Dissertation & Thesis Preparation

If you’re beginning to prepare for the completion of your graduate work, congratulations!

Note on terminology: The term "thesis" in this section of the website is used collectively to refer to the culminating representation of the scholarly work produced by a research-based master’s or a doctoral student.

All UBC theses must be submitted to the UBC's Library's electronic respository, cIRcle, and become publicly available through cIRcle and Library and Archives Canada shortly after submission.

Final versions of all UBC theses must be approved by the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. For purposes of professionalism and archiving, aspects of the thesis body of work must conform to specifications as outlined on this site. Once you have submitted your thesis, you cannot make changes to it.

Following these specifications from the start will make your final submission easy.

Note: If you would like to request an exception to any of these specifications, please contact the thesis team well in advance of your final submission.

There are several resources to assist with thesis preparation and checking. We recommend you look at the sample thesis for the requirements for preliminary pages, end pages, and text portions of a thesis, including tables, figures, and illustrations:

Multimedia materials: Multimedia/non-text materials that cannot easily be included in a PDF of your thesis may have special formatting or archiving requirements.

Although UBC Library’s digital repository, cIRcle, can technically accept all file formats, they have recommendations for choosing file formats that will ensure long term accessibility and preservation of content.

cIRcle File Format Guidelines

If multimedia are part of your thesis, please contact graduate.thesis@ubc.ca for guidance on submission of multimedia.