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Thesis Preparation

The following information is provided to assist Chemistry graduate students as they prepare their theses. If graduate students have any questions that are not answered by this guide, they should email the Chemistry Education Office (questions about department policies) or MIT Libraries (for questions about thesis formatting, etc.)

Degree candidates must fill out the Degree Application via WebSIS at the start of the term. Important dates and deadlines (including late fees) for the upcoming academic year are listed below.  It is strongly advised that degree candidates apply for the degree list even if there is uncertainty about completing the thesis defense and submission by the  deadline, as there are no penalties for being removed from the degree list.

Students must successfully complete the thesis defense before submitting their final, signed thesis.

**Please note that the Specifications for Thesis Preparation were updated in November 2022. Please make sure you use these new guidelines.**

Important Dates & Deadlines

May 2024 degree list.

• Degree Application Deadline: February 9, 2024 ($50 late fee if submitted after this date, $85 late fee if submitted after April 12, 2024)
• Thesis Title Deadline: April 12, 2024 ($85 late fee if submitted after this date. If your thesis title is not finalized by this date, please enter your current working title and the final title can be updated later)
• Thesis Submission Deadline: May 10, 2024
• Last day of work in the lab: on or before May 29, 2024. If you plan to end your RA appointment earlier than May 29, 2024, please contact Jennifer to review your timeline.
• Your degree will officially be conferred by MIT on May 30, 2024
• Information about the MIT Health Plan and graduation will be available online here.

September 2024 Degree List

• Degree Application Deadline: June 14, 2024 ($50 late fee if submitted after this date, $85 late fee if submitted after July 21, 2024)
• Thesis Title Deadline:July 19, 2024 ($85 late fee if submitted after this date. If your thesis title is not finalized by this date, please enter your current working title and the final title can be updated later)
• Thesis Submission Deadline: August 16, 2024
• Last day of work in the lab: on or before August 31, 2024. If you plan to end your RA appointment earlier than August 31st, please contact Jennifer to review your timeline.
• Your degree will officially be conferred by MIT on September 18, 2024

February 2025 Degree List

• Degree Application Deadline: September 6, 2024 ($50 late fee if submitted after this date, $85 late fee if submitted after December 13, 2024)
• Thesis Title Deadline: December 13, 2024 ($85 late fee if submitted after this date. If your thesis title is not finalized by this date, please enter your current working title and the final title can be updated later)
• Thesis Submission Deadline: January 17, 2025
• Last day of work in the lab: on or before January 15, 2025. If you plan to end your RA appointment earlier than January 15th, please contact Jennifer to review your timeline.
• Your degree will officially be conferred by MIT on February 19, 2025

May 2025 Degree List

• Degree Application Deadline:February 7, 2025 ($50 late fee if submitted after this date, $85 late fee if submitted after April 11, 2025)
• Thesis Title Deadline: April 11, 2025 ($85 late fee if submitted after this date. If your thesis title is not finalized by this date, please enter your current working title and the final title can be updated later)
• Thesis Submission Deadline: May 9, 2025
• Last day of work in the lab: on or before May 28, 2025. If you plan to end your RA appointment earlier than May 28th, please contact Jennifer to review your timeline.
• Your degree will officially be conferred by MIT on May 29, 2025

Scheduling your Thesis Defense

All PhD candidates must have a Thesis Defense. As soon as your defense is finalized, please email the Chemistry Education Office with the date, time, location, and thesis title . Thesis defenses are strongly encouraged to be in-person.  If there are questions or concerns about an in-person defense, please reach out to Jennifer Weisman. When thesis defenses are on campus, we recommend reserving a room once the defense date is finalized, student can reserve department rooms through the online scheduling system or request a classroom via this form .

Degree candidates should provide their advisor with a copy of the thesis at least two weeks before the defense and provide their thesis committee chair and member with a copy at least one week before the defense. However, degree candidates should talk with their advisor, committee chair, and committee member to find out if they need the thesis further in advance or if there are preferred formats. Degree candidates should allow time in between their thesis defense and the submission deadline to make edits and submit the final copies.

