Please refer to:

• the criteria the examiners are asked to assess your thesis against on the exam outcome form

and

• the Research Degree regulations

CeDAS oversees the Royal Holloway proofreading scheme, which enables students to pay for an approved third-party proofreader to identify surface error in final drafts. Please note, the University does not permit the use of paid third-party proofreaders who are not part of this scheme.
The Doctoral School is unable to contribute to any costs incurred for proofreading theses.

If you have as papers (including book chapters, journal articles, or conference proceedings) that you would like to include as part of your thesis, you can either present your thesis:

• as a monograph with the papers included as supplementary material at the back of the thesis / adapted and incorporated into the main body of the thesis (see Guidelines for including your own published work in a monograph thesis) 

or 

• in a format other than a monograph (alternative format)

Find out more about the requirements for the format other than a monograph 

Instructions and notes on submission

LaTeX templates

Suggested order for pages in the thesis (please note that this a guide only and is not prescriptive):

1. Title page
2. Declaration of authorship
3. Acknowledgements
4. Abstract
5. List of contents
6. List of tables/figures/illustrations/accompanying material
7. Body of Thesis
8. Appendices
9. Glossary/Abbreviations
10. Bibliography/References

The following should be emailed to the Doctoral School:

• An electronic PDF copy of your thesis
• The declaration of number of words form (signed by your supervisor)

Your electronic thesis should be submitted before midnight on the date of your submission deadline. The thesis should not be submitted directly to any of the examination team.

Thesis going to be larger than 20MB?

If your thesis is going to be 20MB or larger, you won't be able to share this via email. If this is the case, at least two weeks before your submission deadline, you should email the Doctoral School to request a share link to a thesis deposit folder. You will be given access to a SharePoint folder where you can upload the thesis, and any supporting files in time for your submission deadline.  Please do not zip/compress the files when uploading files to the folder.  In order to complete the thesis submission process, you must also email the Doctoral School attaching your declaration of words to the email. We ask you not to use WeTransfer or Dropbox for this process and not to share files directly via Sharepoint to the Doctoral School Mailbox.

The only exception to submission of electonic theses, is where agreement is in place for a restriction of access for reasons of confidentiality, commercial sensitivity or patents which makes it inappropriate to provide an electronic copy for the examiners.  An application for permission to exclude the need to submit a pre-viva electronic copy of the thesis should be made in writing to the Doctoral School no later than the time of your entry to the examination. This application must be supported by your supervisor.

If any of the examination team request a hard copy of your thesis, the Doctoral School will let you know so that you can make arrangements to provide this. Please be aware that this may be made known to the Doctoral School after submission of your electronic thesis.

Documents which support your submission

If you are submitting physical items to support your thesis, such as a photo books, portfolios etc, please make it known to the Doctoral School at the time of submission, if these should be returned to you after examination. Otherwise, these items will not be returned.

Please ensure that when emailing the Doctoral School, you use your Royal Holloway email account, and also quote your student ID in the subject line of your email.

A hard copy of the thesis is no longer required as a matter of course.  Hard copies for your thesis are only required if:

• the requirement to submit an electronic copy of your thesis has been waived (see above).  In such cases, you will need to submit three copies of the thesis
• either / both your examiners specifically request a hard copy.  The Doctoral School will inform you if that is the case once the examiners have accepted their invitation to examine
• you have a particular reason why you would like to present the thesis as a hard copy to the examiners, in which case you will need to submit three copies of the thesis

 If you are submitting hard copies of your thesis:

• Please submit them:
  • By post: to the Student Services Centre, Davison Building, Royal Holloway, Egham TW20 0EX
• The content  and format of the hard copies must be identical to the electronic copy submitted
• The theses must be robust enough to endure the examination process and be easily identifiable
• The theses must be securely bound (e.g. spiral bound, cloth bound, comb bound). If you have queries regarding appropriate binding formats, please email the Doctoral School.

The hard copy theses should be submitted by 5pm on the submission deadline date.

The University takes the issue of plagiarism and other academic misconduct extremely seriously.   All new PGR students are required to complete the ‘Avoiding Plagiarism’ course in Moodle (moodle.royalholloway.ac.uk) prior to their first annual review. This 60 minute interactive online course is designed to ensure that students across all discipline areas follow best practice in referencing, paraphrasing and using citations. 

Please refer to the University’s Regulations on Academic Misconduct for what constitutes academic misconduct, as well as the procedures to be followed for the investigation of alleged academic misconduct and possible outcomes

To help deter plagiarism, it is University policy to select a random sample of research degree theses, which have been submitted to the Doctoral School, for submission to the plagiarism detection software Turnitin before the examination process is initiated. Exemptions are in place for theses covered by commercial confidentiality agreements. Turnitin reports are reviewed by the School Director of PGR Education.  Should concerns be raised, you will be notified by the Doctoral School.

If you would like to use Turnitin as a formative tool to check your draft work prior to submission, please discuss this option with your supervisor.