Theses & dissertations

All graduate students are required to submit their thesis or dissertation to UVic’s institutional repository, UVicSpace. Read the UVicSpace Guidelines to learn how to prepare your submission.

You retain copyright ownership of your thesis. However, when you submit your thesis, you grant UVic a non-exclusive license to publish it in UVicSpace. You also authorize Library and Archives Canada to make it accessible online.

Before you submit

You must make sure that you have permission to use any third-party copyright-protected material before submitting your work to UVicSpace. This material may include images or maps created by someone else.

• copyright in the academic context
• ways to use copyrighted works
• Faculty of Graduate Studies’ policy on inclusion of copyrighted material

For information about how to seek permission to include copyright-protected material in your thesis, visit our page on copyright permissions. You can use our template letter to request permission.

If you cannot obtain permission to use material in your thesis, you may include the material for your committee’s review. However, you must remove it before submitting your thesis to UVicSpace. See the policy on inclusion of copyrighted material for details.

Including alternative types of content

If you are planning to include content other than text in your thesis, make sure that your content can be archived. Email uvicspacehelp@uvic.ca for a consultation or submit the alternative media in thesis consultation form. Review the form with your supervisor at the proposal stage.

Ethical issues & copyright

You will need to consider ethical issues and copyright as you write your thesis. See the Faculty of Graduate Studies’ information on ethical issues and copyright for guidance.

Copyright statement

You must include a copyright statement on the title page of your thesis. You can use the example below. For other examples, see the thesis format checklist or see the thesis template in LaTeX or Word.

Copyright statement example

© Name Year
University of Victoria

All rights reserved. This thesis/dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.

Creative Commons license

You may also apply a Creative Commons license to your thesis. If you choose to apply a Creative Commons license, include the appropriate statement on the title page.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License

© Name Year
University of Victoria

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License

© Name Year
University of Victoria

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Other licenses

There are other Creative Commons licenses available. Please contact the Copyright Office at copyright@uvic.ca for more information.

Withholding your thesis

If you intend to publish all or part of your thesis, consult the publisher website for policies on prior publication. If necessary, you can restrict public viewing of your thesis for one year.

To restrict public viewing of your thesis, submit a withholding form to your department’s graduate secretary for processing before you submit your thesis to UVicSpace.

Learn more about withholding your thesis or dissertation.

Getting your thesis professionally bound

Here are some companies you could contact to get your thesis bound:

• Lehmann Bookbinding, Kitchener, ON
• First Choice Books, Victoria, BC

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact the Copyright Office at copyright@uvic.ca.