that for the duration of your PhD studies you have agreed to assign to the university the copyright of all your preliminary drafts and/or earlier versions of your work, with some exceptions. This is done to enable the university to make use of any intellectual property generated by your work.
How does it work?
Copyright prevents others from copying your work, distributing copies of it, showing your work in public, or making adaptations of your work.
As the copyright owner, you may grant permissions to individuals and/or bodies to do those things. For example, upon submitting the final version of your thesis, you will be granting permission to Ulster University to make your thesis available via the institutional repository.
Third-party copyright
Your thesis will most likely contain some material from other people's work, for example quotations, images, maps, tables, musical scores, etc. By including any of these, you will be using third-party copyright material (that is any copyright that doesn't belong to you).
Limited reuse of third-party copyright material is allowed under the so-called 'fair dealing' exception to the copyright law. However, in some cases you may want to use material that cannot be used without the copyright holder's permission.
Fair dealing
This is an exception to the copyright law which allows you to include copyrighted material in your thesis without asking for the copyright owner's permission. For example, if you are reviewing someone's work, you need to include fragments of it for reference. Remember: the source of the material must always be acknowledged!
There is no clear definition as to what 'fair dealing' is - it is your personal duty to ask yourself how an honest person would have dealt with the copyrighted work:
You can find more information about the fair dealing exception on the copyrightuser.org website.
Creative Commons
When you publish a piece of work and you are the copyright owner (i.e. you have not agreed to transfer it to anybody else), you may want to grant certain permissions to the public so that people can use your work without asking you for permission every time.
Giving your work a Creative Commons (CC) licence enables you to do so. When you publish under such licence, you grant everyone certain reuse rights. When you include material in your thesis that has been published under such licence, you do not need to request the copyright owner's permission. Read more about CC licensing.
CC licences are increasingly popular in academic publishing as they provide a standarised way to share research results and to build upon the work of others.
Your funding body may require that you make your research available in open access, and sometimes a specific CC licence is mandated.
What is an embargo?
It is a temporary restriction placed on the thesis file. The record of your thesis will always be visible in the Research Portal, but you may request the access to the full-text file to be restricted for up to 2 years. In exceptional circumstances, you can request an embargo extension. To do so, please contact our team towards the end of existing embargo period.
How to request an embargo?
At the point of final thesis submission via the PhD Manager, you will be asked if you want to restrict access to your thesis. You will need to provide a reason for your request. Possible valid reasons for imposing an embargo on your thesis include, but are not limited to the following:
Who can request an embargo?
Ultimately, it is your responsibility to make sure that an embargo is requested if appropriate. However, you may be advised to do so by your supervisor, or it may be requested of you by the IP Officer if it is determined that your thesis contains intellectual property materials that can be exploited by the university.
Redacting your thesis
Sometimes parts of the thesis cannot be made publicly visible, for example if it contains third-party copyright material for which no permissions have been obtained from the copyright owners.
In such case, you can redact parts of your thesis so it can be shared publicly via the university repository. You are still required to submit the full, unredacted version of your thesis, which will also be uploaded to Pure but access to it will be restricted.
If you need help with redacting your thesis, book a one-to-one session with the Open Research Librarian.
UKRI funding requirements
PhD researchers who are receiving UKRI training funding must comply with the following terms and conditions:
UKRI Open Access Policy - what is covered?
This policy covers any published research outputs of the following types:
The policy also covers whole books, but it is not applicable to books based on doctoral theses. However, if the thesis published as a book is resulting from a UKRI research grant (as opposed to a training grant), it is subject to the UKRI OA policy.
How to comply with UKRI requirements
How to fund open access publications
Contact our team to explore your options before you commit to a publisher.
Publishing thesis as a book
Your thesis is not covered by the UKRI Open Access Policy, i.e. you are not required to publish it under a CC-BY licence. However, if you want to publish it as an open access book, you may be able to obtain UKRI funds to cover open access publishing fees. Contact our team if you would like to enquire about the application process.
Getting published
During the course of your studies you may be encouraged by your supervisors to get your research published. Early publishing can benefit you and the academic community in a number of ways:
Remember: publishing your results early does not prevent you from including your published material in your thesis. For more information see the guidance on Thesis by Papers Format.
Publishing during your studies
At the beginning of your academic journey you may feel uncertain how to make best decisions regarding publication, e.g. where to publish, and in what type of format (articles, book chapters, datasets, blogs - the choices are vast and many). Your own research and discussions with your supervisors, your peers, and other experts in your field will help you in the decision process.
Open Access publishing
Publishing research results open access, i.e. publicly available and preferably under a licence which allows reuse like Creative Commons, is becoming the most popular way of publishing in the academic landscape.
Some funders require you to publish open access - check the guidance on funder requirements for more information.
Open access publishing may incur high costs for the author. Ulster University has a number of deals with academic publishers which help to cover such costs. Before you agree to pay any fees, contact our team to check if you can avail of any open access funding.
Publishing post-graduation
You may be planning to publish research results from your thesis after you have left Ulster University. Our team can help with open access publishing costs up to 12 months after your graduation. Please contact us before you agree to pay any fees to check if you can avail of any open access funding.
Papers Format - what is it?
If you have published your research results during the course of your studies, or if you have prepared or submitted papers for publication, you can include them in your thesis.
The decision to undertake a PhD by Papers Format must be approved by your supervisors.
Please see the University guidelines for further information on this thesis format.
What can be included?
The materials acceptable for inclusion are:
Are co-authored papers acceptable?
You can include co-authored papers in your thesis, but it is expected that the substantial part will be your original work. You should not include papers where you are not the lead author or one of the lead authors.
You must state precisely the work you have done on the paper, providing detailed information on your contribution towards data collection and analysis, and the writing process.
Is the publisher's permission required?
If you published your paper under an open access licence (e.g. Creative Commons), you have retained the copyright of your paper and you do not require the publisher's permission to include it in your thesis.
If you agreed to transfer the copyright to the publisher, you need to make sure that the inclusion of your paper does not breach the copyright law. The publisher may have a policy in place that allows you to share a version of your paper, or you may need to contact the publisher to request permission to do so.
Our team can help you in this process - send us an email or book an appointment with the Open Research Librarian to discuss your options.
Ulster University Research Portal
The University's chosen research information system is a platform called Pure. It hosts records of all outputs produced by Ulster researchers. It also serves as our institutional thesis repository: records of all theses produced at Ulster University from 2018 onwards can be viewed under the Student Theses tab.
Pre-2018 theses are available in print and can be requested from the Library.
British Library EThoS service
This is currently suspended due to a major cyber attack on the British Library systems.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day.
Open Access Theses & Dissertations (OATD)
OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. It currently indexes around 7.5 million theses and dissertations.
Our webpage:
You are here! Bookmark https://guides.library.ulster.ac.uk/openaccess/theses for your convenience.
Our e-mail:
Contact us at library-theses@ulster.ac.uk
Need to chat?
Book an appointment to chat with the Open Research Librarian via Teams.
