I have benefited greatly from being able to share my PhD dissertation as an open access publication – it has meant that more people have read and engaged with the research I spent so many years working on. I was glad to know there was an option to move to a Creative Commons license, so that it was clear to people what they can do with the work.Dr Lauren Gawne, PhD Graduate (School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, 2013)
Today, public access to graduate research theses is a common and valuable aspect of the open scholarship landscape. This is usually made possible by depositing the thesis in an institutional repository after final submission. To meet the best practices of open access, graduates may be encouraged to apply a Creative Commons licence to their thesis.
For candidates undertaking creative work as part of their thesis, or whose thesis includes Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs), other copyright and intellectual property considerations will apply, and full open access may not be possible. The advice on this page primarily concerns traditional text-based research theses.
Benefits of making theses open access
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Making your research more discoverable
Until your thesis has been made open access, it is an untapped resource of original research. A thesis under embargo cannot be downloaded or read, significantly limiting the potential impact your research can have.
By making your thesis freely available to the public, you help to advance scholarly discourse in your field. You also make it available to other researchers, students, policy makers, and practitioners, all of whom could build on your research in significant and meaningful ways.
For University of Melbourne graduates, your thesis being open access in Minerva Access results in it being discoverable through Google, Google Scholar, the National Library of Australia’s Trove database, and other platforms.
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Raising your researcher profile and creating impact
Making your thesis open access means it can easily be provided as an example of your work and expertise in your chosen discipline, helping to raise your researcher profile.
It can also help to build your impact narrative, spark conversations, and lead to exciting collaborations, both within and beyond the academy. Once open, your thesis can also start gathering views, downloads, shares, and citations – none of which are likely if your thesis remains inaccessible to most potential readers. -
Being inclusive of researchers around the world
Researchers in low- and middle-income countries often face significant barriers when it comes to accessing research. Making theses open access increases the amount of high-quality research available to researchers of the Global South, whose institutions may struggle to afford expensive journal descriptions or costly books (Tennant et al., 2016).
Open access theses at the University of Melbourne
The University’s institutional repository, Minerva Access, provides free public access to theses completed at the University of Melbourne.
Browse open access theses in Minerva Access
Open access is required for University of Melbourne PhD, Doctorate, and Masters Research theses in all but exceptional cases. It may also be required, or encouraged, for Honours and Masters Coursework theses, depending on the school or faculty. When required and approved, temporary embargoes and ongoing access restrictions are possible.
For more information, see the FAQ and deposit advice below, or visit the Graduate Research Hub’s “My thesis in the library” page. Current graduate researchers may also wish to join one of the “Open Access and Your Thesis” webinars, which run twice each year as part of our Researcher@Library program.
Publishing after your thesis is open access
Historically, publishers would not consider submissions that had been adapted from theses available online, just as, historically, many publishers would not accept submissions that had been shared as preprints. Today, however, it is increasingly rare for publishers to reject work for appearing in earlier forms as online theses or preprints, whether the submission is for a journal article, book chapter, or monograph.
That is, most publishers today do not consider theses available online as prior publications for the purposes of publishing. They are typically treated in a similar way to preprints: they are regarded as early versions of a work shared online prior to submission to a publisher.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states that online theses should not be considered prior publications that would prevent submission to a publisher: “Where a thesis (or chapter) contains otherwise unpublished work … it should not be considered prior publication. That is, it is acceptable for the work, or parts of the work … to be submitted … to a publisher for publication” (COPE Best practice for theses publishing, 2017).
There do remain some publishers, journals, and individual editors who are resistant to publishing work previously available online as theses or preprints, so check websites for publisher policies prior to submission. It may be that an editor’s or journal’s resistance is out of step with their own publisher policies.
If an editor or publisher requests that a thesis be taken offline, embargoed, or placed under access restrictions for publishing reasons, graduate researchers must negotiate on the terms of publication. Any agreement entered into with a publisher must accommodate the University making the thesis publicly available in Minerva Access (see “Can I choose not to make my graduate research thesis open access?” in the FAQ below).
Deposit your thesis
Find out how to deposit your University of Melbourne thesis in Minerva Access.
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Graduate Research Theses
PhD, Doctorate, and Masters Research candidates are required to submit a digital copy of their thesis to Minerva Access via the Thesis Examination System (TES). Detailed information is available on the "My thesis in the Library" page.
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Honours and Masters Coursework Theses
Honours and Masters Coursework candidates are welcome to submit their completed thesis to the Minerva Access repository. This may be required by some schools or departments.
