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Back to PhD Hub

In this section, you will find some useful tips for writing your thesis.

For more information on electronic deposition of your thesis click  here

Electronic Deposition

Applicable to doctoral researchers registered on or after 1 October 2012.

For doctoral researchers at the University of Reading, it is now a requirement that an electronic copy of your thesis be deposited via an approved, secure method. This page answers some of the questions you may have about this process. In addition, there is a more detailed training module on Blackboard (see below) to help you understand the process better.

• What is electronic deposition?

Electronic deposition is one element of the process of thesis submission for the large majority of doctoral researchers at Reading; it is a requirement for students on relevant programmes who enrolled on or after 1 October 2012. You will be required to deposit an electronic copy of the final version of your thesis into the University’s digital Institutional Repository, CentAUR.

According to the web-page above there is a compulsory training module (‘Creating your electronic thesis’) available via Blackboard (for which you should be enrolled) to help you prepare for electronic deposition.

Copyright is now a big issue for the University because of the electronic submission and online access to your thesis.

To avoid copyright issues, you now need to ask permission for EVERY figure you use (even if it is your) from the journal that they appear. The course above details how you should go about doing this and provides you with a great template for your letter if you are not sure what you should say. To find the course you need to login to Blackboard, the course should be visible under  ‘Courses where you are: Student’ . The technical title for the module is just ‘RDXCRETHES-14-5SH: Creating your electronic thesis’. If you do not see it in the list, then you need to contact Chris Robson ([email protected]) and he will make sureyou are properly registered for the course.

This is a compulsory course and well worth the time to save on having copyright issues when you submit your thesis.

Do not panic if the journal: 1) does not get back to you, 2) does not give you permission, or 3) says you can use the figure but for a fee. The university says that we shouldn’t have to pay for figures so do not take them up on that offer. If you experience these problems, then all you have to do is tick the ‘not available online’ box when you submit. This will not affect your mark. Ideally try and get the permissions and make sure you reference the permission in the figure caption and keep all correspondence with the journals so that you are covered for any future problems that may arise.

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Open Access Theses and Dissertations

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About OATD.org

OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions . OATD currently indexes 7,231,427 theses and dissertations.

About OATD (our FAQ) .

Visual OATD.org

We’re happy to present several data visualizations to give an overall sense of the OATD.org collection by county of publication, language, and field of study.

You may also want to consult these sites to search for other theses:

• Google Scholar
• NDLTD , the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. NDLTD provides information and a search engine for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), whether they are open access or not.
• Proquest Theses and Dissertations (PQDT), a database of dissertations and theses, whether they were published electronically or in print, and mostly available for purchase. Access to PQDT may be limited; consult your local library for access information.

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Research Repository

Uk doctoral thesis metadata from ethos.

The datasets in this collection comprise snapshots in time of metadata descriptions of hundreds of thousands of PhD theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions aggregated by the British Library's EThOS service. The data is estimated to cover around 98% of all PhDs ever awarded by UK Higher Education institutions, dating back to 1787.

Previous versions of the datasets are restricted to ensure the most accurate version of metadata is available for download. Please contact [email protected] if you require access to an older version.

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EBSCO Open Dissertations

EBSCO Open Dissertations makes electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) more accessible to researchers worldwide. The free portal is designed to benefit universities and their students and make ETDs more discoverable. 

Increasing Discovery & Usage of ETD Research

With EBSCO Open Dissertations, institutions are offered an innovative approach to driving additional traffic to ETDs in institutional repositories. Our goal is to help make their students’ theses and dissertations as widely visible and cited as possible.

EBSCO Open Dissertations extends the work started in 2014, when EBSCO and the H.W. Wilson Foundation created American Doctoral Dissertations which contained indexing from the H.W. Wilson print publication, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities, 1933-1955. In 2015, the H.W. Wilson Foundation agreed to support the expansion of the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses from 1955 to the present.

How Does EBSCO Open Dissertations Work?

