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 Office for Researcher Training, Quality and Integrity (ORTQI).

Your application should contain:

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

Your application for early submission will be reviewed by the Deputy Director of your Research Institute. The Deputy 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 Deputy Director of your Research Institute.

However, if your Principal Supervisor is the Deputy 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) together with a Release of Thesis form for examination. (Note: Ensure you insert and sign the correct Declaration page – refer to Preparing your thesis).

Submit all examination documents to: [email protected]

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

The University is committed to planetary health, therefore, ORTQI will not print hard copies of your thesis. You are responsible for providing ORTQI 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 Urkund (rather than 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 Urkund (by Ouriginal) software to avoid missed citations or accidental plagiarism.

All graduate candidates have access to Dropbox – Originality Check 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?

  1. Convert your file to PDF.
  2. 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).
  3. Upload multiple split files to Urkund Originality Check.

At the point of checking the final draft of your research thesis, you should retain the Urkund report to include with your thesis submission.

Questions

Please refer to the student guide to using Urkund. In addition to the guide, Research Ambassadors can provide support with this software.

Questions regarding the use of Urkund 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].

Self-bind facilities are available at most campus libraries. Please enquire at the service desk of your campus library.

To have your thesis bound, search online for 'bookbinder', or use our identified bookbinders:

Doncaster Bookbinders, Moorabbin
+61 3 9555 4633

Prompt Thesis Binding, Kilsyth
0431 693 093

A G Bookbinders, West Melbourne
+61 3 9329 0288

Apollo-Moon Bookbinders, Rowville
+61 3 9763 2299

Irwin and McLaren Bookbinders, Richmond
+61 3 9428 5829

Whites Law Bindery, Caulfield South
+61 3 9523 6026

Scribe Bookbinding, Carlton North
+61 3 9347 0039

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