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• Submitting your thesis

Submitting your thesis and beyond

Tips on what you need to do before you submit your thesis and beyond.

When you pass the 3-year mark in your PhD candidature (or 1-year mark in your MPhil candidature) you should start preparing to submit your thesis to ensure timely completion. There are several requirements you will need to follow to successfully submit your thesis.

Get organised for your Completion Seminar

All graduate researchers are required to make a public presentation of their research findings at the University in the six-months prior to submitting their thesis for examination. This is called a Completion Seminar and is regarded as an important part of candidature. The seminar should present the objectives, methods, findings and significance of the candidate's thesis research. This is often a departmental seminar. Your supervisors will write a report detailing feedback that can be used for the final draft. Your Completion Seminar should be undertaken at around 3-6 months before you intend to submit. Be proactive and arrange your Completion Seminar ahead of time.

For more information on Completion seminars please go to the Graduate Research Hub page: Submitting my thesis | University of Melbourne (unimelb.edu.au)

Completion seminar requirements can be viewed on the Graduate Research Training Policy (MPF132) policy library. Please note: This policy in the process of being updated .

Preparing your thesis

There is a plethora of information on the GR Hub in regard to:

• Writing your thesis
• Incorporating your published work in your thesis
• Thesis with creative works
• Preparation of Graduate Research Thesis Rules
• Graduate researchers and digital assistance tools
• Research integrity in my thesis

All of which can be found here: Preparing my thesis | University of Melbourne (unimelb.edu.au)

Preparing to submit

Similarly, on the GR Hub there is information on what your need to do before you submit your thesis. Submitting my thesis | University of Melbourne (unimelb.edu.au)

Topics include

• Before you submit your thesis IP Guide
• Completion Seminar
• Creative works
• iThenticate
• Graduate Research Thesis Submission Checklist (download from the site)
• Read the section ‘How to submit’, which may take some of the mystery out of this final step and help take the jitters out of this stage.

The examination process

For information on the examination process Examination Overview | University of Melbourne (unimelb.edu.au)

Key points on:

• What examiners look for
• The Thesis Examination System
• Examination process
• Examination of jointly awarded PhD
• Examination criteria and marking
• Responding to examiners
• Changes to the thesis
• Citation for Completion

For additional information please view the Graduate Research Training Policy Graduate Research Training Policy (unimelb.edu.au)

Thesis submission date expiry and late submission

Your final thesis submission date will correspond to the maximum period of your candidature, that is for a PhD (4.5 EFTSL/years if you commenced prior to 1 March 2020, and 4 EFTSL if you commenced on or after 1 March 2020) or MPhil (2 EFTSL if you commenced on or after 1 March 2020).

However, if you need more time to submit, these are the options for GRs who confirmed after Jan 2018.

• If you need to up to two more weeks post final thesis submission date you need to apply for a 10-working day extension. Please request this by email with [email protected]
• If you cannot submit your thesis by your final thesis submission date and you need several weeks or up to 12 months extension of your thesis submission date, you need to apply for Late submission . Late submission applications need to be requested with the FEIT GR team 2 months prior to your final thesis submission date = 4 EFTSL date. More information on late submission can be found here: Late Submission | University of Melbourne (unimelb.edu.au)

Student visa holders: Staying in Australia for the examination period

Please take care with managing your visa extension needs, especially if your visa expiry date corresponds with your thesis submission date period and you intend on staying in Australia for the examination period. Please contact Stop1 for visa queries well before issues arise if you can.

Once student visa holders submit their thesis their CoE is ‘completed’ and they need to apply for a  CMT if they intend staying in Australia for the examination period. For requesting CMTs and more information: Renewing your student visa (unimelb.edu.au)

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Thesis submission

Before you submit your thesis, ensure that you have the correct information on thesis requirements and on theses in Languages Other Than English (LOTE).