Libraries can add theses and dissertations to the database, making them freely available to researchers everywhere while increasing traffic to their institutional repository.  ETD metadata is harvested via OAI and integrated into EBSCO’s platform, where pointers send traffic to the institution's IR.

EBSCO integrates this data into their current subscriber environments and makes the data available on the open web via opendissertations.org .

You might also be interested in:

• Cambridge Libraries

Physical & Digital Collections

Theses & dissertations: home, access to theses and dissertations from other institutions and from the university of cambridge.

This guide provides information on searching for theses of Cambridge PhDs and for theses of UK universities and universities abroad. 

For information and guidance on depositing your thesis as a cambridge phd, visit the cambridge office of scholarly communication pages on theses here ., this guide gives essential information on how to obtain theses using the british library's ethos service. .

On the last weekend of October, the British Library became the victim of a major cyber-attack. Essential digital services including the BL catalogue, website and online learning resources went dark, with research services like the EThOS collection of more than 600,000 doctoral theses suddenly unavailable. The BL state that they anticipate restoring more services in the next few weeks, but disruption to certain services is now expected to persist for several months. For the latest news on the attack and information on the restoration of services, please follow the BL blog here:  Knowledge Matters blog  and access the LibGuide page here:  British Library Outage Update - Electronic Legal Deposit - LibGuides at University of Cambridge Subject Libraries

A full list of resources for searching theses online is provided by the Cambridge A-Z, available here .

University of Cambridge theses

Finding a cambridge phd thesis online via the institutional repository.

The University's institutional repository, Apollo , holds full-text digital versions of over 11,000 Cambridge PhD theses and is a rapidly growing collection deposited by Cambridge Ph.D. graduates. Theses in Apollo can be browsed via this link . More information on how to access theses by University of Cambridge students can be found on the access to Cambridge theses webpage.   The requirement for impending PhD graduates to deposit a digital version in order to graduate means the repository will be increasing at a rate of approximately 1,000 per year from this source.   About 200 theses are added annually through requests to make theses Open Access or via requests to digitize a thesis in printed format.

Locating and obtaining a copy of a Cambridge PhD thesis (not yet available via the repository)

Theses can be searched in iDiscover .  Guidance on searching for theses in iDiscover can be found here .   Requests for consultation of printed theses, not available online, should be made at the Manuscripts Reading Room (Email:  [email protected] Telephone: +44 (0)1223 333143).   Further information on the University Library's theses, dissertations and prize essays collections can be consulted at this link .

Researchers can order a copy of an unpublished thesis which was deposited in print form either through the Library’s  Digital Content Unit via the image request form , or, if the thesis has been digitised, it may be available in the Apollo repository. Copies of theses may be provided to researchers in accordance with the  law  and in a manner that is common across UK libraries.  The law allows us to provide whole copies of unpublished theses to individuals as long as they sign a declaration saying that it is for non-commercial research or private study.

How to make your thesis available online through Cambridge's institutional repository

Are you a Cambridge alumni and wish to make your Ph.D. thesis available online? You can do this by depositing it in Apollo the University's institutional repository. Click here for further information on how to proceed.    Current Ph.D students at the University of Cambridge can find further information about the requirements to deposit theses on the Office of Scholarly Communication theses webpages.

UK Theses and Dissertations

Electronic copies of Ph.D. theses submitted at over 100 UK universities are obtainable from EThOS , a service set up to provide access to all theses from participating institutions. It achieves this by harvesting e-theses from Institutional Repositories and by digitising print theses as they are ordered by researchers using the system. Over 250,000 theses are already available in this way. Please note that it does not supply theses submitted at the universities of Cambridge or Oxford although they are listed on EThOS.

Registration with EThOS is not required to search for a thesis but is necessary to download or order one unless it is stored in the university repository rather than the British Library (in which case a link to the repository will be displayed). Many theses are available without charge on an Open Access basis but in all other cases, if you are requesting a thesis that has not yet been digitised you will be asked to meet the cost. Once a thesis has been digitised it is available for free download thereafter.

