The following pages will walk you through the thesis or dissertation process from the time you form your committee through final publication and completion of your culminating experience.
Before you begin this process it is strongly recommended that you read these guidelines, work with your advisor to determine whether or not you need to comply with research protocols, become familiar with SJSU submission and publication deadlines, and understand formatting and style guide rules enforced by our publishing partner, Montezuma Publishing.
University policy S14-10 sets the requirements for a thesis or dissertation committee composition. S14-10 also specifies the rights of students and faculty with respect to service requirements of committee members, removal of committee members, and ownership of the research program. Dismissal of a committee chair supervising the thesis or dissertation research might lead to a prohibition of the student from continuing to report on that research.
A master’s thesis committee will be composed of between three and five members. Exceptions can be made only with the approval of the College of Graduate Studies.
The chairperson of the thesis committee must hold a permanent (tenured or tenure track) San José State University faculty appointment. Emeritus and FERPing (those in the Faculty Early Retirement Program) San José State University faculty may serve as chairs with the consent of their department chairs or school directors.
Qualified individuals, including part-time temporary faculty and non-faculty with expertise related to the thesis topic, may serve as thesis committee members.
At least half of the thesis committee must hold a San José State University faculty appointment.
Determine your research project and form your thesis or dissertation committee.
Work with your advisor to determine if you will need research protocol compliance.
In what semester do you wish to graduate? This will allow you to properly plan for meetings with your advisor as you move through the thesis or dissertation process.
Determine if you wish to use the editing services of our partner, Montezuma Publishing. If you wish to use their editing services, you must arrange with them to do so prior to the defense of your thesis or dissertation.
Your thesis or dissertation must be defended, and all corrections made, prior to obtaining your committee approval signatures. Make arrangements for your defense allowing enough time for corrections and edits before the submission due date.
If you are using work that is copyrighted (frequently in tables or figures), in many cases, you will be required to obtain publication permissions. For a general review of copyrights and permissions, see Policies.
Obtain approval signatures from your committee.
Complete all Thesis or Dissertation forms prior to submission to the College of Graduate Studies on or before the submission deadline.
Submit the following documents to the College of Graduate Studies on or before the submission deadline. For more information and the required forms, see Deadlines and Forms.
Thesis or Dissertation. You may submit this as a pdf or a Word document. Google documents or links to Google documents are not allowed.
Thesis Information Form.
Committee Approval Form.
SJSU Publishing Agreement
Any research compliance protocols. If your research requires SJSU protocols, submit your IRB, IACUC, or Biological Use Information form. Follow the research compliance protocols found here.
Any required permissions. See the rules governing copyright permissions. Submit permissions as one PDF document. See Policies.
All of the following documents must be submitted to thesis@sjsu.edu before 11:59 p.m. on or before the submission date for your graduating semester. Each document should be a separate PDF, with the exception of your thesis or dissertation which may be submitted as a PDF or Word document. All documents must be submitted at one time in a single email to the thesis@sjsu.edu email address.
Thesis Information Form, with any links to departmental guidelines or journal author instructions and sample article.
Committee Approval Form.
SJSU License Agreement.
Research protocols.
Permissions.
Any documents that are incomplete may result in a delay of the review of your thesis or dissertation by our publishing partner, Montezuma Publishing. This delay could adversely affect the time required to make corrections to your thesis or dissertation by the publication due date.
Montezuma Publishing, a non-profit organization is SJSU's partner for review and publication of theses and dissertations. See Montezuma Publishing who will follow our required formatting rules. You must follow the most current style guide (e.g., APA, ACS, Chicago, MLA) or use a departmental guideline (that includes heading and subheading styles, citations, and reference styles), as well as the SJSU 14 Formatting Rules. These rules include margin requirements, margin indents, spacing, and other required rules for the formatting of your thesis.
The College of Graduate Studies ("CGS") will forward your thesis and Thesis Information Form to Montezuma Publishing upon CGS' receipt. Montezuma Publishing will send you an acknowledgement of their receipt of your thesis or dissertation and your Thesis Information form. They will review your thesis or dissertation based on your chosen style guide (or departmental guidelines or journal format) and the SJSU 14 Formatting Rules. Once you have been contacted by Montezuma Publishing, you will work directly with them regarding corrections to your work and re-submissions. For more detailed explanations of this process, see Fees and Services. You must return corrections to Montezuma Publishing within the timeline they provide to ensure that your work will be in publishable form by the publication deadline.
CGS will pay for the first two reviews by Montezuma. Thereafter, there is a fee payable to Montezuma Publishing for continued reviews.
Corrections will be sent to you by email. You must complete the corrections within the timelines provided by Montezuma Publishing on or before the publication deadline. The publication deadline must be met to graduate in your chosen semester.
Notification from Montezuma Publishing that your thesis or dissertation has been accepted for publication will serve as the completion of your program requirements for purposes of graduation. SJSU will forward notifications of approval to publish from Montezuma Publishing to Graduate Admissions and Program Evaluations.
You must meet the publication deadline to graduate in the semester of your submission.
Montezuma Publishing will complete the submission to ProQuest on your behalf. SJSU will review each submission to make sure that it meets any publishing requirements you may have regarding embargoes submitted with your SJSU License Agreement.
It will take six to eight weeks before your thesis or dissertation becomes available for viewing on ProQuest or SJSU ScholarWorks.
If your department requires a hard copy of your publication, or you wish one for your own library, see Fees and Services for Montezuma's Publishing's binding and printing services.
If you have not made all of the corrections required for publishing by SJSU and enforced by our partner, Montezuma Publishing, by the scheduled publication date for your semester, you must do the following:
Continue to work with Montezuma Publishing until you have received an acceptance for publication.
If you are having trouble meeting publication requirements, please consider using the formatting services provided by Montezuma Publishing. See Montezuma Services and Publishing.
Your degree will be not be awarded until your thesis or dissertation has been accepted for publication. If you are unable to complete the publisher’s required corrections before the publication deadline for the current semester, your degree will issue in the next cycle after the thesis/dissertation is accepted for publication. In this situation you will not be required to remain continuously enrolled via 1290R for subsequent semesters as long as your thesis or dissertation, including full approval from your committee of both the thesis/dissertation and the defense, was submitted to the College of Graduate Studies by the submission deadline.
Your graduate degree will be issued after the following final steps are completed.
After the thesis/dissertation is submitted with committee signatures, and it has been successfully defended, the graduate coordinator must submit the Graduate Verification of Culminating Experience form.
The research advisor must change the grade in the thesis/dissertation course (e.g. 299) from RP to CR.
GAPE will confirm that the thesis/dissertation has been accepted for publication (i.e. all format matters have been resolved).
GAPE will confirm that all degree requirements have been completed.