Thesis in Languages Other Than English (LOTE)

It is expected that a graduate of the University of Melbourne will be able to engage in academic discourse in English. Therefore, a research thesis will normally be written in English. At the same time, the Faculty seeks to encourage the acquisition of appropriate levels of linguistic and cultural competencies necessary for research of international distinction. Consequently, if a graduate researcher wishes to write a thesis in another language, an application can be made to the Faculty's Associate Dean (Graduate Research) at an early stage in the candidature. The Associate Dean will consider such an application if the source material and readership are primarily in that language or the thesis is concerned with the study of language. Where permission is granted, a summary of the thesis (approximately 2,500 words) in English should be bound in the thesis.

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• Incorporating publications in your thesis

Publications and your doctorate thesis

This resource provides a brief introduction to incorporating publications in your thesis. It includes activities to help you apply tips and reflect on your learning, and should take you 15-20 minutes to read and complete. Check out the further resources at the bottom of each section and references on the last page for more information on this topic.

Including papers that you have written for publication as part of your thesis shows your achievements and impact as a researcher.

This page looks at some key considerations for including publications in your thesis and connecting them into a unified narrative.

Approaching a thesis that includes publication

There are several approaches to incorporating publications into your thesis. You might:

• include individual papers that you have already prepared, or start with a broad thesis plan that sets out the individual papers you wish to submit for publication as you work on your research project.
• finalise your publications before or after you’ve written the related thesis chapters.
• be modifying your publications to fit the thesis or adapting your thesis into publications.

No matter what your circumstances, the university offers a wide range of options for putting together a graduate research thesis. Keep in mind:

• The same criteria, including the required volume of work, apply to theses with or without publication, and theses with small or large publication proportions.
• Focus on the thesis as a whole and the integration of any publication to strengthen the thesis, rather than the number or status of your publications.
• Your thesis, first and foremost, should provide a clear and cohesive narrative of your research to your readers.

Challenges of a thesis that includes publication

Although any form of thesis will have its challenges, writing a thesis that includes publication may create extra demands on you.

For example, choosing to get your work published early in your candidature might mean you feel the pressure to write like an expert, even when you don’t yet feel like one.

Also, your papers might speak to different audiences with different purposes at different stages of your research, and follow different journal conventions. This means that, when it comes time to incorporate your publications into a longer piece of work, you will need to align them and make them fit the purpose and audience of your thesis.

To help you start tackling these challenges, it’s useful to know what qualities a doctorate thesis needs to demonstrate and think about how to curate your publications to show these.

Showing doctorate qualities using your publications

High standards apply to the examination of a doctorate thesis. Nygaard and Solli (2021) synthesise these standards into five qualities:

Your thesis writing needs to be of a publishable standard. While this can be evaluated in terms of potential publishability, including published work or papers intended for publication in your thesis can provide clear evidence of this.

• How many publications do you intend to include in your thesis? What are they?
• What are the publication statuses of these papers (intended/under review/published)?
• What journals are your works published in/intended for? Are they peer-reviewed?

While your publications need to speak to the scholarly communities of the journals you submit them to, which may or may not fit neatly in a single discipline, your thesis will need to show that it belongs in the discipline it sits within. Show awareness of the terminology, conventions, key conversations or debates of your field, even when you’re deviating from these.

If your thesis is interdisciplinary, state early in your writing what disciplines it brings together and why; you will also need to deal with the terminology and conventions of these disciplines for readers who may not be familiar with them.

• What discipline(s) does your thesis belong in?
• How do your publications relate to this discipline?
• What disciplinary terminology, conventions, conversations or debates are you drawing on in your thesis?

Your thesis needs to show you’re making a new and significant contribution to your field.

This could be providing a new understanding of or solution to an existing problem, building a new model, framework or methodology for tackling an old issue, or continuing or investigating someone else’s work. Originality involves finding your own angle or position on your research problem, not just reporting new data. This angle or position should be embedded in your whole thesis, including your publications.