Please note that most receiving a PhD degree are required to present a seminar as part of the thesis defense. This seminar is open to the department. The degree candidate is responsible for providing the Chemistry Education Office with information about their thesis defense at least two weeks ahead of time. Following the seminar, the candidate will meet privately with the thesis committee.

Thesis Formatting

The Institute has very specific requirements for thesis preparation, which were updated in November 2022. Specifications for Thesis Preparation is available on the library’s website and should be read very carefully. The MIT Thesis FAQ may answer additional questions and a helpful checklist is also provided. The specifications also include information about copyright and use of previously published material in a thesis . Do  not  rely on any templates or prior theses from your research group – they may not reflect the most current guidelines. We have highlighted some especially important points below.

Font & Spacing

Title page & committee signature page.

• The title page of the first copy will be digitally signed by the author, advisor, and Professor Adam Willard. The title page should contain the title, name of the author, previous degrees, the degree(s) to be awarded at MIT, the date the degree(s) will be conferred (May, September, or February only), copyright notice, and appropriate names and signatures. Degrees are awarded in Chemistry, regardless of your specific research area. Regardless of when you defend or submit your thesis, the date of degree conferral must be May/June, September, or February.
• As noted above, the title page will be signed by you, your advisor, and Professor Willard. You do not need to have Professor Willard digitally sign the thesis before you submit it, we will arrange to have him sign it. If your advisor has a title (ex., Firmenich Professor of Chemistry) it should also be included under their name. If you are not sure if they have a title, you can consult the Faculty Directory . Professor Willard should have the following listed under his name, on two separate lines: Professor of Chemistry; Graduate Officer
• Each student should place the appropriate copyright notice on the thesis title page. Copyright notice consists of four elements: the symbol “c” with a circle around it © and/or the word “copyright”; the year of publication (the year in which the degree is to be awarded); the name of the copyright owner; the words “All rights reserved” or your chosen Creative Commons license. All theses should have the following legend statement exactly: The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license. Please carefully review the copyright information to determine the appropriate copyright ownership.
• The date under Signature of Author should be the date the final thesis is signed and submitted to the department.
• The title page is always considered to be page 1, and every page must be included in the count regardless of whether a number would be physically printed on a page. We recommend that you do not include the page number on the title page.
• There is also a signature page that will be digitally signed by your entire thesis committee. Your advisor will digitally sign your thesis twice, on the title page and signature page. The signature page is right after the title page.
• More details about digital signatures are provided below.

Table of Contents

Final thesis submission, general submission process.

Please carefully review the details below, including the file naming format . There are two steps to the final submissions process:

1. Submit the following documents to the Department of Chemistry:

• An electronic copy of your thesis in PDF/A-1 format (with no signatures)
• A PDF of the digitally signed title page and committee signature page (using DocuSign to obtain signatures)

Please send an email to your advisor, Jennifer Weisman, and William McCoy, which includes the 2 PDFs above and the following text:

“Dear Professor/Dr X: Attached is the final version of my thesis. Please use reply-all to this message to indicate your acceptance of my thesis document and your recommendation for certification by my department.”

**Note: if your thesis document is too large to send via email, your email can include a link to access the document via Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.**

2. Submit your thesis information to MIT Libraries here . Choose to opt-in or opt-out of ProQuest license and publication.  Include the same copyright and license information that is on your thesis title page. Note: this does not involve submitting your actual thesis.