FAQ
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What are some examples of how major journal publishers handle thesis-related submissions?
Most major scholarly journal publishers today have clear policies supporting the submission of articles derived from theses or dissertations that are publicly available. In doing so, they are following COPE best practice guidelines that recommend treating theses, like preprints, as not being prior publications for the purposes of publishing. The shift to accepting openly available theses as publications is ongoing, but in the University’s experience it is already very rare that an open access thesis is ultimately a barrier to publication.
Consider the following publisher policy examples:
Elsevier’s policy on prior publication confirms that they do not consider online publication of an academic thesis as prior publication. Like preprints, they are considered prior uses of a work that can be considered for publication. They note, however, that Lancet journals, Cell Press journals, and some society-owned journals have their own policies on prior publication that can be found on the journal homepages.
Likewise, Springer’s journal author FAQ states: “Springer will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis including those that have been made publicly available according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.” Other Springer Nature imprints have similar policies, confirming that theses are not considered prior (or duplicate) publication – see BMC, SpringerOpen, Palgrave, and Nature.
Sage’s prior publication guidelines follow COPE guidelines and states: “Excerpts or material from your dissertation that have not been through peer review will generally be eligible for publication.”
Taylor & Francis’s Editorial Policies state that the publisher supports “the need for authors to share early versions of their work.” Although the policy does not mention theses or dissertations specifically, preprints and other Author’s Original Manuscript versions can be shared anywhere, without embargo.
Although Wiley’s overarching policies do not mention theses, their Preprints Policy confirms that the publisher will consider submissions already available online as preprints, and allows submitted manuscripts to be shared to preprint servers at any time. Individual journals’ author guidelines often confirm that theses do not count as prior publications. For example, “Articles submitted to Journal of Anatomy are done so on the following conditions: that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis)” (Journal of Anatomy Author Guidelines).
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Don’t book publishers require theses to be restricted access before publishing monographs based on them?
Major academic book publishers differ in their approaches to publishing monographs based on theses, but most are happy to consider book proposals based on theses that are available online. Some publishers have strong statements clarifying that open access theses do not present barriers to publication, while others consider matters on a case-by-case basis.
Palgrave Macmillan, for example, provides the following advice on their Early Career Researcher Hub: “Palgrave Macmillan will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis including those that have been made publicly available according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification. Prospective authors should bear in mind that every PhD thesis will need to undergo rigorous revision in order to be published as a monograph with our press.”
Likewise, Cambridge University Press considers theses and dissertations to be preprints, as covered by their Green Open Access Policy. If a monograph is based on a thesis, the policy supports that thesis being shared in full, at any time, under any licence (including a Creative Commons licence).
Some other major publishers, such as Routledge, do not have blanket statements of this kind, but consider requirements on a case-by-case basis. Such publishers will usually take into account university expectations around theses being made open access.
Be aware that some publishers who do not accept open-access theses for consideration as monographs may also ask the author to assign rights that the author does not have, such as requiring the author to assign exclusive rights for all time. Embargoes are only for a limited period, after which the University will exercise its right to make the thesis available; this right cannot be removed by the author and thus cannot be assigned in a publication contract. Some publishers go further, for example requiring that the material has not and never will be used for academic assessment, which means that they cannot consider material such as a thesis that was used in award of a degree.
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How can I apply a Creative Commons licence to my thesis?
Creative Commons licences make it clear to authors and readers how a work can be shared and used. University of Melbourne graduates can apply a Creative Commons licence to their thesis in Minerva Access using the following process:
- Choose a Creative Commons licence that would be suitable for your thesis. See “Selecting a licence for your work” on our Copyright website for guidance.
- Receive written permission from your thesis supervisor to apply the chosen Creative Commons licence.
- Email minerva-access@unimelb.edu.au to request your chosen Creative Commons licence be applied to your thesis, attaching the supervisor’s permission.
Note that if your thesis includes publications, you may be restricted in what licence can be applied. Consult your publishing agreement or your publisher’s website for more information. For further advice, contact the University’s Copyright Office.
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Can I choose not to make my graduate research thesis open access?
At the University of Melbourne, it is a requirement of all PhD, Doctorate, and Masters Research candidates that their final thesis is made open access in Minerva Access, unless exceptional circumstances mean that an embargo or ongoing access restrictions are required.
