Submission of Thesis

DDP Summary

You should send your completed DDP Summary to ddpsummary@sheffield.ac.uk, where it will be checked and signed off by Faculty.  Your degree cannot be awarded if you have not submitted this.

Uploading to Turnitin

You should ensure that you have uploaded your thesis to Turnitin before you submit the final copy to Research Services. Turnitin is a text matching tool which is used in preventing unfair means, by creating an originality report, which will be checked by your internal examiner.

You can access Turnitin through Blackboard (MOLE). You should have access via 'Organisations' to a page called 'Turnitin Similarity Check for MEC PGR Theses'. There is an area where you can upload a 'Practice' to make sure the system is working and that your file size is not too large (Turnitin has a limit of 800 pages and 100MB). Once you are happy with this, you should upload your thesis to the 'Final' area (this can only be done once). You'll be sent an email with a receipt in it, which you need to submit with your thesis to Research Services. Please also email the PGR Support Officer a copy of the turnitin receipt.

Turnitin can sometimes reject pdfs made in LaTeX, so please follow this workaround:

Generate your PDF file from the LaTeX file as normal. Open the PDF thus created in Adobe Acrobat, then select Print as Adobe PDF and save the new PDF. The new PDF should then be acceptable to Turnitin. 

Avoiding Plagiarism

You can include work in your thesis that you have previously published, but you should be aware of the copyright implications, and read through this page on publishing work prior to submission, and this page on using copyrighted material.

"Turnitin will identify any previous publication of the text in a journal or conference paper in the originality report. If the resubmission is accepted practice within a department and the student has retained the right to publish the article and obtained permission from the publisher and any co-authors, this match can be excluded from the results."

Submission

All students should submit their thesis electronically through Google forms, via the PGR Thesis Submission Form. There is no longer a requirement to also provide hard copies of the thesis. You can also upload any supporting materials that form part of your thesis examination (e.g. supplemental data, audio recordings, COVID impact form, list of corrections in the case of a resubmission)

You should not send a copy of the thesis (electronic or print) directly to the examiners

Staff candidates are required to pay a fee on submission of the thesis. In 2023/24, this will be £510.

Further information about Thesis Submission can be found here.

What happens after submission?

Your internal examiner will be informed that you have submitted your thesis, and be asked to check the Turnitin originality report to ensure that unfair means have not been used. When this has been approved, your thesis will be dispatched to your examiners by Research Services. 

Your internal examiner will contact you to let you know the date of your viva. This usually takes place 10 weeks after the thesis has been received by the examiners.