Details for Thesis Submission Process

• After the defense, the student and thesis committee reach agreement on the final thesis document.
• Students should follow the format specifications as stated in the Specifications for Thesis Preparation . Do not print or physically sign pages.
• Students will have the thesis signed electronically through DocuSign. This process is described in detail in the section below.
• The title page is always considered to be page 1, and every page must be included in the count regardless of whether a number is physically printed on a page. The entire thesis (including title page, prefatory material, illustrations, and all text and appendices) must be paginated in one consecutive numbering sequence. Your committee signature page should be page 2. Please see the  Sample Title Page and committee signature page for reference.
• You will still include the title page and committee signature page in the full thesis PDF, they just won’t have any signatures.
• The digitally signed title page and committee signature pages should be in one PDF, separate from the thesis document. This avoids a DocuSign tag at the top of each page of the full thesis. Please use the following naming convention: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-sig.pdf (ex., montgomery-mssimon-phd-chemistry-2021-sig.pdf).
• Students should save their final thesis document as a PDF using the following file naming convention: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-thesis .pdf (ex., montgomery-mssimon-phd-chemistry-2021-thesis.pdf).
• Students should not deposit the PDF of their thesis via the Libraries Library’s voluntary submission portal.
• Please send an email to your advisor, Jennifer, and William which includes the final thesis document and file with the digitally signed title/committee signature pages with the following text:

Please also complete the MIT Doctoral Student Exit Survey and your Laboratory Safety Clearance Form .

Digital Signatures

Please see here for a full guide (with screenshots) to using DocuSign to obtain digital signatures

Required Signatures:

These should be everyone’s uploaded digital signatures in their own handwriting, not one of the pre-formatted signatures created by DocuSign.

• Your signature on the thesis title page
• Your advisor’s signature on both the title page and committee signature page
• Your thesis committee chair’s and member’s signatures on the committee signature page
• You do not need to have Adam Willard sign your title page, the Chemistry Education Office will take care of that
• Full thesis with no signatures (including unsigned title page and thesis committee signature page)
• Title page and committee signature page with signatures via DocuSign

Accessing DocuSign

Thesis Hold Requests

Details about requesting a thesis hold are available here and the requests are made to different offices based on the type of request.

Written notification of patent holds and other restrictions must reach the Institute Archives before the thesis in question is received, as under normal circumstances, all theses are open and available for public inspection once they have been received by the Institute Archives.

Graduate Student Exit Interviews

In order to best serve the educational, scientific, and social needs of graduate students in the Chemistry Department, it is critically important that Departmental leadership be appropriately informed of issues of importance to graduate students, ideally on an ongoing basis. Graduate student exit interviews provide information that alert the Department to acute issues that affect graduate students and provide data for longitudinal assessments of graduate student experience within the program.Graduate exit interviews are administered to all graduate students departing the Chemistry Department. The exit interview applies equally to graduate students departing with completed degrees (Ph.D. and M.S.) and without degrees.

• Graduating students will be sent a list of interview questions by the Chemistry Education Office when the student joins the degree list. Instructions about scheduling a time for the in-person or virtual discussion will be included with other informational correspondence from the Chemistry Education Office regarding degree completion. Graduating students will perform their exit interview after the thesis defense so as to avoid making the interview an additional burden.
• For students departing the program without a degree, the interview questions and instructions for scheduling an in-person discussion will be sent by the Chemistry Education Office at the point in time that a date for termination of their appointment in Chemistry is determined.
• For the majority of departing students, this interview coincides with the end of the semester, but a rolling schedule of surveys is anticipated.

Postdoctoral/Research Specialist Appointments

If you plan to transition to a postdoctoral/research specialist appointment within the Department of Chemistry at MIT, please contact Jennifer Weisman and  Chemistry HR as soon as possible. Your final signed thesis must be submitted before a postdoc appointment can start. If you are an international student, it is extremely important that you start this process early to allow sufficient timing for visa processing. In addition to talking with Jennifer and HR, please consult with the International Students Office .

MIT Thesis FAQ: New Degree Candidates

• New Degree Candidates
• Thesis Checklist
• Creating an Accessible Thesis
• Saving Your Thesis as a PDF/A-1
• Student Frequently Asked Questions
• Access and Availability Questions

Instructions

Reminder: students - submit your thesis electronically to your department or program.  .

