If you are writing a thesis and have published, you may want to refer to your published work in your thesis.
When you have completed your thesis it will be freely available worldwide online via the Kent Academic Repository. For this reason you need to think about the use of material in your thesis that has been previously published elsewhere
Did you publish Open Access?
What you can do with your article or book chapter, and the extent to which you can share it online in your thesis, depends upon the terms you published it under.
If you published it Open Access, probably through the payment of an Article Processing Charge, you and you co-authors will have retained copyright and agreed with the publisher that the work will be made available under a Creative Commons licence, usually CC BY. This means that you, or anyone else, is free to share, copy, post online, distribute etc the final publisher pdf version of your article, conference paper or book chapter.
How do I tell if an article is published Open Access?
The published version online on the journal webpage should
- clearly state that the article is Open Access
- ideally display the open padlock Open Access symbol
- display a Creative Commons licence
- “free” access that many journals use is not the same thing as Open Access. Free access is temporary, at the will of the publisher, and does not use a Creative Commons licence so the terms under which an article can be used or shared in the future are not clearly defined
- remember that you have access to thousands of journal titles while you are a member of the University. The fact that you can access an article does not necessarily mean that it is Open Access
If your article was published Open Access…
If your work was published Open Access you can put the final published version of the whole item, or any part of it, in your thesis. It can be made available in its entirety online as part of your thesis. You then need to Create a record in KAR and follow the steps below.
If your article was not published Open Access…
If your work was not published Open Access, you still own the intellectual property and can refer to it, but you are not permitted to share the final published version online. Consequently you cannot put the final published version of your article in your thesis. But there are ways around this. We recommend that you Create a record in KAR and follow the steps below.
If it is too late, and you have already submitted and been examined on your thesis and you included the whole articles in your thesis in the form of the final publisher pdf, you will need to create two copies of your thesis before you deposit to KAR via the Moodle thesis deposit point. See https://www.kent.ac.uk/guides/deposit-your-thesis/redacting-and-restricting-access-to-your-thesis#how-to-redact-material-from-your-thesis Redact/remove the publisher pdfs from one copy of your thesis. When you submit, select Option 2 in the Moodle thesis deposit point. The redacted copy of your thesis will be made publicly available and the full copy of the thesis will be permanently restricted from view. We still recommend that you Create a record in KAR and follow the steps below
Create a record in KAR
- Create a full record for your publication on KAR with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and links to the publisher’s pages for your work.
- Each record will have its own URL in KAR which will look a bit like this: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/69412/
- You should check that an item is not already on KAR before you add it. Use the Browse or Advanced Search function. An entry may have already been made by one of your co-authors or a research administrator.
Add copies of the publications
Where possible, upload a copy of the full text the KAR record. If the article has been published Open Access, the final publisher pdf can be uploaded. If not, we can help you upload another version of the article. See How to get help with this below.
How to get help with this
- You can use our Assisted Deposit Service to send us your journal articles or conference proceedings to upload to KAR for you. We will make the entry in KAR and help you upload the correct version of your work to meet university, funder and publisher requirements.
- If you use the Assisted Deposit Service you don’t need to worry about publisher requirements or embargos as we do that for you, but if you are curious, you can use this SherpaRomeo service to find out more about journal publisher copyright policies. When the journal information is displayed, pay particular attention to the “embargo” and “conditions” sections.
- If you want to make the KAR entry yourself use our KAR guides to help you
Thesis bibliography
Add the KAR URLs to your bibliographic list. This will direct readers of your thesis to the entry in KAR where an Open Access version of your work will be available.
Deposit your thesis via Moodle
When you have completed your thesis do not add your thesis directly to KAR. You must use your school’s thesis deposit point in Moodle. Our Deposit your thesis webpages provide guidance and advice about this
PhD by published works
If you are writing a PhD by published works use our web guidance about Recording a PhD based on published works on KAR
Your school’s web profile
In some schools, post-graduate research students have a profile page where the publications section is fed by KAR. A record in KAR must have your Kent email address in the Creators field for it to display in your profile. If you have records in KAR that are not displaying on your profile, and the Kent Staff Profile box needs to be ticked. Email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk with the detail of the KAR item and Kent email address you wish to be associated with the record.
Help and guidance
Contact researchsupport@kent.ac.uk