When you order a thesis it will either be immediately available for download or writing to hard copy or it will need to be digitised. If you order a thesis for digitisation, the system will manage the process and you will be informed when the thesis is available for download/preparation to hard copy.

See the Search results section of the  help page for full information on interpreting search results in EThOS.

EThOS is managed by the British Library and can be found at http://ethos.bl.uk . For more information see About EThOS .

World-wide (incl. UK) theses and dissertations

Electronic versions of non-UK theses may be available from the institution at which they were submitted, sometimes on an open access basis from the institutional repository. A good starting point for discovering freely available electronic theses and dissertations beyond the UK is the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) , which facilitates searching across institutions. Information can also usually be found on the library web pages of the relevant institution.

The DART Europe etheses portal lists several thousand full-text theses from a group of European universities.

The University Library subscribes to the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses  (PQDT) database which from August 31 2023 is accessed on the Web of Science platform.  To search this index select it from the Web of Science "Search in" drop-down list of databases (available on the Documents tab on WoS home page)

PQDT includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations, representing 700 leading academic institutions worldwide from 1861 to the present day. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The University Library only subscribes to the abstracting & indexing version of the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database and NOT the full text version.  A fee is payable for ordering a dissertation from this source.   To obtain the full text of a dissertation as a downloadable PDF you can submit your request via the University Library Inter-Library Loans department (see contact details below). NB this service is only available to full and current members of the University of Cambridge.

Alternatively you can pay yourself for the dissertation PDF on the PQDT platform. Link from Web of Science record display of any thesis to PQDT by clicking on "View Details on ProQuest".  On the "Preview" page you will see an option "Order a copy" top right.  This will allow you to order your own copy from ProQuest directly.

Dissertations and theses submitted at non-UK universities may also be requested on Inter-Library Loan through the Inter-Library Loans department (01223 333039 or 333080, [email protected] )

• Last Updated: Dec 20, 2023 9:47 AM
• URL: https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/theses

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UA Theses and Dissertations

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ABOUT THE COLLECTIONS

More than 40,000 theses and dissertations produced at the University of Arizona are included in the UA Theses and Dissertations collections. These items are publicly available and full-text searchable. A small percentage of items are under embargo (restricted).

• Submitting master's theses to the UA Libraries was optional for many decades; as a result, we do not have all master's theses that were written at the University of Arizona.
• A small number of historical theses containing culturally sensitive material are not available online.

You can also refer to the Theses & Dissertations - frequently asked questions guide to find materials that are not available online.

Collections in this community

Dissertations, master's theses, honors theses, recent submissions.

Variable Selection in Economic Applications of Remotely Sensed Weather Data: Evidence from the LSMS-ISA

Unveiling Sources of Resilience and Social Support Dimensions: Honoring Mexican Immigrant Experiences and their Migration Journeys in a Borderlands Community Based Participatory Project

The Spatial and Dynamic Patterns of Climate Variability and Change in the United States

The Seasonal Variability of Trace Metals and their Transport Mechanisms in Intermittent Streams

The Role of Dopamine on Inhibition in the Mouse Retina

The Optical Truss Interferometer: A Convenient Solution for Picometer Sensitivity in the LISA Telescopes and Beyond

Teacher Efficacy and Impacts of Justice Centered Inclusive Settings on Multiply Marginalized and Underrepresented Preschool Students

Sparsity-Aware Hardware-Software Co-design of Spiking Neural Network Accelerators

Seamless Coupling of Peridynamics with Finite Element Method for the Simulation of Material Failure and Damage

Revegetation Strategies for Ecological Restoration

Resilience for Trauma and Adverse Events Among Firefighter First Responders

Repression in Conflict-Affected States: The Role of United Nations Peace Operations

Remote Sensing of Aboveground Vegetation Structure, Biomass, and Water Content Across Spatial and Temporal Scales

Reintubation in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit: Lessons Learned

