Dissertation & Thesis Information

To get started, familiarize yourself with the Graduate Students Library Guide. 

The University Libraries offer several print books on writing a thesis or dissertation. We suggest the following two e-books on the topic: 

• Writing your dissertation: a survival guide, by Philippa Jones
• Writing a Graduate Thesis or Dissertation, by Lorrie Blair 

Use the search page to find additional options.

The University Libraries also hosts Electronic Theses & Dissertations Services (ETDs) to support your ETD's discoverability and impact while maintaining your author rights and providing long-term preservation for your work.  

We recommend these guides and tip sheets from the University Libraries: 

• Citation Guide
• Copyright Guide
• Tutorials for page numbers, charts, images, tables, and format conversion
• Books on Academic, Scientific, or Technical Writing

The structure of your thesis or dissertation should be determined based on your discipline’s style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) but must also follow the Graduate School’s overall formatting requirements. 

Note: If you choose to link to works using a URL, we recommend using a permanent URL to guarantee access to readers. The University Libraries offer perma.cc, a free service for creating permanent URLs for content on the open web. You can find more information in the Libraries’ citation guide.

For discipline-specific questions, please reach out to your Subject Area Librarian.  

You may also want to visit the University Libraries’ Frequently Asked Questions website.
 

Library Access 

Please note that access to University resources — including library services and databases — is limited to currently enrolled students. 

Students with Incomplete grades without future enrollment will be limited in their access. Students who have graduated have access to alumni services at the University Libraries. 

The Libraries recommend the Unpaywall browser extension to streamline finding open access versions of peer-reviewed journal articles.

Before your current enrollment ends, be sure that you’ve downloaded or have confirmed access to the literature you may need to complete your work. Feel free to contact the Library for assistance. Students can also visit the main University Library and obtain a guest pass for the day. Guest passes are not available for the Science or Dewey Libraries. 

National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD)

The University at Albany has an institutional membership in NCFDD, which has great resources for doctoral students. Activate your NCFDD account. Students must use their UAlbany email address for the registration.

One of the available resources is the Dissertation Success Curriculum. The curriculum is designed to provide the skills, strategies, and support that advanced graduate students need to overcome the three biggest obstacles to finishing their dissertation: perfectionism, procrastination and isolation.

The Versatile PhD

The University has also an institutional membership to Versatile PhD. The Versatile PhD mission is to help graduate students, ABDs and PhDs identify, prepare for and excel in professional careers. They serve many of the leading North American research universities, including their PhD students, post-docs and alumni, by providing unique and instructive content, networks, job analytics and readiness tools. Students must use their UAlbany email address for the registration.

Software

See what software is available for download onto your computer by visiting the ITS Software Catalog. You can also view where campus-specific software is publicly available for use in classrooms or computer labs.

Research Regulations

Research involving human subjects, animal subjects or biohazardous materials must be approved by the appropriate research review committee before the research begins. 

If applicable, please contact the appropriate University compliance committee: 

• Research involving human subjects: Institutional Review Board
• Research involving animal subjects: Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
• Research involving biohazardous materials: Institutional Biosafety Committee

The approval forms are considered administrative and should not be included in your PDF submission. However, you should include blank copies of the survey instrument and informed consent forms used as part of your research, if applicable.

The University Libraries offer a Copyright Guide, which includes a section on Fair Use. Columbia University offers a Fair Use Checklist. 

Under U.S. Copyright law, you are the copyright owner of your thesis or dissertation as soon as it is in a fixed format. You do not need to register your copyright or include a copyright notice with the work to enjoy copyright protection. 

Copyright Registration

As noted above, as the author of your thesis or dissertation, you are the copyright holder automatically. However, some students opt to register their copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office as an extra safeguard in case they need to pursue legal action against someone. 

To do so, you can file your copyright through the U.S. Copyright Office, where it subsequently becomes available in the Library of Congress. You can find their fee structure on the Copyright Office's website.
Copyright can also be filed retroactively, so this does not have to be an immediate consideration.  

For a more in-depth discussion of copyright, fair use, open access, and more, you may want to explore the Authors Alliance resources on copyright fundamentals.

Reusing Published Material that You Authored 

If your dissertation or thesis includes your own previously published materials, permission to reuse these materials may be required.

As of September 7, 2021, the University at Albany has an Open Access Policy. Under this policy, UAlbany authors give the University a nonexclusive, irrevocable right to distribute their scholarly articles for any noncommercial purpose.

