Your Thesis at Queen Mary

MPhil, PhD, MD(Res), EngD or DClinDent are the only awards required to be deposited in QMRO and made publicly available. The University does not require Masters theses to be deposited.

Your MPhil, PhD, MD(Res), EngD or DClinDent thesis is required to be deposited in QMRO, the University's open access repository. Your award cannot be processed until you have submitted the final version of your thesis. To do this you will need to log in to the University's research system Elements using your username and password.

The guidance document, Instructions for depositing theses with Queen Mary University of London Library Services [PDF 678KB], explains how to deposit your thesis.

After your thesis is deposited in QMRO it will be shared with the British Library’s EThOS service and will be discoverable to readers on the internet through services such as CORE and Google Scholar. All theses in QMRO can be found using internet search engines.

Therefore, you must ensure you have permission to reproduce any extracts, images, figures or other content for which you do not own the copyright (you can use works which are out of copyright without permission). This material is referred to as third party copyrighted material. 

Any sensitive or confidential information (including your own signature) should also be redacted (removed).

If you are able to provide a redacted version of your thesis, with any third party copyrighted or confidential material removed, then the Library will make that version publicly available and permanently embargo the non-redacted version. Please see 'How do I create a redacted version of my thesis?' below for guidelines on making a version of your thesis suitable for public release.

If there is any reason why your thesis cannot be made publicly available, you will have the opportunity to request an embargo during the deposit process. Embargoed theses will not be accessible to the public until the embargo period has expired. However a bibliographic record of your thesis (including the abstract) will still be made available in QMRO. The standard embargo period is 12 months, if a longer embargo period is required the library will need confirmation that this is supported by your supervisor. The embargo period starts from the date you deposit your thesis into Elements.

Unless an embargo is permanent, at the end of the agreed period your thesis will automatically be made publicly available. If you require an extension to any embargo, you will need to contact the library at openresearch@qmul.ac.uk to agree a new embargo date.

If your thesis contains sensitive or confidential information, which may include but is not limited to:

• signatures, names, addresses, phone numbers or other details that could lead to the identification of individuals
• information, data or statistics to which you've been given confidential access
• information likely to pose a security threat
• photographs of people who have not granted you permission to use their image

then the Library will place a permanent embargo on your thesis file in order to comply with GDPR/Data protection laws. A bibliographic record of your thesis (including the abstract) will still be made publicly available in QMRO.

If you are able to provide a redacted version of your thesis the Library will make that version public and embargo the non-redacted version. Please see 'How do I create a redacted version of my thesis?' below.

The inclusion of third party copyrighted material requires the author to seek permission from the copyright holder. There is more information and guidance on the Library's copyright webpages or you can email library-copyright@qmul.ac.uk if you have further questions.

If your thesis contains material for which you don't hold the copyright, which may include but is not limited to:

• lengthy quotations and extracts, such as passages of text or music
• images, such as photographs, maps, music scores, tables, charts or graphs
• images reproducing works of art
• entire copies of published articles

then the Library will place a permanent embargo on your thesis if you do not have permission to make this material public. A bibliographic record of your thesis (including the abstract) will still be made publicly available in QMRO.

If you do not have permission but are able to provide a redacted version of your thesis the Library will make that version public and embargo the non-redacted version. Please see 'How do I create a redacted version of my thesis?' below.

If your thesis contains commercial/patent information, which could apply if your findings have resulted in:

• a commercially applicable service or product
• a patentable idea or product

then the Library will place the thesis under the standard 12 month embargo period and notify Queen Mary Innovation Ltd who will contact you to discuss any commercial potential/sensitivity. A bibliographic record of your thesis (including the abstract) will still be made publicly available in QMRO.

When you make your thesis available in QMRO the full text of your thesis will be publicly available on the internet. Most publishers allow you to make your thesis available online in this way, so it's unlikely to affect your ability to publish your research in the future, but some publishers may consider the publication of a thesis in an online repository as prior publication. If you think this may be a problem, you can choose to embargo your thesis. The library will place the thesis under the standard 12 month embargo period. A bibliographic record of your thesis (including the abstract) will still be made publicly available in QMRO.

Redaction means removing information from your thesis that you shouldn't make publicly available.

• Start with your original document as it’s usually easier to redact information in a copy of the original document than in a PDF.
• Where possible, it’s best to delete all the restricted content and replace it with a text box of the same size. Using a text box will allow you to retain the same layout as your original thesis and will mean that page numbers/other formatting will not need to be updated.
• Inside the text box give detail of what was removed using the word ‘redacted’ and the reason why, such as ‘for confidentiality reasons’ or ‘unable to gain permission from the copyright holder’.
• Don’t leave the original text behind black highlighting as it may still be possible for readers to uncover the text.
• Don't delete the reference to the content you have removed as readers may be able to access third party content via the copyright holder.

The CopyShop at QMUL is able to provide this service and has a dedicated thesis binding website.