Reimagining Prison Education: Incarcerated Individuals' Reflections on Education, Themselves, and the Digital World

Reexamining Preference for Online Social Interaction: Compulsion and Close Interactants as Moderators for Positive and Negative Outcomes

Racial Discrimination, Individual Resources, and Coping Among Latinx Adolescents: A Longitudinal and Within-Person Analysis

Quantifying Adaptive Mechanisms and Ovarian Dynamics in Developing Heat Stress Beef Heifers

Proteomic Assessment of Post-Translational Modifications in the Brain of 5x-FAD Females

Prediction of Maximum Solar Energy Harvest Considering Year-Round Sky Coverage Conditions and Integrating Shading Effect for Fixed PV Panels

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DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

UNL's Institutional Repository ISSN 2766-1415

• Collections-- Public Access : More than 125,000 articles, papers, ebooks, documents, presentations, creative activities, master's theses, public-access dissertations, etc. All free to all users. (Alphabetical by department, center, or group)
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• UNL Dissertations from ProQuest-UMI : More than 16,000 PhD dissertations from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Includes all dissertations 1902-present. Free full-text access from UNL campus connections. Users from outside UNL have free abstracts and 24-page previews, with the option to purchase electronic full-text. This area is managed by ProQuest. University of Nebraska-Lincoln users from off-campus connections should proceed directly to the resource you desire; you will be asked to authenticate with your UNL ID number for free download of full-text dissertations from ProQuest. Please remember to log out or close browser when you are done.

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Privacy Copyright

Copyright: Writing your thesis

• What do I need to know?
• Licences & exceptions
• Personal research & private study
• Writing your thesis
• Publishing your work

When writing your thesis you need to be careful when you use text, images or other material produced by someone else in your work. Follow the guidance below to ensure you don't breach copyright law.

Unpublished theses and copyright

Sufficient acknowledgement means identifying both the work in question (by its title or other description) and the author/creator, unless that work is published anonymously or the identity of the author cannot be established by reasonable means.

However, this exception does not apply when your thesis is made available to the public, subsequently - including via the University's institutional repository, CentAUR (see 'What constitutes a published thesis?' below). If you need to include third party copyright-protected material in your thesis, and you would like people to be able to find and read your thesis online, you will need to follow the advice on this page.

Image: Kim Shahabudin

What constitutes a published thesis?

When the whole or part of a thesis is made available to the public, whether it be print, or electronically on a website or in a repository (an institutional repository such as CentAUR, EThOS or any other national, institutional or subject repository), it is considered to have been published and the copyright situation changes.

While it is very unlikely to be necessary to omit material for copyright reasons from the final, printed version of your thesis, you may require permission from the copyright owner to retain any third party copyright-protected material within the electronic copy made available via CentAUR .

CentAUR (Central Archive at the University of Reading) is the University of Reading's institutional repository for research publications and equivalent research outputs.

Lists published items, including journal and conference proceedings, books and book sections, and other formats that constitute the research outputs of the University. Where copyright permits, the author's final versions of papers (that have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication), or the equivalent multimedia formats, are included. The main period covered is 2003 onwards. Find out more about CentAUR Help and guidance CentAUR help Contact the CentAUR team for additional advice on using this resource

References for British PhD theses. Includes some full-text, and the ability to request theses for scanning where not already available (a cost might apply). No password required, although you need to register with the service to order a thesis - Find out about ordering a British thesis via EThOS

Search across 600,000+ British PhD theses for free and order full text quickly and easily The service automatically harvests e-theses from Institutional Repositories and digitises paper theses from participating institutions.  List of institutions participating in EThOS Help and guidance Find out about ordering a British thesis via EThOS Search tips for Ethos Contact inter-library loans for further information about requesting theses via EThOS

Your responsibility to arrange copyright clearance

All higher degree students registered on or after 1st October 2012 are required on submission to deposit an electronic copy of their thesis with the Doctoral and Researcher College for upload to CentAUR and EThOS. Unless there are specific reasons to restrict access, agreed by your supervisor and School Director of Postgraduate Research Studies, your thesis will be made available to the public via these repositories.

