Deposit guide for eDissertations

(For eTheses, please follow our Deposit guide for eTheses. For ePrints, please follow our Deposit guide for ePrints).

The rules governing the production of dissertations are those laid down by academic departments. For some taught higher degrees, you may be required to submit one bound copy of your dissertation for your supervisor plus an electronic copy for the Library. You should therefore read carefully the guidelines you have been given by your department or School.

If you have been asked to deposit a digital copy of your dissertation, before doing so you must have:

1.  Submitted a paper copy (if required by your School/Department) to the appropriate office
2.  Ensured that your dissertation does not include any copyright material, unless you have permission from the rights holder(s). You must also ensure that the work you submit is your own. For more information, please see Copyright and intellectual property guidance for electronic thesis submission.
3.  Produced a PDF file which is an accurate copy of the paper version. See “Create a PDF” below.

Steps in the Deposit process

  1. It is useful to have the following information to hand:
    • the type of degree - eg. MA, MSc, MBA, MNursSci.
    • the full title of your dissertation
    • the abstract of your dissertation
    • the year your degree was awarded
    • the names of your supervisors
  2. At the "Nottingham ePrints" Home page, Login
  3. Click on the "New Item" button.
  4. Select your Item Type (ie eDissertation), Dissertation Type and School and Subject Area from the pick lists. (For dissertation type, free text may be added if necessary)
  5. Fill in the bibliographic details (author, title, abstract etc)
  6. Upload (copy) your PDF(s) to the eDissertations archive
  7. Review your submission details
  8. Your submission will be checked and will appear in the archive in due course.

Create a PDF

Word 2007, which is installed on computer room PCs and available on University owned PCs, offers a 'save as PDF' option. Open your word document, click on the Office button on the top left corner, go to save as, then click PDF. This will save your document in a PDF format.

For more information on getting Word 2007 or the PDF add-in, please see the Office 2007 pages. PDF Converter Pro 5 is also available from the NAL.

For Unix users who have used LATEX to produce your article, use the freeware application Ghostscript to turn a PostScript file into a PDF file. See the Software library for more information.

You may find installed on some older computers, MakePDF or PrimoPDF. We do not recommend you use this software to create PDFs.