Please pay close attention to the following sections of the Specifications for Thesis Preparation :

• Joint Thesis
• Copyright   (and review the copyright and licensing section below)
• Permission to Reuse or Republish a Thesis
• Changes to a Thesis After Submission

Here are some sample title pages to assist you with formatting:

• PhD thesis with a CC license
• Multiple authors thesis
• Dual degree with extra committee members

What to submit to your Department/Program

Submit the following:

• A PDF/A-1  of your final thesis document (with no signatures)
• Signature page (if required by your department; your department will provide specific guidance)
• Source files (not required)

File naming

Files must be named according to this scheme: authorLastName-kerberos ID-degree-dept-year-type_other.ext

• Thesis PDF: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-thesis.pdf
• Signature Page: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-sig.pdf

Temporary Holds

Please review the Holds section of the Thesis Specifications . The Office of Graduate Education oversees the policies and procedures for requesting a temporary publication hold  of your thesis. They offer this form for publication hold requests.

Note: Request for temporary holds must be submitted prior to graduation . To contact OGE and the Vice Chancellor's office, email  [email protected] To contact the Technology and Licensing Office, email  [email protected]

What to submit to the Libraries

This form  must be completed by the day of graduation:  https://thesis-submit.mit.edu/ .

The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis. You will be asked to confirm or provide:

• Your name as it appears on your thesis (Family Name, Given Name Middle Name)
• Thesis title
• Department or Program
• Supervisor(s)
• Copyright (see the Copyright and Licensing section below)
• ProQuest opt-in (for Graduate and Doctoral candidates only)

Copyright and Licensing

You may, optionally, choose to apply a Creative Commons License to your thesis. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. For more information about CC: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/

Before you apply a CC license or CC0 (public domain) to your work, please note that the licenses cannot be revoked.  This means once you apply a CC license to your material, anyone who receives it may rely on that license for as long as the material is protected by copyright, even if you later stop distributing it.

• To determine which CC license is right for you, use the CC license chooser  
• Note: You do not need to apply a CC license to your work. If you choose not to, your thesis will be available in DSpace@MIT with the following statement: In Copyright  https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/

Formatting Your Copyright Statement

• Following the instructions in the thesis specifications under How To Copyright a Thesis .
• If using a CC license, replace "All Rights Reserved" with your chosen CC license (CC-BY-NC 4.0).
• Remember to also include the following statement below your (c) : " The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license. "

What Copyright information to submit to the Libraries

• I hold copyright (if you choose this option you will have the option of also choosing a CC license)
• I hold copyright and give it up to the public domain (this means that your thesis will be released openly under CC0 "No Rights Reserved" and opts out of copyright and database protection.  This may not be revoked.)
• This is a work of the US government
• Another person or organization owns copyright 

For more information Review the Copyright section of the Thesis Specifications .

ORCID: Open Researcher & Contributor ID

What is ORCID?

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a method of linking research-related items, such as articles as datasets, to these identifiers.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. The goal is to support the creation of a permanent, clear, and unambiguous record of scholarly communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and contributors.

Register for an ORCID ID.

This process also associates your ORCID with your MIT profile. Once you have the ID you also have the option to build your profile through the “import works” button, associating your papers, data sets, and other research output with your ID. You can then include the ID as a link on your CV or web page. You can also create an account without linking it to your MIT profile here .

See our ORCID FAQ  for more information.

ProQuest Opt-in

What is the ProQuest Opt-in?

When submitting your title page information to MIT Libraries, you may choose to opt in to the pilot program to provide additional open access to MIT theses through  ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Global  (PQDT). The aim is to make theses more visible and discoverable. By opting in, you consent to your full thesis being available in ProQuest's database. If you are a Bachelor's candidate or do not opt in, ProQuest will only access your abstract.

There is no cost to you and your thesis will not be sent to ProQuest until it is published by MIT. See the Thesis Specificatio n and  PQDT's Author Dissertations FAQs  for more information about participating.

Quick links

• Thesis Specifications
• Distinctive Collections
• Scholarly Publishing@MIT
• About DSpace@MIT
• Dissertation/Theses

Have questions?

Contact us at [email protected] .

• Next: Thesis Checklist >>
• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2023 4:55 PM
• URL: https://libguides.mit.edu/mit-thesis-faq

Please note: The admissions office is closed Tuesday, May 14, from 10:30 AM–1:30 PM.