• What contribution will your thesis make to your field?
• In what ways will this contribution be new and significant?
• What are the contributions of your publications? How do they align with the overall contribution of the thesis?

While you can draw extensively on your discipline, your examiners will be looking for clear evidence of your ability to think independently and express your own ideas confidently as a researcher and writer.

If your research is part of a bigger team project, or if you intend to include co-authored papers in your thesis, indicate clearly which part of the work you undertook, how your work shaped the bigger project and what you learned from working with others.

• Is your research part of a bigger project involving a team of researchers?
• Are you including co-authored papers in your thesis? If so, do they meet the University’s authorship requirements for inclusion ?
• If you answered ‘yes’ to either of the above questions, what is your part of the work? How has it shaped the bigger work? What have you learned from the collaboration?

Your thesis, whether with or without publication, needs to form a cohesive text from beginning to end. All its elements need to align effectively with one another to make a unified overarching argument.

For example, your conclusion should address at a high level the research problem described in the introduction, whereas the middle chapters should pace the answer to the research question or hypothesis in a way that draws on the foregoing chapters and builds up to the more conceptual discussion at the end.

• Can you identify an overarching argument in your thesis? If so, what is it?
• What are the key messages of your thesis chapters, including publications?
• How do these messages relate to one another and the overarching argument?

For information on how to write a paper for publication and on policy questions about formal requirements for a thesis that includes publications, click on ‘Further resources’.

Writing a paper for publication

Graduate Research Training Policy

Graduate Research Hub: Incorporating publications

Use the side menu to go the next section: Planning your thesis including publications , where we explore thesis and publication mapping tools.

Finding theses

University of melbourne theses, australian theses,   international theses, referencing theses, further help, find theses online and in print.

This guide shows you how to find Masters and PhD theses, online and in print, from:

• The University of Melbourne
• Other Australian universities
• Outside Australia

Why use theses?

Theses can be a valuable source of information, especially for topics where there are fewer published works available., the references or works cited in a thesis can also be useful to find further published sources on a topic..

If you are currently writing a thesis (Honours, Masters or PhD) you may want to:

• check if anyone has recently completed a PhD thesis in your area of research internationally
• look at PhD theses from your faculty (or supervised by your supervisor) to get an idea of how to format your thesis.

Most recent theses are available through Minerva Access , the University's institutional repository. 

Minerva includes PhD and Masters Research theses, as well as a smaller number of Honours and Masters Coursework theses.

Accessing Full-Text in Minerva Access

Open access theses.

• Many theses are open access, which means anyone is able to read the full text online, and no subscription or login is required.
• Use the download link on the left to access a PDF of the thesis.

Restricted access theses

Some theses are currently only available to university of melbourne staff/students.

Use the login link and access with your unimelb username and password

Embargoed theses

If a thesis is under full embargo , full-text is not available for internal or external access (including inter-library loan requests). It a thesis is under an external embargo , it can be requested by University staff and students for research purposes via Minerva Access .

You will be able to view an abstract 

Finding theses from your faculty or school in Minerva Access

You can limit your results in minerva access to view only theses from your faculty..

1. Select your faculty from the list of Communities on the Minerva Access homepage. You may need to also choose your school on the next page. 

2. Select the option that includes Theses  (rather than Research Publications) 

3.To further refine the list (ie. to only PhD theses) scroll down to use the Type menu on the far left menu bar.

Finding University of Melbourne print theses

University of Melbourne theses not available online are held in the Cultural Collections Reading Room on level 3 of the Baillieu Library, or in offsite storage. While you cannot physically browse the thesis collection, you can submit a request to view a thesis using the online form .

You can search the Library Catalogue  to find our print collection of University of Melbourne theses

• To restrict your search to just theses, select University of Melbourne Theses from the drop-down menu to the right of the search bar

For more information on requesting to view print theses see the Special Collections website . ( Note : Use the request form for Rare Books)

Australian theses from other universities can be found via Trove .

