4. Award of degree

If you have submitted your thesis for examination via UQ eSpace please read this document (PDF, 74 KB) for information on how your examination will progress.

Once you have completed all required revisions and these have been approved by the Dean of Graduate School, you will be able to upload your final thesis to the UQRDM. Please use the final thesis UQRDM guide (PDF, 138.1 KB) to ensure your final thesis upload and submission is successful.

If you still continue to have difficulties uploading your thesis, after reviewing this guide, please contact the Graduate School at graduateschool@uq.edu.au or 3346 0503.

Thesis access options

It is at this stage in the process that you, or your principal advisor, will need to make a decision regarding access to a published thesis. In keeping with international academic practice, your thesis will be made publicly available once you have completed all the requirements for your degree.

If you have assigned intellectual property rights to UQ, this choice will be made by your principal advisor.

If you did not assign intellectual property rights to UQ, you can choose between:

• open access
• thesis embargo.

Open access

The majority of theses are open access. Once you have completed all the requirements of your degree, your thesis will be freely available via UQ eSpace.

Thesis embargo

In some cases, it might be appropriate to restrict access to your thesis for a specific period of time (usually 3 years).

Reasons for embargoing a thesis might include:

• academic
• cultural
• ethical
• legal, or
• commercial reasons.

For further information about the pros and cons of open access and thesis embargo, refer to the list of FAQs.

Request or extend an embargo post-conferral

If your degree has already been conferred, complete the Thesis Embargo Following Conferral Request form (PDF, 234.8 KB) to request an embargo or extend an embargo.

For candidates who have assigned their intellectual property to the University, the Graduate School will contact your principal advisor (or the head of your enrolling unit if the principal advisor is no longer at UQ) about extending an embargo. Your final thesis upload will be reviewed by Graduate School staff to ensure that it meets University requirements. You will then be given access to log into mySI-net to confirm your thesis title and enter a 100 word abstract. Once this task is completed, the Graduate School will send official confirmation that you have met degree requirements to your student email account. Your details will then be sent to the Provost for the conferral of your degree. After the Provost has conferred the award, the UQ Graduations team will prepare your Award documents.

Please refer to the UQ Graduations website with regards to important information about the degree documents and graduation ceremonies.