Preparing for submission
Deadlines
- View the Academic Calendar for relevant thesis submission deadlines: defence, submission of theses, and application to graduate.
- Contact the graduate administrative support staff of your academic unit for additional support.
It's the student's responsibility to be aware of these deadlines. Students are encouraged to consult the Academic Calendar well in advance of their plan to submit or graduate.
Reviewing
Before you begin, read the information found in the Drafting section.
After you have passed your defence, make a single PDF file of the final revised and approved version of your thesis/dissertation.
Review your PDF file carefully for missing pages, poor font translation, and other anomalies, as described in the following bullets:
- Is page numbering correct and consistently placed throughout the document?
- Have page numbers for landscape-oriented pages been adjusted?
- Have you included a Table of Contents?
- Are any pages missing? Have any blank pages been included in the final document?
- Are the margins set appropriately and consistently throughout the document?
- For those students who have multimedia objects, has a list of each multimedia object’s type been included?
- Are all internal and external multimedia objects and files present for submission?
- Total file submission must not exceed 4 GB.
- For technical support, please contact your unit's Graduate Administrator.
Common Submission Errors
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Our college underwent a name change as of January 1, 2017. Please change our college name on your title page to: College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
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Your copyright information is missing or incorrect. Please show both the month and year when you defended and follow this format: “Copyright John Smith, December, 2010. All Rights Reserved”.
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Your Title Page must include the following phrase directly below the copyright information: "Unless otherwise noted, copyright of the material in this thesis belongs to the author"
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Your title page contains a list of keywords. These should be removed. This information only belongs on the ETD data form where it is searchable.
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Your department name is incorrect.
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The name of your degree is incorrect.
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The title page is never to be numbered or counted, so the page following it should be ‘i’, not ‘ii’ as you have it.
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Your Table of Contents will need to be adjusted to match the new page numbers. Instructions on how to change page numbers can be found by searching for the keywords ‘manuscript page numbers’ Word processing programs differ but one site to try is http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NumberingFrontMatter.htm
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The front section(s) of your document is to be paginated with lower case Roman numerals. Please adjust your page numbering.
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The address for the College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies on your Permission to Use and Disclaimer Statement is missing or incorrect.
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The address for your department on your Permission to Use and Disclaimer Statement is missing or incorrect. Please ensure this is correct.
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The address for your department on your Permission to Use and Disclaimer Statement should remain along with the College address.
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Your disclaimer statement is missing information. Please determine if this page is required and then fill in the proper information if it is.
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Acknowledgements should be pluralized.
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The numbering and format of material consistent with the way this material appears in the text of the thesis.
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Page numbers should be right justified.
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All numbered elements of the thesis/dissertation should be included in the table of contents.
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Your list of tables are incorrectly labelled. The first number will reflect the chapter number and the second number will refer to the table number in that chapter.
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Your List of Figures are incorrectly labelled. The first number will reflect the chapter number and the second number will refer to the table number in that chapter.
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You have a running header throughout your document. This is unnecessary, please remove it.
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The body of your thesis should start with page 1. Please adjust your page numbering and table of contents.
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Your page numbering should be centered along the bottom of the page. Please adjust the numbering.
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All of the margins should be set to 1”, including all tables and figures. Please adjust your margin settings.
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All new chapters should start on a new page. Please adjust your chapters and your Table of Contents.
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You have included documents with signatures on them. For privacy/security reasons archives and libraries do not want signatures included in publicly-accessible documents. Please remove either the signatures or the pages containing them.
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It is not necessary to print the ethics approval page in your manuscript. The approval needs to be in your file in Graduate Studies only.
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Signatures can be removed either by making a copy of the original document manually covering the signature then scan it to include in your pdf, or by inserting a blank, borderless text box over the signature in the pdf.
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Appendices should be numbered consecutively using capital letter of the alphabet
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There is only one appendix and it does not need to be numbered, it will simply be titled Appendix
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Pages of the appendices are numbered consecutively respecting the overall pagination of the thesis.