This requirement is outlined in the Graduate Research Training Policy (MPF1321) and the Intellectual Property Policy (MPF1320). The latter policy reads:
4.19. Student theses must be made openly available to the public through the University’s Institutional Digital Repository, unless otherwise agreed with the University (for example where an embargo has been approved by the University). The University is deemed to have been granted by the Student a non-exclusive, royalty free, world-wide and irrevocable licence to use and reproduce the Student theses for non-commercial educational, teaching and research purposes, including making the thesis available to the public through the University’s Institutional Repository.
Students must retain all necessary rights to enable the University to publish and share the thesis and not grant exclusive copyright licence to a thesis to any other person or organisation.
Likewise, our Principles for Open Access to Research Outputs at Melbourne states:
10. Graduate researchers are expected to make their research thesis publicly available via the University’s institutional repository unless otherwise agreed with the University, and to make their thesis available within the University via the repository in all but exceptional cases. Note that the University’s right to publish and share a thesis is irrevocable and cannot be overridden by a private publication agreement.
For information on how to apply a temporary embargo or formally request permanent access restrictions, see the FAQ item below and consult the “My thesis in the library” page.
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What embargoes or ongoing access restrictions are possible?
If you are a University of Melbourne graduate researcher, you may apply a temporary embargo to your thesis or formally request permanent access restrictions when certain criteria are met. Embargoes and access restrictions can also be applied to portions of your thesis, whether this is through the redaction of third-party copyright material or through the embargo or restriction of certain chapters or appendices.
When summitting your final thesis in the Thesis Examination System (TES), you can request a two-year embargo, which will be granted if you meet the required criteria. This can be either an external embargo, where access is limited to interlibrary loans and University of Melbourne staff and students, or a full embargo, where the thesis not available by any means. Full embargo is only granted in highly exceptional circumstances. The two-year embargo period can be shortened, or extended to four years, with the support of your supervisor. Further information on embargoes and embargo criteria can be found on the “My thesis in the library” page.
As covered in the Graduate Research Training Policy (MPF1321), ongoing restricted access arrangements must be approved by the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Graduate & International Research) in consultation with the relevant Dean. Further information, and the restricted access request form, can be found on the “My thesis in the library” page.
Note that applications to have embargoes extended purely for publishing reasons are only granted when extenuating circumstances apply. Requests for permanent access restrictions that are sought to comply with publisher contracts are never granted. In most cases, however, these are not required, as most publishers today understand the requirements for theses to be freely available in institutional repositories.
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I chose to embargo my thesis – can I bring it out of embargo early?
Yes. Any University of Melbourne graduate who opted to embargo their thesis can choose to release it from embargo early. To end an embargo before its original end date:
- Check to make sure that ending the embargo early would not conflict with any agreements made with third parties (for example, publishers).
- Receive written permission from your thesis supervisor to shorten the embargo period.
- Email minerva-access@unimelb.edu.au to request a change to embargo end date, attaching your supervisor’s permission.
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My thesis includes publications. Won’t making it public breach publisher policies?
When preparing a thesis with publications, candidates should follow the guidelines on the “Incorporating your published work in your thesis” and “Submitting my thesis” pages, as well as the “Preparation of Graduate Research Theses Rules.”
If your publication is still in review and has not yet been formally accepted for publication, you should include the submitted manuscript in your thesis.
Once accepted for publication, or published, you should use the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) – the final manuscript accepted for publication after peer review and revisions.
Final published versions can only be included when you have explicit permission to do so and when it does not conflict with your publishing agreement. Final PDFs can be always used for open access publications carrying Creative Commons licences.
It is important to check publisher policies to determine which version can be shared and whether an embargo is required. In the absence of policies pertaining specifically to inclusion in online theses, candidates should follow policies governing what can be shared in institutional repositories. These policies should be available on journal or publisher websites and may be referred to as open access policies, sharing policies, or self-archiving policies. For journal articles, the Sherpa Romeo deposit policy register can be used to determine sharing policies and embargo requirements.
Also note that some publishers offer specific permissions to include Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) or final published versions in theses. For example, the publisher Sage allows the final PDF of a candidate’s article to be included in their thesis and made available online. Their Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines states: “You may use the Final Published PDF (or Original Submission or Accepted Manuscript, if preferred) … in your dissertation or thesis, including where the dissertation or thesis will be posted in any electronic Institutional Repository or database.”
For more information, see the “My thesis in the library” page, along with the advice contained on the Copyright Office’s “Copyright and your thesis” page. The “Declaration for publication incorporated in a thesis” form can be found on the “Submitting my thesis” page.
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My thesis contains third-party copyright material. Can I still make it public?
