In October 2016 the University policy regarding the deposit of your completed thesis changed. If you have successfully completed your research degree at the University of Essex you should submit an electronic copy of your thesis to the University of Essex Research Repository. This must be done prior to confirmation of the award of your degree. It is no longer a requirement to submit a bound copy of your thesis to the Albert Sloman Library.
The digital copy of your thesis held in the Research Repository will usually be made available open access through the Research Repository itself as well as through the British Library’s EthOS service, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, unless you indicate that you would prefer this not to happen. By default, University of Essex theses are shared under CC BY-NC licences. If you would prefer a different licence, please email repository@essex.ac.uk. Information about CC (creative commons) licences is available via the Library website.
Under some circumstances, you can request that access to the digital version of your thesis is restricted. If you require any restriction to the access of your thesis you must complete the request form (.docx), and submit the form in advance of the submission of your thesis for examination. As our aim at Essex is to promote open research, restricting access to Essex theses is by exception, and must be approved by Faculty Deans.
Read our handy guide: Research Thesis deposit instructions (.pdf). Contact us If you require further assistance.
The following issues which are those that you might consider if you wish to restrict access to the online version of your thesis in the research repository.
Under UK copyright law, any significant work automatically attracts copyright protection. This is designed to protect the rights of authors. Authors (or their publishers) can take legal action against those who infringe their copyright. Your thesis may contain material that you don't hold the copyright for, for example: lengthy quotations, images, photographs, graphs, tables, maps, etc.
If you have included such material from either a published or unpublished work you will need to have obtained the rights holders’ permission to include their content in the online version of your thesis. Third party copyright material can be included for examination purposes (for which the audience is limited to your supervisors, markers and external examiners), but not for open access without permission from the rights holders.
If you thesis contains personal data relating to individuals who haven’t given consent for their data to be made available online access to the full text of your thesis should be permanently restricted in the research repository.
Your thesis may contain content sensitive information that could mean open access to the full text of your thesis is not feasible. For example, if your thesis includes any potentially sensitive commercial information, any information provided in confidence or information relating to security matters access to the full text of your thesis should be permanently restricted in the research repository.
If your degree was funded by a Research Council you should check if your funder requires a particular deposit option, as some research councils require an open access deposit. If you have been funded by a commercial or other private funder you should make sure that you comply with their requirements regarding access to the completed thesis.
Access to the full text of a thesis in the research repository can be restricted if you are concerned that including the text may prevent you from finding a publisher for your thesis.