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Tables, if included, should be numbered A.1, A.2, etc.
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There are unnecessary blank pages in your document. Please remove them and adjust your page numbering if necessary.
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You have submitted your ETD in more than one pdf file. ETDs are supposed to be submitted as a single pdf whenever possible. If you are unable to combine your pdf files into a single pdf, please notify grad.convo@usask.ca so the Library can be informed and make any necessary changes in the archive database.
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As of this writing, the Graduate Studies office has not yet received all of your committee’s signed post-defense forms. Final approval of the ETD cannot occur until those forms have been received in our office.
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The date when you first loaded your ETD file is the date which will count in your convocation file but complete the edit(s) within the next few days if at all possible.
How to submit
- Go to the ETD (Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Submittal System) site at https://etd.usask.ca/.
- Click on Login using your campus NSID and Password to start the submission process.
- Verify your personal information. If some of the prepopulated information is incorrect, contact grad.studies@usask.ca.
- HARVEST submissions are governed by a standard distributions license that covers, among other things, storage and backup of the submission.
- Check the checkbox at the bottom of the page, then click the “Save and Continue” button to move to the next step.
- In this step, you describe your thesis or dissertation. Make sure that the information entered below matches the information contained in your document. Note that fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.
- Also for some fields (such as Authors, Identifiers, Keywords etc.), more than one value can be added using the Add button to the right of the field.
- You will also be asked to enter information about your Examining Committee and enter a request for an embargo (if applicable).
- Click the Save and Continue button at the bottom of the page.
- At the "Upload Your Files" step, click the Choose File button to select a file to add to HARVEST. You may also provide an optional description of that file using the File Description field.
- If you wish to add additional files as part of this same submission, click the Upload File & Add Another button, and repeat the above step for each additional file.
- All students must upload the PDF of the thesis or dissertation, any supplemental files required, and a completed and signed GPS 404.
- A summary of your submission so far will be displayed at the Confirm & Submit step.
- Once you are satisfied with the submission, click the Confirm and Submit button at the bottom of the page to continue. After clicking the Confirm and Submit button, you cannot make any more changes to the form's data without contacting CGPS.
- You will see a confirmation message acknowledging your submission to HARVEST.
- Once your submission has been reviewed and added to the specified collection, you will receive an email confirmation.
After submission
Things to know
- You will receive an automated email once your ETD has been submitted.
- A CGPS Graduate Program Services Officer will review the title page, permission to use and disclaimer statement, and project abstract to ensure they meet institutional requirements and follow the General Form and Style for Theses and Dissertations.
- If corrections are required, instructions will be sent to your PAWS email account.
- Once any adjustments or corrections have been completed, you must log back into the ETD account and replace the primary document.
- Please allow five business days for your ETD to be reviewed before contacting the CGPS.
Copyright
- Students hold copyright to their thesis/dissertation even when agreements have been reached with other parties regarding ownership of some parts of the research material.
- It is understood that any copying or publication of the thesis/dissertation in any manner for financial gain requires the permission of the author, therefore the student.
- As a condition for the award of the degree, the author is required to give permission to the University Library to make the thesis/dissertation available for inspection and to permit copying of the thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes only.
Thesis/Dissertation Confidentiality
- A thesis/dissertation is a public document and once submitted for the degree, exists in the public domain unless the candidate and the thesis/dissertation supervisor request to withhold the document from circulation temporarily (reasons for the request must be specifically indicated).
- Supervisors and academic units have the option to delay publication of a thesis/dissertation for copyright or other reasons. Students can request limited access to their ETD when uploading their ETD.
- Requests to withhold an ETD from publication may be indicated in the ETD upload process. Periods of one year, two years, and three years will be the available options.
Bound copies
Some departments may require a bound copy of the completed document. To have your thesis/dissertation bound, students can connect with a binding company of their choice. Allow at least two to three weeks for binding. Students can pay to have their thesis/dissertation bound for their records at their own expense.
