Dissertations & Theses  Tags: graduate thesis dissertation etd  

Information about the University of Toledo Graduate School's guidelines for the preparation of theses and dissertations is found in the Handbook for Preparation of Graduate Dissertations, Projects, and Theses found on the Graduate Studies website.  This includes information about the format and style* of your document, including examples of title/signature pages for specific colleges.  The Handbook also discusses UMI/Proquest submission requirements, copyright, and how to obtain bound personal copies of your document.

*Style guides for specific disciplines may be consulted as to the format for references or citations.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations must be submitted as a single PDF file of the entire document.  While some computers have the ability to save a word processing document in Adobe PDF format, not all do.  There are online utilities that can convert a word processing document into the PDF format, however.  If none of these services work for you, please contact Wade Lee (information at right) for assistance in converting your file.

The OhioLINK ETD Submission form cannot accept special characters such as accented letters, greek letters, mathematical symbols, and some common punctuation added by word processing programs such as Microsoft Word.  To avoid having your entire submission rejected, make sure that these are not entered at any point in your ETD submission process.

Tips for avoiding or replacing special characters:

• Copy and paste your abstract or title into a plain text editor (such as Notepad) before copying it into the form.  This should eliminate special characters such as 'curly quotes' (“”), em dashes (—), and ellipses (…) inserted by Microsoft Word.
• Look for any accented, greek, or mathetmatical symbols.  These must be replaced by HTML Character entites as described in the ETD instructions for special characters.  A list of these codes can be found here.  So, for example, the accented character ñ would be written as ñ , the greek letter Ψ would be written as Ψ , and the mathematical symbol ∫ would be written as ∫.  (The replacement always begins with an ampersand (&) and ends with a semicolon (;)).
• If you have paragraphs in your abstract, place <p> before the paragraph and </p> after the paragraph.

The OhioLINK ETD Center is a repository of theses and dissertations submitted by students graduating from colleges and universities across Ohio.  The University of Toledo participates in the OhioLINK ETD Center, and you can upload your thesis or dissertation (including Honors theses) and make it publicly available on this site.  If you choose to upload your thesis or dissertation, this will satisfy the College of Graudate Studies requirement for one of your printed copies, and you will only need to submit a single printed copies to the grad school.  More information about the OhioLINK ETD Center can be found in their FAQ.

To submit your thesis or dissertation, you need to have your document available as a single PDF file.  (See the PDF Conversion box on this page for information on how to convert your document.)

Submitting your document is a multi-step process.  Go to the ETD Submission page to begin.

1. First, you must accept the publication agreement.
2. Next, you will select your school.  Note that there are different selections for University of Toledo Main Campus programs (listed as University of Toledo), University of Toledo Health Science Campus, and University of Toledo Honors Theses.
3. In the Information about You section, you will supply information about yourself.  Some of this information will be shown with your thesis, other information will be kept on file as contact information.  All blanks marked with asterisks (*) are required.
4. In the Information about Your Paper section, you will enter your paper's title, abstract, year, pages, and related keywords.  You will also chose one or more relevant subject headings from a pre-defined list.  Note:  you cannot paste your abstract or other information directly from Microsoft Word if it includes special characters such as 'curly quotes', ellipses (...), accented characters or greek symbols, etc.  See the Special Characters box on this page for instructions on including them.
5. In the Information about Your Degree section, you will choose the name of your degree (Master of Arts, Doctor of Education, Master of Science in Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy, etc.) and program, and then enter the advisor and committee information from your title page.
6. One of the last steps is the Permissions Page.  You will need to decide
   • What type of copyright status you would like to assign.  This can include
     
     • a standard copyright agreement where you reserve all rights and may be required if you will be publishing your dissertation commercially through an outside publisher.
     • a Creative Commons license that allows you to retain copyright, but allows the work to be distributed and reproduced (but not modified) as long as you are credited as the author.
     • a Creative Commons license that allows you to retain copyright, but allows the work to be distributed and reproduced and modified as long you are credited as the author and the modified version is distrubuted under the same license conditions.
     • Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable; once granted, they cannot be taken away. Please understand their terms carefully before selecting a Creative Commons option.  If you are in doubt, discuss with your advisor.
   • Whether you require a publication delay (such as may be required for patentability reasons).  Only your abstract will be available until the delay period ends.  Check with your advisor to see if this is necessary.  You will also need to fill out the College of Graduate Studies' Intellectual Protection and Patent Form.
   • UMI Publication.  Check with the graduate school (or see the UT Thesis & Dissertation Guidelines box on this page) as to whether you should submit for UMI Publication.  This is NOT available for Honors Thesis.  If you are submitting to UMI, you will need to complete a ProQuest UMI Publication Agreement (see Guide)
7. Finally, you can upload your PDF file from your computer.  Check the file after upload to ensure that it adheres to the UT Thesis & Dissertation Guidelines (see box).  If there is any problem with the file, the College of Graduate Studies will reject the submission and you will have to re-enter the entire submission form.

One common problem encountered while preparing your manuscript is how to add page numbers to the document so that the initial material is in lowercase roman number (with no page number on the title page), while the main text is in 'normal' numbers, starting at '1' in chapter one.  You can follow these steps in Microsoft Word 2007.  (Click below to watch video... click on the sqare to enlarge to full screen).

1. To begin, go to the second page of your document.
2. Click on the 'Insert Menu', then go to Page Numbers
   1. Select 'At the Bottom', and choose the number in the center
   2. Make sure 'Different First Page' is Checked.
   3. Close the Header and Footer view, or click on the main text.
3. Go to the beginning of the first chapter, and click your near the top of the page.
   1. Click on the 'Page Layout Menu', and Insert Break
   2. Choose Continuous Break.
4. Click further down the page, in the text.
5. Click on the 'Insert Menu', then go to Page Numbers
   1. Choose Format Page Number
   2. Check 'Start at'
   3. Change the type from 'i,ii,iii...' to '1,2,3...'
6. Click on the Footer in the chapter 1.
7. Uncheck 'Different First Page'

In recent years, more and more students are publishing their work as Electronic Theses or Dissertations and making the publication available for free on the web.  Often these are made available through institutional respositories associated with their college or university, or a network of institutions.  Not every dissertation or thesis is available this way, and the less recent the publication date, the less likely it was made available as an ETD.  Here are some places to search across a large number of dissertation repositories.  You should also check the website of the college or university the student graduated from to see if there is any mention of ETDs.