Third party copyright-protected material included within your assessed work may be retained in the published, electronic version of your thesis if your use constitutes ‘fair dealing’ for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation, or otherwise if you have received permission from the copyright owner (e.g. under the terms of a licence). If your use of third party material would not be ‘fair dealing’ for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation under UK copyright law (for example, the inclusion of material not previously made available to the public) and you have not obtained permission from the copyright owner, such material must be redacted, or access to the thesis restricted. Follow the links for further guidance.

• Electronic deposition of doctoral theses Guidance on depositing your thesis electronically.

Note that copyright owners are not obliged to respond quickly (or indeed at all) to reuse requests, so where necessary, you are strongly advised to seek permission as you go (whilst you are writing the thesis, rather than when you are preparing to submit). If it is not possible to obtain the necessary permissions and the redaction of the third party copyright-protected content would compromise the integrity of the thesis as a whole, you will need to indicate on your Thesis Deposit Form that access must be restricted, meaning people will be unable to read your research online.

• Thesis deposit form

Further help

• Contact the Examinations Office For advice on submitting your thesis.
• Contact Chris Jones (University Copyright & Compliance Officer) For advice on ensuring your thesis complies with copyright law.

Fair dealing for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation

• Criticism and review
• Fair dealing

Reproducing any substantial portion of a copyright-protected work generally requires permission from the copyright owner(s). This can be true even for your own publications: sometimes the copyright will be owned jointly between co-authors, or have been transferred to a publisher.

Section 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides a possible exception, stating that "fair dealing with a work for the purposes of criticism or review, or that of an earlier work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by sufficient acknowledgement and provided that the work has been made available to the public."

This permits limited reuse of published material for the purposes of facilitating direct, germane critique. For example, it may be permissible to reproduce a whole photograph if it is necessary to refer to specific visual elements in an accompanying commentary - as long as this is 'fair dealing'. More information about fair dealing is provided within this box, in the next tab.

Note that ‘criticism or review’ can extend to commentary on the ideas, impressions or implications of a copyright work, as well as its specific content or style – but the less direct your critique (and the more generally illustrative the use), the harder it will be to demonstrate that the dealing is fair.

With regard to quotations specifically, the extent of any quotation must also be "no more than is required by the specific purpose for which it is used."

• See Section 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (Criticism, review, quotation and news reporting)

UK copyright exceptions permit limited reuse in certain circumstances and many exceptions are subject to a test of ‘fair dealing’ - in other words, whether the reuse is 'fair' in the context. There is no statutory definition of 'fair dealing', so the extent to which a fair dealing copyright exception might apply will always depend on the individual facts in each case.

However, the use cannot be excessive or considered to conflict unduly with the interests of the copyright owner (e.g. by replacing a sale of a work). Reliance on fair dealing exceptions almost always requires accompanying acknowledgement of the creator and source.

In deciding whether your use of copyright-protected material is a fair dealing for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation, you should consider whether an independent ‘fair-minded and honest person’ would agree with your approach.

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• Last Updated: Aug 21, 2024 8:32 AM
• URL: https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/copyright

Library Services

Here we explain how to access copies of research theses that UCL Library Services holds. There is also an increasing number of open access thesis repositories available online.

Theses held in UCL Library

Open access repositories containing the full text of selected research theses.

• Indexes of completed theses

Obtaining copies of research theses

• Open Access for Thesis: how to deposit

University of London theses

The Library holds a copy of most research degree theses completed by students registered at UCL and awarded by the UoL, including many from students at Schools and Institutes prior to merger with UCL. Theses are listed by author on the Library catalogue, Explore : they are shelved in our off-campus Store and may be retrieved for consultation (24-hour notice required) by completing the store request form or via the request link on Explore. Theses are not available for loan, either to individuals or via interlibrary loan.