First-year applicants: Essays, activities & academics

Rather than asking you to write one long essay, the MIT application consists of several short response questions and essays designed to help us get to know you. Remember that this is not a writing test. Be honest, be open, be authentic—this is your opportunity to connect with us.

You should certainly be thoughtful about your essays, but if you’re thinking too much—spending a lot of time stressing or strategizing about what makes you “look best,” as opposed to the answers that are honest and easy—you’re doing it wrong.

Our questions

For the 2023–2024 application, we’re asking these short answer essay questions:

• What field of study appeals to you the most right now? (Note: Applicants select from a drop-down list.) Tell us more about why this field of study at MIT appeals to you.
• We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it.
• How has the world you come from—including your opportunities, experiences, and challenges—shaped your dreams and aspirations?
• MIT brings people with diverse backgrounds together to collaborate, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to lending a helping hand. Describe one way you have collaborated with others to learn from them, with them, or contribute to your community together.
• How did you manage a situation or challenge that you didn’t expect? What did you learn from it?

Depending on the question, we’re looking for responses of approximately 100–200 words each. There is also one final, open-ended, additional-information text box where you can tell us anything else you think we really ought to know.

Please use our form, not a resume, to list your activities. There is only enough space to list four things—please choose the four that mean the most to you and tell us a bit about them.

Self-reported Coursework Form

How you fill out this form will not make or break your application, so don’t stress about it. Use your best judgment—we’re simply trying to get a clear picture of your academic preparation by subject area. We see thousands of different transcripts, so it really helps us to view your coursework and grades in a consistent format.

Here are a few quick tips to help you complete this section:

• The self-reported coursework should be completed by students in U.S. school systems only. If you attend an international school, we’ll just use your transcript.
• The information you provide does not replace your official high school transcript, which must be sent to us from your school to verify your self-reported information (in order to avoid accidental misrepresentation, it might help to have a copy of your high school transcript in front of you while completing this form).
• Avoid abbreviations, if at all possible, and enter the names of your school courses by subject area. Please include all classes you have taken and are currently taking. If your courses were taken outside of your high school (at a local junior college or university, for example), tell us where they were taken in the “Class Name” field.
• In the “Grade Received” field, list term and/or final grades for each class, as found on your school transcript (semester, trimester, quarter, final, etc.). Use one entry only per class. For example, it’s not necessary to use a separate entry for each semester of the same class. Place all grades for a class in the same field, separating grades with commas.

The MIT thesis template in LaTeX

The latex template.

The current MIT thesis template was developed in 2023, using up-to-date LaTeX coding, to meet the current formatting requirements of the MIT Libraries. The title and abstract pages are automatically laid out from information provided by the user. This template includes options to use a variety of fonts, and it is compatible with either pdfTeX or unicode engines such as luaLaTeX. When using LaTeX formats dated November 2022 or later, the resulting pdf file meets the PDF/A-2b archivability standard. A standard TeX Live installation includes all other packages required by the template.

This template was written by John Lienhard at the request of the MIT Libraries.

• Documentation: Documentation for the template is available in pdf format here .
• Download: The most current LaTeX files for this template are distributed through the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN): https://ctan.org/pkg/mitthesis Download
• Overleaf.com: A copy of the thesis template is also present in Overleaf.com's template gallery, here . Overleaf includes all the packages in TeX Live, so no additional downloads are needed. Learn more about Overleaf at MIT .

Specifications for MIT theses

The formatting requirements for MIT theses are set by the MIT Libraries, as described at this url: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/thesis-specs/ . Questions regarding these specifications should be directed to [email protected] .

The original LaTeX 2.09 template was written by Stephen Gildea in the late 1980s (also in CTAN, here ). That template was edited by many later students, leading to the files archived here.

