Publishing dissertations

PhD candidates are supposed to submit 2 printed versions of their PhD thesis, plus 2 copies of their propositions.

Both the printed and the digital version must be formally submitted 3 weeks prior to the PhD ceremony.

The printed version of your thesis (2 copies plus 2 copies of the propositions) can be handed in at the Service desk of the University Library or sent to our postal address.

Address UB Service desk:
Broerstraat 4
9712 CP Groningen

Postal address:
University of Groningen Library
Dissertations department
Postbus 559
9700 AN Groningen

You may request confirmation of receipt 7 days after submission via dissertations rug.nl. Usually, however, the thesis has been processed within this time frame and a confirmation email has already been sent via Hora Finita.

Please note that this confirmation e-mail is only sent when the digital version has also already been submitted via Hora Finita.

Usually, the print shop provides a digital version in PDF format as well. Please enquire about this. If not, please use the PDF version you sent to the print shop.

No, you cannot request an ISBN via the UB anymore.

Some printing companies offer to request an ISBN for your thesis; you can ignore this option.

For the findability of the thesis, a DOI is more important and useful.

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is important as an identifier for a publication. A DOI will be assigned to all PhD theses by the University of Groningen Library, this will be done after the PhD thesis has been submitted via Hora Finita. PhD students don’t have to request a DOI for their dissertation or add it to their dissertation. The DOI will appear on the thesis landing page in the RUG research portal.

Digital submission has been mandatory since the adoption of the new PhD Regulations several years ago. Your PhD thesis will be added to the University of Groningen research portal.

The upload of the PhD thesis to Hora Finita must include a signed license agreement. It is possible to indicate on this which chapters have already been submitted or are being prepared for publication and which ones have been accepted or already published. Based on our knowledge of and experience with copyrights and open-access publications, as well as the completed license agreement, the necessary embargoes will be imposed.

If, due to agreements entered into, it is desirable to keep the material under embargo for a period exceeding 1 year after the PhD ceremony, the Rector Magnificus of the University of Groningen will set a reasonable duration of the embargo bearing in mind the agreements entered into and any explanation thereof provided by the PhD candidate. In such cases, PhD candidates need to submit a written and reasoned request to the Rector Magnificus of the University of Groningen. Your request will be handled by the University Library and must be sent to dissertations rug.nl.

In a patent application it might be necessary to ensure that your thesis is not already publicly available in whole or in part before the effective filing date of your patent application. In general, the supervisor is aware of the procedure that needs to be followed. Please discuss this with him/her.

A digital version must be submitted, even if you intend to release a commercial edition. Upon request, an embargo can be imposed on the full-text PDF for a period agreed on between the author and the publisher, while certain sections, such as the abstract, title and table of contents, might be made open access after consultation. Since the UG strives to keep embargoes on commercial issues as short as possible, we would like to make you aware of the possibilities to realize this when negotiating with a publisher.

By filling in the license agreement, you give permission to the UG to include the dissertation open access in the UG Research Repository.

Points 2 and 3 in the license agreement are the most important. Here you specify the exceptions to the open access publishing.

You only need to indicate the numbers of the chapters you still plan or intend to publish at point 2 and the numbers of the published chapters at point 3. In principle, you do not need to specify open access articles at point 3.

During processing, regardless of the content of the license agreement, we always check all chapters whether an embargo is required.

If we find that a published chapter does not need an embargo (anymore) we implement it that way and the responsibility for making this chapter open access available passes to the UG.

If you are publishing a commercial edition of the thesis, please mention this via a note on the license agreement. You can upload the publisher's agreement as an attachment via Hora Finita.

Point 4 of the license agreement informs you that we initially place a one-year embargo on chapters mentioned in point 2 starting from the promotion date. This embargo expires automatically. If agreements with a publisher require to extend this embargo after the first year, please email us at dissertations rug.nl.