Access to your final thesis
The University of Manchester is committed to ensuring as wide an audience as possible can access and read the outputs of its research and scholarship. The University supports the principles of Open Access and the efforts of its researchers to disseminate their research findings as widely as possible.
The University's Presentation of Theses policy requires that all final Postgraduate Research eTheses are made Open Access no longer than 12 months after submission, unless an exception to the policy is required for reasons of sponsorship or sensitive content. This aligns with the University’s Publications policy which applies to all students and employees of the University.
You will select your preferred access level for your final eThesis during submission of your examination eThesis. This preferred access level is subject to approval by your PGR supervisor.
The majority of PGR students will be able to comply with the policy by selecting either immediate Open Access, or Open Access with a 12 month embargo, for their final eThesis. In academic publishing terms, an embargo is a period during which access to scholarly work is restricted. An eThesis which is embargoed will not be discoverable or accessible via the University’s systems. If you're planning to submit a Journal format thesis, there are likely to be additional considerations related to sharing your thesis, so we recommend consulting our Journal format thesis submission guidance.
It will not be possible for certain PGR students to comply with the policy, in which case an exception to the policy can be requested. The following scenarios outline the access level options available:
Scenario 1: Thesis can comply with default policy
Access level options: Immediate Open Access OR Open Access with 12 month embargo
Scenario 2: Thesis meets one or more of the following criteria:
- Contractual restrictions imposed by sponsor
- Contractual reasons of theses partners (e.g. external co-supervisors)
- IP / product protection / patent pending / potential commercialisation
- Thesis contains personally identifiable or ethically sensitive data
- Other (free text box)
Access level options: Open Access with 5 year embargo OR Indefinite closed access
Scenario 3: Thesis contains data likely to be included in future research by supervisor or collaborators
Access level: Open Access with 2 year embargo
Please be assured that this access level is for your final thesis, not your examination thesis, which is automatically closed access.
Benefits of Open Access
Open Access research offers many benefits to researchers and the wider world:
- OA allows interested readers who are unable to access subscription journal content, or embargoed theses, to read and build upon research. This can include practitioners, policy makers, the general public, and researchers in developing countries.
- For the individual researcher, making research OA has been demonstrated to provide a citation advantage, and can support the development of researcher profiles. Making your eThesis OA will increase its visibility, contributing to the establishment and development of your research profile.
- Increasingly required by research policy makers and funders, OA is an important consideration for all researchers. Making your thesis OA allows you to gain experience of OA without compromising future publication strategies (many publishers do not consider a thesis to be a prior publication).
Plans to publish
The majority of students should be able to comply with the policy by selecting either Immediate Open Access or a 12 month embargo for their final thesis. The default option of Open Access with 12 month embargo allows you 12 months to arrange publication before your thesis becomes openly available.
The Scholarly Publications & Licensing Team at MIT surveyed the major publishers’ policies regarding graduate students’ reuse of work previously made available through their thesis and concluded that the majority of publishers do not generally consider a thesis as a prior publication. UKCORR have collated available publisher policies and attitudes to open sharing of theses with regards to later publication in this useful Google Doc:
UKCORR Thesis prior publication and embargoes: publisher policies and attitudes
Here are examples of position statements on this issue from several major academic publishers:
- Elsevier: ‘Elsevier does not count publication of an academic thesis as prior publication’
- Nature: ‘The Nature journals are happy to consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.”
- Taylor & Francis: ‘Depositing your PhD in a repository won’t impact on future publication because there … should always be substantial differences between your thesis and a journal article, in length, style, format and content. You can take a portion of your PhD research and turn it into a journal article, or even more than one article, but you need to always ensure it matches the aims, scope and requirements of that journal (e.g. on considering/referencing surrounding literature, relevance or originality for instance). What you can’t do is just lift a portion of your PhD and submit it.’
Publishers are likely to require significant revisions and amendments to a thesis as part of the publication process, including expansion of scope and changes to structure. In most cases, publishers will also require the title of a thesis to be altered for publication, especially if the original thesis has been made openly available, so PGR students should consider this when deciding on the title for their thesis.
It is advisable for publication plans to form part of supervisor-student discussions, including after completion of the Notice of Submission form. This will ensure the supervisor is aware of the student’s intentions with regard to publishing, and any concerns about final thesis access can be addressed.
If you're planning to submit a thesis which contains published or soon-to-be published work, including Journal format theses, we recommend consulting our Journal format thesis submission guidance. You can also access the Library’s Theses LibGuide and Copyright guide, or Contact us for more information
See Submitting your eThesis for more information on the eThesis submission process, or contact the eThesis Support Service for further assistance.