Writing or supervising a thesis? Read this!

Writing your thesis or supervising a student? Have a look at our new webpages to find out what decisions you need to make about the future use of your work and what happens at the end of your final year when you deposit your thesis into the Kent Academic Repository via Moodle.

New web pages

We’ve published new library webpages about Depositing your thesis. The pages provide an overview of the decisions you need to make before you use Moodle to deposit your thesis.
For example:

• do you need to submit a redacted version of your thesis as well as the full version?
• do you wish to apply an embargo because you are planning to publish it?
• does your thesis contain a lot of sensitive or confidential material which means it cannot be made publicly available?
• which Creative Commons licence will you apply to your thesis?
• do you have data or accompanying files you want to preserve?

Separate sections take you through each of these decisions in detail, outline the action you need to take and describe the steps involved in the thesis deposit process itself.

New booklet

If you prefer to read guidance in print form, we’ve published a booklet “Copyright, Open Access and your thesis” with the Graduate School. Copies are available from the Graduate School or as an online pdf. You might find it helpful to use this as a basis for discussion with your supervisor.

New Moodle page

We’ve improved the workflow, given each step meaningful headings, included links to online guidance and added some features to help post-graduate administrators help you.

Why have we made these changes?

University of Kent PhD theses have been submitted in electronic format only since 2014. Last year the library reviewed this process to see how it was working. We sought feedback from past and current PhD students, from PG Administrators and from Directors of Graduate Studies. We also observed students and administrators as they went through the thesis deposit process.
We concluded that

• there was different guidance about the deposit process in different places
• students were not always aware of it, or able to find it where and when they needed it
• students were arriving at the Moodle deposit page without having any warning about the decisions they need to make.

So we worked to improve the web pages, the Moodle thesis deposit point and any other documents that you might receive. We hope that you will now feel more able to make timely and well-informed decisions.

Suggestions and feedback

We would be pleased to have your feedback and any suggestions for further improvements. Please email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk

Who to ask for help

Contact researchsupport@kent.ac.uk