By granting permission to UAlbany prior to committing to any contractual arrangement with publishers, UAlbany authors retain rights that might otherwise be signed away, restricting the author’s ability to open their research. Instead, scholarly articles now may be made openly available in the University’s repository, Scholars Archive, or an open access repository (or publication) of the author’s choosing without publisher permission. 

You may find information about support for taking advantage of the policy at the Library’s Open Access Author Services page.

Students who have had materials accepted by publishers after the policy’s implementation will not need to provide permission to reuse their own materials in their thesis or dissertation if the following is true:

1. The student deposits the “accepted manuscript version” to an open access repository (e.g., Scholars Archive or one within the student’s discipline).
2. The student uses the “accepted manuscript version” of the article in the dissertation or thesis.
3. The student properly cites the repository version of the work (including the article URL) in the dissertation or thesis (typically within the chapter where the “accepted manuscript version” materials are used).

If the student secures a waiver of the policy’s grant of rights and has not submitted the “accepted manuscript version” to a repository, then the student will need to secure permission from the publisher to include the published materials in their dissertation or thesis if not otherwise permitted under the publisher’s terms.

Students who have had materials accepted for publication prior to the Open Access Policy (September 7, 2021) may need to secure permission from the publisher to include the published materials in their dissertation or thesis if not otherwise permitted under the publisher’s terms.

Review your contract with the publisher to determine if you retain authorship and if you can reuse those materials in your dissertation or thesis. If not, formal permission from the publication is required and must be uploaded as part of your ETD submission. Additional information can be found in the formatting guidelines below. 

Journal articles under consideration don’t require permission to be included in your submission. Only formally accepted or published materials require permission of reuse.

The following information must be included in the dissertation when using your own previously published materials:

• Identify which of your studies or articles have been published and where (give full citation); 
• Indicate that your studies or articles are included in the dissertation with permission from the publisher; 
• Indicate whether your studies or articles are published in their entirety and in the original wording, or whether they have been revised for the dissertation; 
• Indicate that your studies or articles are being included because they were part of the programmatic line of research that comprised the dissertation and that including them provides a coherent and appropriately sequenced investigation; 
• Indicate that you, the dissertation author, were the lead or primary researcher for the work. 

This information can be included in the prefatory pages or in the beginning of the applicable chapter/section of your dissertation. When required, formal copies of permissions from the publication(s) must be included as a supplemental file to your submission in  Scholars Archive.  If the publication offers general permission via a website, then the appropriate web address can be included as part of the statement indicating the publication status in the submission. If there are multiple authors on a paper you are reusing, then permission from each of the authors is required, unless the work has been formally accepted by a publisher. If it has been formally accepted by a publisher, then permission from the publisher is required.

Use of Images

Images (tables, figures, maps, photography, etc.) created by the author do not require additional permissions. If the images are authored by another person or publication and are being reproduced or replicated in the submission, then permission to reuse these must be included (in the prefatory pages, appendices, or as a supplemental file in Scholars Archive). This would include photographs that are reproduced with annotations or markings. 

If the author is modifying or adapting images authored by another person or publication, then the author will need to cite the source and indicate that the image has been adapted. If the image is openly licensed (e.g., uses Creative Commons licensing) or is in the public domain, then  please include this information in the image citation. You can also use the University Libraries’ resources above to determine if the image falls under fair use. 

No submissions incorporating printed materials that have been copyrighted will be accepted without appropriate authorization. It is the author’s responsibility to resolve any copyright problems arising from the use of published material.

Social Media 

As with the use of other third-party materials, your ability to use content off social media content in your research depends on your use.

You also need to consider the type of account profile the user has set up. If the account is private, we recommend you obtain permission. If you do not have permission, we recommend redacting the user’s name and handle. 

Additionally, please review the social media platform’s terms of service and copyright information. 

• X’s Terms of Service
• X’s Copyright Policy
• Instagram’s Terms of Use
• Instagram’s Copyright FAQs
• Facebook’s Terms of Service
• Facebook’s Copyright Information

You can read a dissertation or thesis previously submitted by another UAlbany student. However, the location depends on what publishing options the student chose. 

You can explore UAlbany-authored open access theses and dissertations from 2008 onward in Scholars Archive.

For dissertations published before this time, if the student did not place restrictions on publication, please visit the University Library’s database finder and type in “Dissertations & Theses @ SUNY Albany” to access previous submissions. 

The University Libraries has created helpful videos discussing various subjects for graduate students. Below are the video links, the presenter, and details regarding the materials covered in each video.

