Submission requirements

You must ensure your thesis is prepared in accordance with VU's thesis guidelines before you can submit your thesis for examination.

Early submission

If you complete your thesis 12 months (or equivalent part time) before your candidature due date you must submit an application for early submission to the Graduate Research School.

Your application should contain:

a copy of your thesis
Release of Thesis form (see below)
detailed letter from your research supervisor providing reasons for early submission and confirming the thesis has been analysed through the Turnitin software.

Your application for early submission will be reviewed by the Associate Director of your Research Institute. The Associate Director may convene a 'Research Institute Review Panel' to assist with reviewing and approving the application.

Release of thesis

You must submit a Release of Thesis form with your thesis so it can be released to examiners. The Chair of Examiners is normally the Associate Director of your Research Institute.

Release of Thesis (PDF, 446.87 KB)

However, if your Principal Supervisor is the Associate Director of your Research Institute, then they are unable to act as Chair of Examiners. In this instance, the Director, Research Institute (or nominee) will normally act as the Chair of Examiners for your thesis.

Submitting copies of your thesis for examination

All candidates are required to submit:

one electronic copy of their thesis for examination (maximum 15MB)
Release of Thesis form for examination
originality report.

Learn more about preparing your thesis

Release of Thesis (PDF, 446.87 KB)

Student Declaration (PDF, 187.27 KB)

Ensure you insert and sign the correct declaration(s) in your thesis.

Submit all examination documents to [email protected] .

The Candidature Team will organise for the relevant Research Institute Associate Director or nominee to sign and approve the Release of Thesis.

The University is committed to planetary health. Therefore, the Graduate Research School will not print hard copies of your thesis. You are responsible for providing the Graduate Research School with a temporary bound copy of your thesis if requested by an examiner. You are also responsible for ensuring the submitted hardcopy is the same version as the submitted electronic copy.

Acceptable forms of temporary binding are spiral and thermal binding. The thesis can be printed double-sided.

If you are on a scholarship, email [email protected] to see if you are eligible for a binding allowance.

: VU uses Turnitin as its mechanism for undertaking originality checking in any written submissions.
Candidates (students) are advised to check the originality of their thesis with the Turnitin software to avoid missed citations or accidental plagiarism.
All graduate candidates have access to the Originality Check and Similarity Report via the ‘Student Induction Space' found within VU Collaborate
Using the originality check
As a research student, you can check references and originality in any piece of your writing (from a draft of a coursework essay to the final draft of your PhD thesis). This should be a part of your regular self-assessment and professional development and will also be a formal requirement at the submission of your final thesis.
Originality checking can be undertaken through the test Dropbox that has been set up for you in the Student Induction Space on VU Collaborate.
This Dropbox will not retain your work on its repository – therefore, by checking your work here, you are not at risk of accidentally ‘plagiarising yourself’.
Prior to submitting your document into the dropbox, ensure the document does not contain less than 400 characters, and is not more than 50MB, as this will cause an error to appear when generating an Originality Check.
What to do when your file upload exceeds the maximum file size limit?
Convert your file to PDF.
Split PDF by number of pages (use Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to split your large PDF into smaller separate documents and refer to Adobe guidelines to use PDF splitter).
Upload multiple split files to the Assessment Dropbox.
At the point of checking the final draft of your research thesis, you should retain the Turnitin report to include with your thesis submission.
Questions
Please refer to the student guide to use the originality check and Turnitin similarity report. In addition to the guide, Research Ambassadors can provide support with this software.
Questions regarding the use of Turnitin can be directed to the Connected Learning team via the ‘Chat’ button on any VU Collaborate space. For any other queries, please email [email protected] .