ubc phd dissertation

Graduate School

Current Students

Final Dissertation & Thesis Submission

Workday Student Support

Graduate students can find "how to" guides and support information on our Workday support page .

NOTE ON DEADLINES: Thesis approval deadlines are for having your thesis fully approved in cIRcle, not just submitted. You are expected to submit at least five days ahead of any deadline in order to allow yourself time to make any needed corrections.

This section is only for final, post-defence submission of theses and dissertations.

Note on terminology: The term "thesis" in this section of the website is used collectively to refer to both master's theses and doctoral dissertations.

Final theses and dissertations are submitted electronically to the Library's electronic repository, cIRcle, where they will be open access.

[CREATIVE ARTS ONLY (Master of Fine Arts/Master of Music): As of October 21, 2017 , for MFA and MMus theses only, you may choose to submit to the collection in cIRcle “Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Creative Arts, 2017+ (CWL ACCESS)”. Access to this collection is permanently restricted to individuals who have a Campus-Wide Login (CWL). The collection is not available to the public. Please see cIRcle: Uploading Electronic Creative Arts Theses and cIRcle: File Format Guidelines . ]

You must submit your final, defended thesis electronically to UBC's online information repository, cIRcle . PDF files must be compatible with Adobe Acrobat version 5, and must not be in "secured" format or password-protected . cIRcle does not accept secured or password-protected PDFs due to access and preservation concerns. A scan to PDF is not acceptable. If you have questions, please contact the cIRcle staff .

Your thesis will be reviewed for formatting by the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and approved for inclusion in cIRcle. Your program cannot be closed and you will not be eligible to graduate until the content and formatting of the thesis have been officially approved and you have received an official email confirming final approval of your thesis. It is your responsibility to submit a thesis in the correct format and allow time for revisions to be complete in order to meet deadlines.

Note about pre-reviews: If you are preparing for final submission, your thesis will be reviewed more quickly if you submit directly to cIRcle rather than emailing it for review.

We recommend you submit your thesis a minimum of 3 - 5 business days before any deadline , as corrections may be required. Particularly around deadlines, the thesis team is exceptionally busy and there will be delays in activating accounts and reviewing theses. Additionally, you will need time to make any necessary corrections, as your thesis must be approved and accepted into cIRcle (not just submitted) in order for you to meet deadlines.

Thesis Availability

Your thesis will be available online in 3 - 4 days.

IMPORTANT: If you would like to delay publication of your thesis , you must obtain approval from the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies before submitting your thesis.

Submitting Doctoral Dissertation for External Examination

For information on submitting a doctoral dissertation for transmittal to the External Examiner, please see the Final Doctoral Oral Examinations section of this website.

Checking the Thesis

Please use Resources for Thesis Checking to check formatting before attempting to submit your thesis.

Proofreading

Important: It is your responsibility to proofread your thesis carefully before submitting the final version, and to make sure that the thesis you submit is complete, accurate, and free of errors. You cannot make changes to your thesis after it has been accepted into cIRcle, so you will not be able to correct any errors after your final submission. Check for:

consistent, sequential numbering of sections
consistent abbreviations and units of measure
correct symbols and special characters
consistent headings and capitalization
consistent line spacing and table formatting
typographical errors
grammatical errors

Proofreading is primarily your responsibility, but supervisors and examiners should not sign off on theses until they are free of errors.

The thesis team checks theses to ensure theses meet the formatting requirements, focusing on the preliminary pages and file names. If staff notice egregious mistakes elsewhere in a thesis they may require them to be corrected in the interest of ensuring a professional presentation of the work.