Copyright for Graduate Students

• Copyright Issues with Karen E. Kiorpes, Head of the Preservation Department
  • What is copyright?
  • What does it protect?
  • How long does it last?
• Copyright Issues with Ann Kearney, Collections Conservator
  • Using Third Party Materials
  • Public Domain Material
  • Openly Licensed Work
  • Fair Use

Author Tools & Tips for Graduate Students

• Publishing Contracts with Emily Kilcer, Scholarly Communication Librarian
  • Negotiation Fundamentals
  • Contract Considerations
  • Publishing Contracts Presentation Slides
• Depositing your Dissertation Online with Lindsay Van Berkom, Scholars Archive Administrator & Coordinator of Dewey Access Services
  • Scholars Archive
  • Creative Commons Licenses
  • Embargoes
  • Depositing your Dissertation Online Presentation Slides

Managing Your Scholarly Identity

• Managing Your Scholarly Identity with Jesús Alonso-Regalado, Subject Librarian for History, Latin American Studies and Romance Languages
  • ORCID iD
  • Google Scholar
  • Institutional Repositories
  • Academic Social Networks
  • Social Media

Dissertation Policies & Forms

• Dissertation Policies
• Necessary Forms:
  • Survey of Earned Doctorates (online submission; the Graduate School will automatically receive a copy upon submission). Questions within the survey are optional and information regarding privacy can be found on the SED website.
  • ETD Submittal Checklist For Master's & Doctoral Students (online submission; the Graduate School will automatically receive a copy upon submission)
  • Dissertation Approval/Transmittal Form (can be prepared by the student or department; this document is a fillable template)
  • Recommendation of Conferral Form (can be prepared by the student or department; this document is a fillable template)

Note: Administrative forms should not be uploaded as part of your PDF. These forms should be submitted directly to the Graduate School ([email protected]). 

Thesis Policies & Forms

• Thesis Policies
• Necessary Forms:
  • ETD Submittal Checklist for Master's & Doctoral Students (online submission; the Graduate School will automatically receive a copy upon submission)
  • Master's Thesis Approval/Transmittal Form (can be prepared by the student or department; this document is a fillable template)
  • Application for Approval of Subject of Master’s Thesis (this should be prepared prior to writing the thesis, but is not required as part of the thesis submission process). This form is an agreement between the advisor and student regarding the thesis subject. It is strongly suggested that students complete this form with their advisor prior to engaging in the thesis. 

Note: Administrative forms should not be uploaded as part of your PDF. These forms should be submitted directly to the Graduate School ([email protected]).

ETD Submission At-a-glance

1. At the thesis/dissertation defense, you will present your manuscript to your committee. Your committee will read and review your manuscript before approving it for submission to Scholars Archive.  
2. You will submit your ETD through Scholars Archive. The Graduate School will review your ETD for formatting requirements. Manuscripts that do not meet the requirements will be returned for revision until all requirements are met.
3. When all requirements are met, your thesis/dissertation will be posted in Scholars Archive and ProQuest. You will receive an email notifying you that your work is posted and how you can print a copy of your thesis/dissertation 

Deadlines

You cannot submit your dissertation or thesis until you have defended it and your committee has approved it.  

The submission deadline refers to the electronic submission of your faculty-approved dissertation or thesis. The deadlines are as follows: 

• Fall: December 1
• Winter: January 15
• Spring: May 1
• Summer: August 1 

You cannot make academic content edits after the initial submission.  

However, you can make required formatting edits after the initial submission and this will not affect your degree conferral term.

Students must apply for graduation during the term in which they are submitting their faculty-approved dissertation or thesis. 

Timeline

When scheduling your defense and planning your degree completion, please take the following factors into consideration:

• Electronic Submission Deadline: Review the published deadline for the semester in which you plan on completing your dissertation or thesis. Your defense date should be scheduled with this date in mind. We recommend that defenses not be scheduled too close to the electronic submission deadline.
• Committee member availability: Provide your committee members with enough time to coordinate their schedules and determine their availability for document review and defense scheduling.
• Departmental coordination: Contact your department to determine if you'll need certain resources or facilities.
• Committee Requested Edits: After defense, your committee members may determine that edits are required before final approval of your dissertation or thesis. This will affect your electronic submission date, which is why we recommend not scheduling your defense too close to the submittal deadline.
• Employment or Post-doctoral Positions: If you have secured employment or a post-doctoral position, you will need to ensure that your degree is awarded before your start date.
• Formatting Review: The format review process can take time, depending on the number of edits that are necessary. Submissions near the semester deadline are considered peak processing time and will add additional time to the review.

Your thesis or dissertation is a significant work of scholarship. The Graduate School is pleased to partner with the University Libraries to enhance the web presence of our graduate programs and showcase student work at UAlbany to a broader audience using Scholars Archive.

