Publish your thesis while respecting copyright rules
The thesis draft
Before you begin
Keep in mind that your thesis will be produced in close collaboration with your thesis director. It is important to take time to discuss your ideas with your thesis director about the content and layout of this document.
Finally, take a few minutes to review instructions provided by the Repro, which will bring important information for the printing of your thesis.
The official cover page of your final thesis will be generated automatically by the Doctoral Student’s Office from the data in IS-Academia and will be added in your thesis by the Repro. It includes :
- Thesis title
- Jury members
- Laboratory
- Doctoral program
Most of thesis content (cover page, contents page, list of figures etc.) is listed below. You should ensure that you have included all required elements, and that you discuss the whole with your thesis director.
In an effort to optimize your PDF file*, it must have bookmarks to each main section, in the following order:
- Cover page
- Acknowledgements
- Preface by another author (often the thesis director)
- Summary (Abstract max. 3,499 characters)
- Table of contents
- List of figures, tables and symbols
- Body of the thesis
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
- Photographic credits (list of photos used with the names of the copyright holders)
- Curriculum Vitae
Please, verify that each bookmark links its location properly.
*PDF size: max. 100 MB
- For the draft of your thesis:
You can use the publishing tool https://filesender.switch.ch/ . The site allows you to select the people to whom you wish to grant access (for example members of the jury) and allows you to define an access schedule to the documents uploaded.
- For the final version of the thesis:
Please add the library (theses.bib@epfl.ch) to your filesender distribution and inform them of the specifics of the video file distribution. They will then download the video(s) and add them to your Infoscience thesis record with the same embargo period (if any) and accessibility (internet and/or intranet). Please inform them in case the video files should have a different access mode than the manuscript.
Information on publication of your thesis and advice on submission, copyright, and on-demand publishers can be found on the EPFL library webpages: Services for researchers and Citation & copyright basic rules.
The official administrative doctoral candidate’s name has to be used in the thesis for administrative purposes.
The variants of their name, however, can be managed at the level of the library catalogs (swisscovery for example) and institutional repositories (infoscience for example) by authority files that will group together all the forms of a name used, allowing to research an author’s publications regardless of the form of the request.
Practically, the doctoral candidate can notify the library (at theses.bib@epfl.ch) of the usual form of their name they wish to link to their official administrative name. These variants will then be managed in their authority file.
An unofficial template for the PhD thesis at EPFL is provided by PolyDoc. You can use it should you wish. There is no official or mandatory template to be used. Just remember to comply with the requirements of the Print center (Repro).
It is very common to reuse content in a thesis. It is therefore important to ensure that the use (or reuse) is possible and to ask for authorizations from the rights holders when necessary.
This guide provides all the information : Publish your thesis while respecting copyright rules
A thesis containing a compilation of articles published (or submitted for publication) in scientific journals is possible on condition that it contains:
- an introduction that puts the whole thesis into context and gives a summary of the objectives of the research to be presented in the thesis (a thesis must have a common thread that connects the different papers/chapters together).
- a general conclusion chapter, summarizing the main contributions of the thesis
- a section presenting possibilities for future development of the work presented in the thesis
Each section that was, or is to be, published as an article must comprise on its first page
- a complete list of authors
- a detailed description of the doctoral candidate’s contribution
- a full bibliographic reference available
CDoct 109 (November 2015) and CDoct 110 (January 2016) (Regulation)
Permission to reproduce
For a thesis made of articles, the good practice consists in contacting the publisher to ask permission to reproduce the article in the thesis. The publisher should not refuse and it keeps the student safe from any further problem with the publisher who is in the majority of cases the copyright holder.
Likewise, where an article is signed by two or more authors, an authorization to publish should be obtained from their respective authors.
Good to know
- There is no minimum number or maximum number of articles
- It is not required to be the first author
- Scientific journal or literary magazine, the rules are the same
Theses made of published articles (Note from the EPFL Library)
More and more frequently, theses are partly or completely built as assemblies of articles already published in scientific journals (profit-making or non-profit-making). Most of the time, publishers forbid the distribution of articles in their final format.
In order to avoid problems that would hinder its mission as the official distributor of EPFL theses, the Library asks the authors who want to include published articles in their thesis to comply with the following guideline:
- The thesis must not include, even as an appendix, articles with the publisher’s layout unless the author has obtained an explicit permission to do so and that it is mentioned at the beginning of the thesis chapter.
Instead of the publisher version of the article, we recommend to always use:
- The preprint, i.e. the version of the manuscript submitted to the journal before peer-reviewing.
- The postprint, i.e. the version accepted for publication. It includes additional corrections, suggested by the reviewers (as accepted by the publisher). The content is the same as the publisher version except for the final layout.
Whatever the version you choose (preprint or postprint), a mention like « postprint version of the article published in… » or « preprint version of the article submitted to… » must be added and include a link to the published article using the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) that eases the work for the reader.
The use of the preprint and postprint versions ensures that the copyright is respected and guarantees the free distribution of EPFL theses.
Lausanne, March 2017/EPFL Library/publishsupport@epfl.ch
Final thesis and publication
Neither the author, nor the director(s) have the right to postpone the printing of the doctoral thesis.
An electronic version will be published on the intranet few days after the public defense. It may be placed under a three-month embargo (available via the IS-Academia Portal).
You will find here a guide to publish your thesis while respecting copyright rules in English and in French.
- The writer of the thesis is considered as its author as defined by the law on copyright. The author holds all the rights conferred by copyright.
- The EPFL has a non-exclusive right to publish and use part or all of the thesis, where it has supported the author by funding their work or making available the logistical means on its premises
The distribution of a thesis can be delayed while the patent process is being completed. As soon as the patent application has been submitted, the thesis must be distributed (Loi sur le brevet d’invention, art. 49)
- What is a patent?
- To know more about patenting, please contact the Technology transfer office (TTO)
- Title, abstract and keywords will be published about 15 days before the public defense.
- In case of patent application or confidentiality, these items must not include information deemed sensitive. If necessary, please contact the Library (theses.bib@epfl.ch)
Recommendation
You are recommended (1, 2 and 3) to:
- archive the Research Data necessary to make your thesis reproducible
- whenever legally possible, provide the jury president and members with access to the archived datasets.
What
Research Data includes code and is defined as evidence that underpins the answer to the research question, and can be used to validate findings regardless of its form (e.g. print, digital, or physical). Datasets can be composed by research data necessary to validate the findings of your thesis, such as:
- raw data
- pre-processed data
- processed data
- plots
- source code
- executables documentation (e.g., README files, protocols, parameter files, log files, etc.).
How
Research Data should be saved in a digital archive that allows for its long-term preservation and retrieval. To ensure that the datasets will remain usable in the future, data curation prior to archiving is recommended:
- cleaning the datasets
- documenting
- enriching metadata
- converting proprietary formats into open formats
- restructuring the dataset and naming etc.
Where
EPFL offers a free archiving service for Research Data: ACOUA, the ACademic OUtput Archive. For support and information, contact the Research Data team of EPFL Library.
How long
Archived datasets can be safely stored and retrieved for many years. A basic recommendation is to make datasets preserved for at least 10 years. Depending on the research funder (SNSF, ERC, etc.) there might be specific duration requirements.
If your datasets include personal data or health data (e.g. clinical trials), both the archiving and the associated retention duration can be legal requirements. For more information in such cases, contact the EPFL Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC).
When
Usually, the adoption of Research Data Management good practices during the thesis makes it easy to perform data curation. Ideally, it is suggested that your datasets have been curated and already archived at the time you upload the draft of the thesis.