Some UoL research degree theses submitted by UCL students in the areas of classical, Germanic, Latin American studies; history and law are not held: check the UoL School of Advanced Study catalogue for availability.

UCL started to award its own degrees to students registering from 2007/2008. Print copies of research theses are catalogued by author in Explore and shelved in Store; electronic versions are in many cases available on open access in UCL Discovery .

If you wish to access a thesis recorded in UCL Discovery for which the full text is subject to an access restriction or not present, it is best to contact the author directly to request a copy privately.  If this is not possible, please contact the UCL Open Access Team .

If a thesis is not available via UCL Discovery or EThOS (see below) then it might be possible to obtain a copy from our interlibrary loan service via your home university interlibrary loan department. Please contact your university library and ask them to enquire about this service with UCL's Interlibrary Loan service; e-mail [email protected] for more information.

The Library does not normally hold print copies of any theses in the following categories:

• MA, MSc, MRes, LLM theses.
• Diploma theses.
• Undergraduate dissertations.
• Theses submitted at other universities or colleges.

Further information is available in the Support for dissertations and research projects LibGuide .

A growing number of open access thesis repositories is becoming available including:

• ProQuest , holds many full text theses. You can search for dissertations and theses there.
• UCL Discovery , UCL's open access research repository, includes theses alongside other UCL publications. You can search for theses, or browse a list.
• EThOS , a database run by the British Library that aims to record all UK doctoral theses, with links to access an electronic version of the full text where available. The digitisation of theses that only exist in print form can often be requested, depending on the awarding institution and for a fee: UCL supports this process for UCL-held theses.
• The DART-Europe E-theses Portal , holds details of open access electronic theses stored in repositories across Europe.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations , includes links to a number of international search tools and portals.

Video - Using PhD theses in research: EThOS 

YouTube Widget Placeholder http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8X8ai6xN-4

Indexes of completed theses (access available to members of UCL only)

Proquest dissertations & theses global (pqdt global).

PQDT Global contains over a million full-text dissertations and theses from 1861 onwards that are available for download in PDF format. The collection includes PQDT UK and Ireland content.

Many UK universities now decline to lend research theses. You may visit the awarding university or, increasingly, obtain an electronic version either from the university itself or from EThOS (see above).

Theses awarded by universities worldwide may be requested via UCL Library Services Interlending and Document Supply service . The normal charge for this service applies. Please note that theses are never available for loan: they must be consulted on Library premises only.

Open access for theses: how to deposit

Candidates for UCL research degrees are required to deposit an electronic copy of their final thesis in UCL's Research Publications Service (RPS), to be made open access in UCL's institutional repository, UCL Discovery . Theses are amongst the most highly-downloaded items in UCL Discovery . Making your thesis open access will mean that it is accessible worldwide, to anyone who wants to read it.

It is also possible, but not mandatory, to submit a print copy of your thesis to the Library for storage and preservation if you wish. We recommend submitting the print copy in cases where the electronic copy cannot be made openly available online in UCL Discovery, but you wish the print copy to be accessible to members of the Library.

Please refer to our guidance on how to deposit  for further information on the submission procedures.

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UoR Research Data Archive

Access the research data archive here.

The University of Reading Research Data Archive is an institutional repository for the preservation and sharing of research data produced or collected at the University of Reading. We accept open and restricted datasets.

University research staff and research students can register and deposit data in the Archive. Up to 20 GB of data per project can deposited at no charge. Deposits greater than 20 GB may be subject to a charge and must be discussed with us before the deposit is made.

The Archive will enable you to comply with the University's Research Data Management Policy and any relevant funder policy for the long-term preservation/sharing of research data. In particular you can:

• create and publish an online metadata record for a digital and/or non-digital dataset;
• generate a unique permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for your dataset, so that it can be easily cited and linked to;
• deposit digital data files and related documentation for long-term preservation and access;
• license your data and use access settings to control how your data files can be accessed and used.

More information and Archive policies can be found on the Archive Policies page .

If you have questions about using the Archive please contact us.

