NOTE ON DEADLINES:
Thesis approval deadlines are for having your thesis fully approved in cIRcle, not just submitted. You are expected to submit at least five days ahead of any deadline in order to allow yourself time to make any needed corrections.
This section is only for final, post-defence submission of theses and dissertations.
Note on terminology: The term "thesis" in this section of the website is used collectively to refer to both master's theses and doctoral dissertations.
Final theses and dissertations must be submitted electronically to the Library's electronic repository, cIRcle, where they will be open access.
[CREATIVE ARTS ONLY (Master of Fine Arts/Master of Music): You may choose to submit to the collection in cIRcle “Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Creative Arts, 2017+ (CWL ACCESS)”. Access to this collection is permanently restricted to individuals who have a Campus-Wide Login (CWL). The collection is not available to the public. Please see cIRcle: Uploading Electronic Creative Arts Theses and cIRcle: File Format Guidelines. You can submit multimedia files to the Creative Arts collection along with a PDF of the text-based portions of your thesis. If you decide to submit to the regular collection, you can only submit a PDF file there; multimedia files must be submitted separately to the Supplementary Materials collection.]
You must submit your final, defended thesis electronically as a single non-secured electronic PDF file to UBC's online information repository, cIRcle. The PDF file must be compatible with Adobe Acrobat version 5, and must not be in "secured" format or password-protected. cIRcle does not accept secured or password-protected PDFs due to access and preservation concerns. A scan to PDF is not acceptable. If you have questions, please contact the cIRcle staff.
Your thesis will be reviewed for formatting by the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and approved for inclusion in cIRcle. Your program cannot be closed and you will not be eligible to graduate until the content and formatting of the thesis have been officially approved and you have received an official email confirming final approval of your thesis. It is your responsibility to submit a thesis in the correct format and allow time for revisions to be complete in order to meet deadlines.
Note about pre-reviews: If you are preparing for final submission, your thesis will be reviewed more quickly if you submit directly to cIRcle rather than emailing it for review.
We recommend you submit your thesis a minimum of five business days before any deadline, as corrections may be required. Particularly around deadlines, the thesis team is exceptionally busy and there will be delays in activating accounts and reviewing theses. Additionally, you will need time to make any necessary corrections, as your thesis must be approved and accepted into cIRcle (not just submitted) in order for you to meet deadlines.
Thesis Availability
Your thesis will be available online in 3 - 4 days.
IMPORTANT: If you would like to delay publication of your thesis, you must obtain approval from the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies before submitting your thesis.
Submitting Doctoral Dissertation for External Examination
For information on submitting a doctoral dissertation for transmittal to the External Examiner, please see the Final Doctoral Oral Examinations section of this website.
Checking the Thesis
Please use Resources for Thesis Checking to check formatting before attempting to submit your thesis.
Proofreading
Important: It is your responsibility to proofread your thesis carefully before submitting the final version, and to make sure that the thesis you submit is complete, accurate, and free of errors. You cannot make changes to your thesis after it has been accepted into cIRcle, so you will not be able to correct any errors after your final submission. Check for:
- consistent, sequential numbering of sections
- consistent abbreviations and units of measure
- correct symbols and special characters
- consistent headings and capitalization
- consistent line spacing and table formatting
- typographical errors
- grammatical errors
Proofreading is primarily your responsibility, but supervisors and examiners should not sign off on theses until they are free of errors.
The thesis team checks theses to ensure they meet the formatting requirements, focusing on the preliminary pages. If staff notice egregious mistakes elsewhere in a thesis they may require them to be corrected in the interest of ensuring a professional presentation of the work.
Submitting supplementary material
Supplementary material must be relevant to the thesis work and usually consists of electronic material or multimedia that cannot easily be included in the PDF of your thesis. It will be submitted to the cIRcle collection “Supplementary Thesis Materials and Errata” on your behalf after your thesis has been approved, and a link to the supplementary material will be added to the cIRcle abstract.
In order for your supplementary material to be uploaded, you must submit a copy of the cIRcle distribution license that pertains specifically to the supplementary material.
IMPORTANT: Supplementary material files must comply with the cIRcle File Format Guidelines.
Please ensure that you read this carefully before preparing your files for submission.
Procedure for submitting supplementary material:
- Email graduate.thesis@ubc.ca to let us know you will be submitting supplementary material. Include details of what you want to submit and why.
- Create a “List of Supplementary Material” in the preliminary pages of your thesis, following the List of Tables and List of Figures. Ensure that “List of Supplementary Material” is included in the table of contents.
- Download and complete a PDF copy of the cIRcle licence and email it to graduate.thesis@ubc.ca. Please be sure that the form states that it pertains specifically to the supplementary material or errata.
- Email the supplementary material to graduate.thesis@ubc.ca, or use a drop box.
- Once your thesis submission is complete, Grad Studies will submit the supplementary material on your behalf to cIRcle, and a link to the supplementary material will be added to the cIRcle abstract.