By sharing your ETD openly, you are better contributing to your discipline’s body of knowledge and fostering a more equitable, sustainable scholarly landscape.

Connecting this important scholarship to a wider readership that can read, use, and build upon your work advances science. Doing so also widely advantages your work: wider visibility can lead to greater impact.  

More broadly, this effort aligns with the University’s support of open scholarly practices, as evidenced by the University’s 2021 Open Access Policy.

Initial Submission

After your Committee has approved your manuscript at your defense, incorporate any necessary edits and then submit your thesis/dissertation to Scholars Archive to begin the publication process.

Submit via Scholars Archive.

If you are a first-time user, you’ll need to create a new Scholars Archive account. We recommend using a stable, non-UAlbany email address for your username, since UAlbany email addresses close after one year of non-enrollment. You’ll also need to create and keep your own password.

Once you sign in, you will be directed to the Submission Instructions and Agreement page. There, you will be prompted to agree to the terms of the ProQuest Traditional Publishing Agreement. You will also be prompted to select the Scholars Archive Standard Author Agreement or Creative Commons licensing.  

Note: These agreements do not take your copyright or constrain your ability to publish your work elsewhere. They simply give permission to UAlbany and ProQuest to distribute your ETD on your behalf.  

Select “Continue.” Carefully read and complete the Submission Form. Required fields are clearly indicated.

Keep the following tips in mind:

• We prefer that you upload your thesis or dissertation as a Word document for ease of accessibility checking.
• Enter the Title of your thesis/dissertation in the Scholars Archive title field in Headline Capitalization. Capitalize nouns, pronouns, and verbs, and all other words of four or more letters.
• Because you are logged in, your name should automatically appear in the Author field. Click the figure with the pencil to reveal a drop box to make any edits. Your name in Scholars Archive should reflect the name used in your academic record at UAlbany. Students can use chosen identity markers if they are reflected in the student information system.
• Please make sure you have added your affiliation to the University at Albany in the Author field.
• If you have an approved embargo term the Graduate School will enter this information on your behalf. You can choose to immediately release your work after it is approved for publication or “embargo” it for six months, one year or two years. See the "Embargoes" accordion for information on how to submit embargo requests. When the embargo expires, your work will automatically be published.
• Enter in Keywords and/or add Subject Categories to help make your thesis/dissertation easier to find.

Supplemental Files

The Additional Files field can be used to upload supplemental content files to accompany a manuscript, such as charts, images, appendices and datasets are some of the additional files that may be uploaded along with an ETD.  

Supplemental files can also include permission forms that require signatures for the publication of ETDs. These can be hidden by the submitter when an ETD is uploaded or by the administrator when the ETD is reviewed.  

Once you upload a document to the supplemental area, you cannot delete it. You will need to email [email protected] to request documents be administratively deleted for you.  

Supplemental files are not governed by embargoes or access control limitations; if an ETD is uploaded and placed under an embargo, any supplemental files that are not hidden will be available to the public. 

Students who participate in our Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition may want to consider uploading their presentation video as part of their Scholars Archive submission as a supplementary file.

Revisions

After you submit your thesis/dissertation, you will receive a confirmation email. To view the status of your submission, submit revisions or contact the ETD Team for help, click on the link in the email.  

When the Graduate School has reviewed your thesis/dissertation for formatting errors, you will receive another email. Click the link in that email to review and submit any revisions.  

To revise your thesis/dissertation, follow the link in the revision request email from the Graduate School to navigate to the page in Scholars Archive where you can review any needed revisions and revise your thesis/dissertation.  

The View Decisions page provides links to one or more decision letters addressing needed revisions. If you have received multiple letters, view them all here.  

Review the revisions requested by the Graduate School. When you have made these changes, upload your corrected thesis/dissertation.  

When you are done correcting your work, click “Revise thesis/dissertation” to upload your corrected document.

After clicking “Revise thesis/dissertation,” you will be returned to your original submission form. Scroll down to “Upload Full Text” and click “Upload file from your computer.”

Upload your updated thesis/dissertation. After you click “Submit,” you will again be sent to a page listing the information associated with your thesis/dissertation.  

If any formatting issues are identified in your corrected document, you will be contacted again and go through the same process until your document is accepted.

When all edits are complete, you will receive a final email indicating that your thesis/dissertation has been accepted to appear in Scholars Archive. 

When you submit your thesis or dissertation to Scholars Archive, you’ll need to make some agreements. First, you will be prompted to agree to the terms of the ProQuest Traditional Publishing Agreement. Then you will be asked to choose the Scholars Archive Standard Author Agreement or a Creative Commons license. This determines how others can use your work. 