Depositing Data

If you wish to deposit a dataset or register data in the Archive for the first time and would like to book a preliminary consultation, please contact us. We will help you prepare your data and documentation files for deposit, and address any relevant considerations, including intellectual property rights in the data, issues of consent and confidentiality, how the data will be licensed, and embargo and access control requirements for the data files.

As an eligible depositor you can deposit Datasets up to 20 GB in volume at any time without prior approval and at no cost.

Deposits greater than 20 GB may be subject to a charge and must be discussed with us before the deposit is made.

Deposits of restricted datasets must also be discussed with us prior to deposit.

We provide guidance on preparing for data archiving , available as a web page or for download . We recommend you read through this guidance before you contact us for a pre-deposit consultation or deposit data in the Archive. We also provide a Data Deposit Checklist  (PDF), which you can use to check you have everything you need to submit an eligible and valid deposit. A Pre-Deposit Consultation can be booked through our MS Bookings form.

When you have everything ready, you can follow our step-by-step Data Deposit Instructions  (PDF) to submit your data, and watch our video walkthrough 'How to Deposit a Dataset' (YuJa).

For guidance on what file formats to deposit your data in, you can refer to our list of Recommended File Formats (PDF).

If you are not sure what documentation to submit with your data, you can use our README template  (txt) to identify the basic documentation requirements for data being deposited in the Archive.

Data offered or submitted to the Archive will be assessed for eligibility in accordance with the Archive's Collection Policy . You can make a preliminary assessment of your data using the Data Selection and Appraisal Checklist (PDF).

Restricted datasets

We offer a service for archiving and providing managed access to restricted datasets. These are research datasets that meet the definition of Restricted or Highly Restricted information in the University's Classification Polic y . They may encompass datasets containing identifiable information and data that have been de-identified where a higher risk of disclosure is considered to exist, for example through linkage to private databases, and/or where a there is deemed to be a higher risk of harm in the event of disclosure, for example because of the sensitivity of the subject matter. These datasets cannot be made op enly accessible, but providing certain conditions are met , they can be preserved and made available to authorised users under a Data Access Agreement.

If you wish to deposit a restricted dataset we will ask you to create a metadata record for the dataset according to the standard deposit procedure and to upload any public documentation files. We will hold the restricted dataset in secure storage on the University network, and publish the metadata record is published in the Research Data Archive, so that they can be cited and interested researchers may request access to the data. There is an example of a record for a restricted dataset in the Research Data Archive here .

Access to a restricted dataset for research purposes can be requested by any researcher affiliated to a research organisation. The request will be reviewed by a Data Access Committee including the PI of the original study. If the request is authorised, we will arrange for the recipient organisation to sign a Data Access Agreement (see an example in this dataset ) and transfer the data for use by the authorised user(s).

We only archive restricted datasets where there is a documented ethical and legal basis for retaining the data and making them accessible to others. Participants must have consented to take part in the research on the understanding that data collected from them would be preserved and would or could be made available to other researchers. Providing you are transparent about who the data may be shared with, and for what purpose, and as long as appropriate safeguards are in place, it is possible to preserve data and make them accessible in compliance with legal and ethical obligations.

If you wish to deposit a restricted dataset, please first read the Restricted Dataset Deposit Guide  (PDF), and then contact us to discuss your deposit.

DOI Allocation Service

The University allocates Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to datasets deposited in the Archive under a DataCite DOI Allocation Agreement with the British Library. Under this agreement any University service may allocate DOIs to digital objects providing this is done within the terms of the contract and according to the University's DataCite DOI Policy (PDF). If you are a service owner and are interested in using the DOI allocation service please contact us.

Robert Darby , Research Data Manager

[email protected]

0118 378 6161

Data Selection and Appraisal Checklist (PDF)

Preparing for Data Archiving (PDF)

Data Deposit Checklist (PDF)

Data Deposit Instructions (PDF)

Restricted Dataset Deposit Guide (PDF)

Recommended File Formats (PDF)

README template (txt)

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