Final Submission Instructions

This section is only for final, post-defence submission of theses and dissertations.

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.

Please follow these steps in order:

1.  Download and complete the following forms from the Graduate Studies website:

When you have completed your thesis defence and any changes required by the examining committee, your supervisor and committee member(s) will sign the Thesis or Dissertation Approval form.

2. Ensure your completed forms are submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

Thesis or Dissertation Approval forms must be submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies by your graduate program. The program will ensure that the form is complete and that the signatures/endorsements are genuine, and will forward the form to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies on your behalf.

It is preferable for you to submit the Thesis/Dissertation Cover Sheet to your program office rather than directly to Grad Studies, so that both forms arrive as a complete package.

Please do NOT email a copy of your thesis along with the forms.

Please ensure your forms are sent ahead of your planned submission date. Your cIRcle account cannot be activated until Graduate Studies has received all your thesis forms.

3.  Set up your cIRcle account by going to the UBC Library cIRcle User Registration page. See cIRcle Instructions for more details. Once you have created your cIRcle account, you will be sent an email message that allows you to set your password.

4.  IMPORTANT: After setting your password, send an email to:

graduate.thesis@ubc.ca

to request that your account be activated. You must include your name and email address in the body of the email. You will be notified when your account has been activated and you are able to submit your thesis. Please send the email AFTER you have submitted your forms, as your account cannot be activated until the forms have arrived at the appropriate Grad Studies office.

IMPORTANT - CREATIVE ARTS ONLY:

[If you are submitting an MFA or MMus thesis to the "Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Creative Arts, 2017+ (CWL ACCESS)" collection, you must state this in the email to graduate.thesis@ubc.ca. Otherwise you will not be able to submit to this collection.]

5.  Convert your thesis to a single non-secured PDF file. 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. If you have questions, please contact the cIRcle staff.

[CREATIVE ARTS ONLY: For MFA and MMus theses, convert the text portion(s) of your thesis to a single non-secured PDF. Ensure that multimedia files are in formats that are accepted by the UBC Library.]

The preferred conversion tool is Adobe Acrobat. This ETD Tutorial provides information about PDFs including conversion from Microsoft Word to PDF.

Name the PDF file using the following format, all lower case:

ubc_gradyear_gradmonth_lastname_firstname.pdf
Example: ubc_2023_november_houdini_harry.pdf

Your gradmonth is the month in which your degree will formally be conferred by Senate. It will be either May or November.

IMPORTANT: Ensure that there are no spaces in your file name; use underscores instead. The file name must be all lower case.

6.  Submit your thesis to cIRcle. Your thesis will be reviewed and you will be notified by email if any changes need to be made.

Submit to the collection "Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) 2008+". Do NOT submit to the "Graduate Research [non-thesis]" collection.

CREATIVE ARTS: For MFA and MMus theses, you may choose to submit to the collection "Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Creative Arts, 2017+ (CWL ACCESS)". Access to this collection is permanently restricted to individuals with a Campus-Wide Login. Please see cIRcle: Uploading Electronic Creative Arts Theses for specific details and instructions. If you are uploading more than one multimedia file, please ensure that each file name is unique.

Important: You must continue to check your email after submission so that you can make any required corrections. Your submission is not complete and you will not meet deadlines until your thesis has been approved, and you have received an official email receipt.

When your thesis meets Graduate Studies' requirements, you will receive email notification that it has been added to the UBC Library's cIRcle Institutional Repository.

Requesting a Delay in Publication of your Thesis

If you want to request a delay in publication of your thesis, you must do this before you submit electronically. See How to Request a Delay in Publication for instructions.