LaTeX has changed greatly since the original MIT thesis template was written. LaTeX 2.09 was replaced by LaTeX2e in 1994. New engines were developed, particularly pdfTeX during the 1990s and Unicode-aware engines in the decades that followed. Many packages and fonts were developed to accompany the original platform, particularly after 2000; and major updates to the LaTeX kernel began in 2018. Over the years, the MIT Libraries have changed the required format several times, especially as electronic thesis submission has become the norm. The original template served MIT well; but by the early 2020s, it was substantially out of date. That situation motivated the creation of this new template.

MIT Libraries logo MIT Libraries

Thesis content and article publishing

Journal publishers usually acquire the copyright to scholarly articles through a publication agreement with the author. Their policies then determine what authors can do with their work.

Below are publisher policies regarding graduate students’ reuse of their previously published articles in their theses, and policies on accepting journal submissions that first appeared in an author’s previously released thesis.

If an article is co-authored with a member of the MIT faculty, or if you have opted-in to an OA license , the MIT open access policy  is likely to apply to the article, which allows for the extension of additional rights to graduate student authors through MIT for reuse.  Short excerpts of published works may also be available for reuse under the MIT Libraries license agreements .

See this page for information about who owns the copyright to your thesis (generally, it’s either MIT or you).

Please contact [email protected] with questions or if you need information that does not yet appear below.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Reuse of author’s previously published article in author’s thesis

Check the terms of your publication agreement .

Submission of new article by author that first appeared as part of author’s thesis

Allows :  “ We do not regard dissertations/theses as prior publications.”

American Chemical Society

Allows : “Authors may reuse all or part of the Submitted, Accepted or Published Work in a thesis or dissertation that the author writes and is required to submit to satisfy the criteria of degree-granting institutions…. Appropriate citation of the Published Work must be made as follows “Reprinted with permission from [COMPLETE REFERENCE CITATION]. Copyright [YEAR] American Chemical Society.”

“If the thesis or dissertation to be published is in electronic format, a direct link to the Published Work must be included using the  ACS Articles on Request link.”

See also this FAQ for thesis info.

Each ACS journal has a specific policy on prior publication that is determined by the respective ACS Editor-in-Chief. Authors should consult these policies and/or contact the appropriate journal editorial office to ensure they understand the policy before submitting material for consideration.

American Geophysical Union

Allows : “If you wish to reuse your own article (or an amended version of it) in a new publication of which you are the author, editor or co-editor, prior permission is not required (with the usual acknowledgements). However, a formal grant of license can be downloaded free of charge from RightsLink by selecting “Author of this Wiley article” as your requestor type.”

Allows : “Previously published explicitly does not include oral or poster presentations, meeting abstracts or student theses/dissertations.”

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Allows : “ Upon publication of an article or paper in an AIAA journal or conference proceeding, authors can use in their own theses/dissertations (with permission of AIAA if required by copyright).”

From here : “In most cases when AIAA is the copyright holder of a work, authors will be automatically granted permission by AIAA to reprint their own material in subsequent works, to include figures, tables, and verbatim portions of text, upon request. Explicit permission should be sought from AIAA through Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) ; all reprinted material must be acknowledged and the original source cited in full.” 

American Institute of Physics

Allows : “A uthors do not need permission from AIP Publishing to reuse your own AIP Publishing article in your thesis or dissertation (please format your credit line: “Reproduced from [FULL CITATION], with the permission of AIP Publishing”)” Author agreement says the version of record can be used . 

Allows : Publishing the work in a thesis is not considered prior publication according to author warranties in the publication agreement.

American Meteorological Society

AMS seems to require permission. Email [email protected] . It can take 10 days to hear back. They will then ask that you include the complete bibliographic citation of the original source, as well as the following statement with that citation for each: © American Meteorological Society. Used with permission.

American Physical Society

Allows , “ provided the bibliographic citation and the APS copyright credit line are given on the appropriate pages.”

Allows Language from Physical Review journals page: “Publication of material in a master’s or doctoral thesis does not preclude publication of that material in the Physical Review journals.”

American Society for Clinical Investigation

After Jan 4, 2022 : “Effective with the January 4, 2022 issue of JCI, authors retain copyright on all articles, which are published with a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).”