1. Select Advanced search on the Trove homepage, and choose Research and reports

2. Type your search terms into the first box (Keyword search box)

3. Check the box next to Australian content

4. Click the green Search button

5. On the results page, select the Show more  option under Format

6. Select Thesis  to limit your results to theses

7.  To access, check the purple link at the bottom of each record. Theses available online will either:

• have a link to where they are held

• have an Access conditions apply  link

8. Click on the title of the thesis to view the record, and select the  Read  button to access the full text

•  If the thesis is not available online through Trove, please complete a Thesis request form on the  Request Forms page . We will then try to obtain a copy of the thesis for you via inter-library loan. 
• For more information on using the Advanced Search to create more specific searches, see Trove's Australian theses page. 

These are the top four international theses databases that include full-text:

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global The most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world. Spans 1743 to the present day, offering full text for most dissertations added since 1997.
• British Library EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) Search for UK theses and access or request full text. See FAQs for more information.
• DART-Europe E-theses Portal Access to digitised theses from European universities.
• OATD: Open Access Theses and Dissertations Indexes more than 1.5 million theses and dissertations. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from 600+ colleges, universities, and research institutions.

Other useful theses databases ​

• American Doctoral Dissertations
• China Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses full-text Database This database is a comprehensive, high quality database of dissertations and theses in China. The dissertations and theses are from hundreds of institutions located across China. Coverage is 1984 onwards and is updated daily. It covers a wide range of subjects such as fundamental sciences, engineering technology, agriculture, medical science, history, philosophy, education, law, economics and more.
• CNKI China Academic Journals Most comprehensive, full-text database of Chinese journals. To narrow your searching select section (G) Politics/ Military Affairs/ Law to search across the database.
• KRIS - Kiwi Research Information Service NZ open access research document portal.
• TEL (thèses-en-ligne) French theses
• Theses Canada Portal

Need help with referencing theses?

Visit the Re:cite guide to referencing

Contact us , or ask a question on Library chat

Visit us on social media.

• Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 5:45 PM
• URL: https://unimelb.libguides.com/findingtheses

Minerva Access

Discover minerva access.

Minerva Access is the University of Melbourne's institutional repository and makes our research outputs publicly available.

Browse the repository by collection, publication date, author, title, or subject.

Search the repository, including published research outputs and theses.

Answers to frequently asked questions and contact details for further advice.

Deposit your research

University of Melbourne staff and students can deposit research outputs in Minerva Access. This can be a quick and easy way to make your publications open access.

Research Outputs

University staff can deposit their research outputs in Minerva Access by uploading files in Elements, completing a ServiceNow form, or emailing the Research Outputs team. Find out more here.

Graduate Research Theses

PhD, Doctorate and Masters Research candidates are required to submit their final thesis to Minerva Access via the Thesis Examination System (TES). See the "My thesis in the Library" page for details.

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. View guidance here.

To find out more about open access and open research, visit out Open Scholarship website.

If you require assistance using Minerva Access, or have queries relating to existing Minerva Access records, please contact [email protected] .

For assistance depositing Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs), contact the Research Outputs team at [email protected] .

Further open access support can be found on our Open Scholarship website. For further support, please organise to consult a librarian or contact [email protected] .

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Ask - /faq/3267/

Phd thesis word limit, what is the word limit for a phd thesis.

You should aim to write a thesis of 80,000 words. The word limit is exclusive of words in tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Footnotes are included as part of the word limit.

If you need to exceed 100,000 words, you must submit a request to the Chair of the Higher Degrees Research Comittee via the Graduate Research Examinations Office before you submit your thesis. This must include:

• your justification for the request
• the expected length of your thesis
• support by your supervisor(s) and Head of Department, who must also certify that the proposed examiners do not object to examining a longer thesis

About this answer

Last updated: Dec. 10, 2021, 5:58 p.m.

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The TES statuses listed are those that graduate research students can view when logged in to TES.

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