What These Agreements Mean

These agreements do not take your copyright or constrain your ability to publish your work elsewhere. They simply give permission to UAlbany and ProQuest to distribute your ETD on your behalf.
 

Standard Author Agreement

This is the default agreement you must accept to submit your work to Scholars Archive. It allows the University at Albany to preserve and share your thesis or dissertation online. You retain your copyright, which means you still own your work.

The agreement does not give others permission to reuse or adapt your work unless you explicitly grant it. You maintain full control over how your work is used. This means if someone wants to reuse your work, they must contact you directly. 
 

Creative Commons (CC) Licenses

Creative Commons licenses are optional. They let you decide how others can use your work. If you choose a CC license, you’re giving the public permission to reuse your work under certain conditions without them needing to ask you first.

Here are the most common options:

• CC BY (Attribution): Others can use, share, and adapt your work—even commercially—as long as they credit you.
• CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial): Others can use and adapt your work, but not for commercial purposes, and they must credit you.
• CC BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivatives): Others can share your work, but not change it, and they must credit you.
• CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike): Others can adapt your work, but they must credit you and license their new work under the same terms.
• CC BY-NC-SA: Like CC BY-SA above but only allows non-commercial use.
• CC BY-NC-ND: The most restrictive—others can download and share your work with credit but can’t change it or use it commercially.

Not sure which CC License to choose?

Creative Commons licenses answer the question: “What can users do with my work without permission?”

• If you want to allow the broadest use of your work, then you may want to consider choosing CC BY. 
• If you want to limit commercial use or changes, then you may want to consider CC BY-NC-ND. 

You can explore your options further by going to the Creative Commons website or by trying their License Chooser tool.
 

Still need help deciding?

If you’re unsure which license is right for you, contact the University Libraries for guidance by sending an email to [email protected].
 

Final considerations

Whichever license you choose, you should save a copy of the linked agreement for your records.

• Scholars Archive Standard Author Agreement
• Creative Commons license
• ProQuest Traditional Publishing Agreement

An embargo delays the formal publishing of your submission for six months, one year or two years. 

Students can request an embargo if they plan on submitting their dissertation or thesis for publishing with a journal or formal publication, or requesting a patent.  

Embargoes are an option to increase incentive for downstream publishers to publish your work before it becomes available on Scholars Archive. Any embargo applied in Scholars Archive will also be applied in ProQuest.

An online form is available for Embargo Requests. Embargo requests must be endorsed by the student’s committee chair. Committee chairs will be copied automatically once the online form is submitted by the student.

Please consider these items before requesting an embargo: 

• Read your contract with the publisher and pay particular attention to any language dealing with copyright and reuse of materials. Who retains the copyright if you publish with them? Can you reuse your materials without permission? You do not want to give away your copyright. Review this sample addendum for retaining rights when you are signing publishing contracts. 
• Once your dissertation is approved through Scholars Archive, the embargo start date will begin once Scholars Archive processes the submission. 
• For submissions that are embargoed and subsequently have externally published materials, you do not need to provide those permissions to Scholars Archive after the fact. 
• If you are applying for a patent, you will want to do this earlier than your defense. A dissertation defense is considered public disclosure, which may cause problems when applying for a patent. 

If you are interested in ordering bound copies of your thesis or dissertation you may want to explore the following vendors. Quality and pricing may vary. (Note: The Graduate School does not endorse a particular vendor.)

• Barnes & Noble Self-Printing Service
• GradWorks Online
• HF Group
• Thesis On Demand

Additionally, the Library Binding Council has a list of "certified library binders."

ORCID iD is a free, unique, persistent identifier that allows scholars to track and share their professional information, such as affiliations, grants, publications, peer review and more.

We recommend you create and use an ORCID for your published documents so people can find all your submissions — especially if you publish under multiple names. 

Your ORCID can be included in your Scholars Archive submission. 

Note: UAlbany’s Chosen Identity Markers Policy allows students, faculty and staff to designate a chosen identity markers (first name, gender identity and pronouns) in certain instances. We are allowing students to do this in their Scholars Archive accounts and on their dissertations and theses. However, the last name must match the primary last name on your student record. Instructions and additional information to consider before making this decision can be found Diplomas page on the Registrar's Office website.   

If you intend on publishing under a different name in the future, we suggest creating an ORCID so your publishing is connected to you, regardless of name of affiliation. 

If you recently changed your legal name and need to update the student information system, please contact the Registrar’s Office.