Prior to Jan 4, 2022 : “ Permission can be obtained via Copyright Clearance Center . Copyright or license information is noted on each article.”

Likely allows : D oesn’t explicitly call out theses but says posting on preprints isn’t prior publication. 

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Allows : “Authors can include partial or complete papers of their own (and no fee is expected) in a dissertation as long as citations and DOI pointers to the Versions of Record in the ACM Digital Library are included. Authors can use any portion of their own work in presentations and in the classroom (and no fee is expected).”

Likely allows . Prior publication rules apply to “peer reviewed” publications.  

Cambridge University Press

Allows : “Permissions requests are waived if t he author of the work wishes to reproduce a single chapter (not exceeding 20 per cent of their work), journal article or shorter extract in a subsequent work (i.e. with a later publication date) of which he or she is to be the author, co-author or editor.”

Policies set by individual journals.

Allows : “ ​​ Use and share their works for scholarly purposes (with full acknowledgement of the original article): Include in a thesis or dissertation (provided this is not published commercially).”

Allows : “ Elsevier does not count publication of an academic thesis as prior publication.”

Emerald Publishing

Allows . Authors should use the submitted version or accepted manuscript version.  Use of the final published version is permitted in print, but not electronic versions of theses.

Allows : “We are happy for submissions to Emerald to include work that has previously formed part of your PhD or other academic thesis. Please submit your paper in the usual way but declare the existence of the uploaded thesis to the Editor of the journal. If the Editor wished to consider the paper further, the paper would go through our standard anonymised peer-review process.”

Allows , with some requirements

Theses not specifically addressed , but permitted subject to editorial discretion. Individual journals may have their own policies.

Institute of Physics

Allows. A uthor may use the final published version or figures/text, and should include citation and a link to the version of record. “When you transfer the copyright in your article to IOP, we grant back to you certain rights, including the right to include all or part of the Final Published Version of the article within any thesis or dissertation.”

Inter-Research Science Center

Reuse of published content is “generally free of charge,” but you must get permission. Email: [email protected]

Not addressed , except to say, “ Permission to re-use any previously published material must have been obtained by the authors from the copyright holders.”

International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) INTERSPEECH conference

Allows , with citation. “ISCA grants each author permission to use the article in that author’s dissertation….”

Mathematical Sciences Publishers

Allows , with citation. “The Author may use part or all of this Work or its image in any future works of his/her/their own.”

Unclear, but the author agreement says , “The Author warrants that the Work has not been published before, in any form except as a preprint.” We suggest asking your editor.

National Academy of Sciences

Allows , with citation. “ PNAS authors do not need to obtain permission in the following cases: …to include their articles as part of their dissertations.”

Not addressed . “ What constitutes prior publication…will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Allows , with citation. “ Authors have the right to reuse their article’s Version of Record, in whole or in part, in their own thesis.”

Allows . “ Nature Portfolio will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.”

Oxford University Press

Journals have their own policies . OUP uses the Copyright Clearance Center for permissions . Contact your editor.

Royal Society of Chemistry

Allows , but says, “ Excerpts or material from your dissertation that have not been through peer review will generally be eligible for publication. However, if the excerpt from the dissertation included in your manuscript is the same or substantially the same as any previously published work, the editor may determine that it is not suitable for publication in the journal.”

Allows — in addition, a special agreement with Springer for MIT authors allows for reuse for scholarly and educational purposes.

Policy varies by journal but according to Springer: “There are no overriding ethical issues as long as the dual publication is transparent and cross referenced. Transparency is key, though a few journals might reject such an article for the reason of non-originality.”

Taylor & Francis

Allows — authors retain the right to “Include your article Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM) or Accepted Manuscript(AM), depending on the embargo period, in your thesis or dissertation. The Version of Record cannot be used.”

Allows : “ Y ou may share any version of your article with individual colleagues and students… as submission of thesis, or doctorate.”

Allows : “ The following types of “prior publication” do not present cause for concerns about duplicate or redundant publication: Dissertations and theses in university archives.”

Page last updated: April 10, 2024