Some theses contain information that cannot be made public, such as confidential or private data, or third-party copyright material where permission to publish has not been obtained. In these cases, it may be necessary to submit a redacted version of your thesis with third-party copyright content removed. You would then be submitting two copies:
- The original, examined thesis, which will be archived (not available for online public access).
- A redacted “public access” copy, with non-compliant material removed (ensure you maintain page number integrity).
Guidelines on how and when to seek permissions, recording copyright statuses, and redacting copyright material can be found on the “Copyright and your thesis” and the “My thesis in the library” pages. For more information, please consult the Copyright Office.
Further Support
For enquiries relating to open access and scholarly publishing, please contact your Faculty or Subject Liaison Librarians.
If you require assistance using Minerva Access, or have requests relating to existing Minerva Access thesis records, please email minerva-access@unimelb.edu.au.
Copyright enquiries should be directed to the Copyright Office at copyright-office@unimelb.edu.au.
For all other enquiries relating to thesis preparation and submission, please email your faculty or school’s graduate research contact.
Page last updated 1 February 2024.
Institutional repository
Repositories hosted by institutions to collect the research outputs of that institution. They often collect a broad range of digital items including articles, papers, books, book chapters, reports, data, and creative outputs.
The University of Melbourne has two institutional repositories: Minerva Access for research outputs, and Melbourne Figshare for research data, reports, supplementary research materials, and non-traditional research outputs (NTROs). You can find out more about Minerva Access and Melbourne Figshare on our Repository Open Access page .
Open access
Open access refers to the availability of research outputs via the internet, such that any user can find, freely access, read, and download the output without charge. Best practice in open access is to use open licences, such as Creative Commons licences, that permit users to copy, distribute, print, search, link, crawl, mine, and otherwise use and reuse the research output, as long as proper attribution is provided. Find out more on our What Is Open Access? page.
Creative Commons licences
Open licences that have become best practice in open access publishing. They are built using a combination of elements: BY (Attribution), SA (Share-Alike), NC (Non-Commercial), and ND (No Derivatives). All licences are detailed on the Creative Commons website.
The most open of the licences is the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This licence allows authors to retain their copyright while granting others permission to distribute, use, adapt, remix, and build upon the material, so long as attribution is given to the creator. This is the preferred, and sometimes required, licence of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), as well as many international research funders.
The most restrictive is the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence does not allow for any commercial uses or the creation and sharing of any adaptations or derivative versions. It greatly restricts how others can use the work and, when adopted as part of an exclusive licence to publish with a publisher, can result in a significant loss of author rights.
Embargo
In the context of open access publishing and sharing, embargoes are a restriction imposed by publishers on the public release of an output. Most scholarly publishers will allow the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of a journal article or book chapter to be made open access in a repository after an embargo of between 12 and 36 months.
Staff at our institutional repository, Minerva Access, will determine and manage embargoes before making any version of a research output publicly available.
Preprint
A version of an article or paper that is shared openly prior to formal peer review or publication. Preprints are typically shared on preprint servers, such as arXiv.org, bioRxiv, OSF Preprints, SSRN, or Zenodo.
Find out more on our Preprints page.
Submitted manuscript
The submitted manuscript is the version of a research output originally submitted to a venue, such as a journal or book publisher. This version typically undergoes editorial review and may subsequently be sent on for peer review.
In the past, submitted manuscripts were sometimes called preprints, although this term now has a different meaning: early versions of article or papers shared prior to peer review on preprint servers.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) / Accepted version
The version of an article, paper, book, or book chapter that has been accepted for publication. It is the author’s final manuscript version after peer review and revisions, but prior to the publisher’s copyediting, typesetting, and formatting results in a proof.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Version of Record (VoR)
The final published version of a research output – usually the publisher’s final PDF.
Unless the work is published open access under a Creative Commons licence, this version cannot generally be shared or made open access in a repository.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Non-Traditional Research Output (NTRO)
A broad term encompassing research outputs that do not take the form of typical peer-reviewed scholarly publications (journal articles, books and book chapters, conference publications).
Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs) include visual artworks, creative writing, films, performances, recordings, music composition, building and design projects, curated exhibitions, and portfolios. They may also be referred to as Artistic and Practice Based Research Outputs (APROs).
To be considered a research output for reporting purposes, an NTRO must meet the definition of research established in the Australian Research Council's 2018-19 ERA report:
Research is defined as the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies, inventions and understandings. This could include synthesis and analysis of previous research to the extent that it is new and creative.
University of Melbourne researchers can find out more about reporting their NTROs on our Research Gateway: Add Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs) to Find an Expert.