Deposit Step #1 of 2: upload a soft copy (PDF) to the online repository

1. Your major paper / internship paper must be in PDF format.
2. Ensure that the PDF is the final document that has been approved by your Master's committee and by the Graduate Studies office for format.
3. In the PDF file the Approval form must remain unsigned - do not scan and insert into the pdf the signed Approval page with the signatures of your committee members. One copy of the signed Approval form must be separately submitted to the Graduate Studies office, as specified in the step 2 deposit instructions.

1. Go to http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/major-papers/ and click on "Submit major paper". Enter your UWinID and Password to log in and follow the instructions to submit your major paper pdf. Your work will be saved at any point and if you are unable to finish your submission you can log out and go back at a later time to complete your submission.

2. After you complete all required information click on "Submit" at the bottom of the page. You will receive an automatic notification email confirming that your online submission was successful. If you do not receive a confirmation email check to make sure you have selected "Submit" at the end of the submission process.

Proceed to the next step to complete your deposit - refer to Deposit step #2 of 2 instructions for submitting your signed approval page. 

Your uploaded PDF will need to be reviewed and approved by Graduate Studies, and you will receive a second follow-up email to confirm that your submission was approved or otherwise to provide you instructions about any edits that may be required to the uploaded PDF. Note during peak times it may take 2-3 business days for your online submission to be reviewed by Graduate Studies, however, for the purpose of meeting a deposit deadline, the date of your initial upload will be considered as your PDF submission date under Deposit step #1 of 2. If any required edits are subsequently determined by Graduate Studies you will receive an email with instructions and will be responsible for completing the edits and re-uploading your updated PDF document.

3.After uploading and submitting your PDF file, ensure you proceed to submit your required forms - refer to the instructions under Deposit step #2 of 2. 

When will your online submission be publicly available on the web:

After your online submission has been finalized and following a processing period (approx. 6-8 weeks), a copy of your online submission will be posted in the University of Windsor digital collection of major research papers (since November 2017). 

If your major paper needs to be withheld from the public domain for a period of time you must still submit it online and submit a "request for withholding" to Graduate Studies. Review guidelines about how to request withholding of your thesis.

Contact the graduate studies office if you have questions.

An ETD (electronic thesis or dissertation) is an electronic version of a Master's thesis or Doctoral dissertation. ETD consists of a PDF computer file as well as any supplementary files to the student's thesis, such as source code, excel files, etc. A student submits their ETD to ETD Administrator, the University of Windsor online thesis submission system. All ETDs are stored in Scholarship@UWindsor, the University of Windsor digital collection.

Major research papers are also submitted online as a PDF file to the Scholarship@UWindsor Major papers repository.

Free publicity for your post-graduate level research: the authors of theses that are available on the web become much more widely known and as a result their reputations and status are enhanced. Your thesis can be accessed through the web by researchers in the field, potential employers, or it can be used for for job and grant applications, etc. You can also promote your ETD by linking to it from your home page or online CV.

Worldwide accessibility increases scholarly citations: When your thesis is available as an ETD more people are likely to read your work and/or cite it. In a comparison study conducted at West Virginia University (WVU) the results showed that compared to paper theses ETDs at WVU were accessed 145,000% more than print documents (one hundred and forty-five thousand percent). Furthermore, the increase in citation impact for online research could be anywhere from 50 to 250 times (S. Reeves, 2006).

You can request to have your online submission withheld from the public domain for a certain period - review the instructions for withholding.

There is no charge for the online submission. 

Adobe Reader, which is freely available from many internet sites, can only be used to view PDF files but not to create or edit PDF files.

If your source document is in MS Word format and if you require support with MS Word/Office 365, you may contact ITS at: www.uwindsor.ca/itservices/support

If you are on campus, you can use any computer that is available for public use in the Leddy Library. A freeware "PDF writer" is installed on all workstations in the library that will allow the conversion of your thesis document into PDF format. Just open up the document and select "Print to PDF Writer". You will then be prompted for a location and file name and a PDF version of your thesis document will be created in that location.

For assistance, ask the IT Consultants on duty at the Leddy Reference desk (they can be identified by their blue IT Consultant vests).

You will receive an email notification confirming your submission, and your submission will be sent for approval to the Graduate Studies office. If changes are required you will be notified by email, otherwise you will receive an email confirming that your submission has been approved.

After a processing period (6-8 weeks), a digital copy of the deposited document will be available as open access in ProQuest (theses and dissertations only) as well as in the University of Windsor Scholarship@UWindsor digital insitutional repository:

1. theses and dissertations will be placed in the Scholarship@UWindsor ETD repository 
2. major papers will be placed in the Scholarship@UWindsor Major papers repository.

If a withholding request was submitted at the time of depositing, for the during the embargo period the full-text of your major paper, thesis or dissertation will not be publicly available, however, a brief record will be posted on the web including the abstract. Instructions about submitting a withholding request are outlined under 'additional information' on the deposit steps webpage.

Signatures are private information that are protected by privacy legislation. One of the mandatory pages in your thesis is the Approval page which lists all of your committee members with the exception of the chair of defense. Your committee members will sign the Approval page after you defend and complete final revisions as required. You will need to submit the signed Approval page to the Graduate Studies Office as required for your final deposit, however, you should include the unsigned Approval page in your pdf for the online submission. 

Today, electronic publishing is an accepted option for distribution and publication. Some students may be concerned that making their electronic thesis widely available may have a negative impact on their ability to publish their thesis commercially afterwords. To determine the publishing policy of various academic journals Theses Canada encourages graduate students to check the SHERPA/RoMEO Database at www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php.

Researchers at Virginia Tech University, where electronic thesis submission is compulsory, have done a number of surveys of book and journal publishers in various disciplines. The results of their surveys (further down) are very encouraging and show that 82 - 86% of journal publishers will accept for publication articles taken from e-theses that had been previously made available through the web. However, some publishers will not accept for publication any material that has already been published in an electronic form so students are encouraged to contact potential publishers and inquire about their policies.

Another option is to withhold the thesis for a specific period of time so that it will not interfere with traditional publication of part or all of the thesis. Review the instructions for submitting a withholding request.

Virginia Tech University surveys on ETD:

Gail McMillan, “Do ETDs Deter Publishers?” [report from the 4th International Conference on Electronic Theses and Dissertations] College and Research Libraries News, v.62 no.6 (June 2001):620-1.

Virginia Tech Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Copyright Information at Virginia Tech University Libraries. Publishers’ Surveys: 2004 ETD Survey of Humanities Editors and Publishers.

Open Access refers to free and unrestricted availability of scientific or scholarly literature on the Internet. This is the new and emerging model of scholarly communication, made possible by the Internet and the technology to make open access literature accessible and usable.

In the past, the academic community relied on the traditional publication method to release their scholarly literature. Authors submitted their writing to a journal, which published the article in a printed form and sold it to libraries or individuals through subscriptions. While this system created financial and physical barriers to access of the literature, they were necessary to sustain the model. For decades, this was the most efficient way to disseminate scholarly literature. This is no longer the case.

Open access provides many advantages over the traditional publication model and there are several ways of making research open access.