Policies & Procedures

!   Bibliographic details and abstracts are available to all. Downloads of full-text dissertations are restricted to University of Portsmouth members who must login. MPhils may be accessed by all.

The Library maintains a repository of dissertations and MPhils for the use of University staff and students. This page sets out our policies and procedures for handling this material; it also stipulates our requirements in relation to the conditions for acceptance of dissertations and MPhils.

There have been some changes to this resource. In the 2018/2019 Academic Year, concern about consent in the sharing of student dissertations meant that the University needed to agree a new Protocol for the sharing of UG and PGT dissertations. This was to ensure that the University maintained compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. As a result, many of the earlier dissertations are no longer available.

Key principles

  1. Dissertations and MPhils must be submitted in an electronic format. Where dissertations are submitted on discs or USB sticks, these will be returned to the department for archiving after the dissertations have been uploaded into the Library repository.

  2. Criteria for inclusion in the University Library repository:

    • Awarded 2:1 and above for Undergraduate and 60% or above for Postgraduate Taught dissertations. Individual departments may set a higher threshold if they wish.
    • All MPhils are accepted.

  3. E-dissertations will be retained for a maximum of 10 years. MPhils will be retained on an on-going basis. departments/schools/subject groups may review the Library holdings and request that a dissertation be removed from the repository if it is no longer appropriate to retain for the full 10 years.

  4. The Library accepts no responsibility for the contents of dissertations; issues relating to academic level, legality or confidentiality are the responsibility of the department/school/subject group depositing the material. The Library will not correct spelling errors except in the title and abstract, in order to ensure that the dissertation can be found in the database.

  5. 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 academic years: we currently hold examples of ‘legacy’ dissertations submitted to the Library prior to the University’s Protocol for the sharing of Undergraduate (UG) and Postgraduate Taught (PGT) Dissertations (April 2019). These ‘legacy’ dissertations are retained as examples of previous work, to aid students in their studies, and will be removed in 2021.

  6. If you wish to request your dissertation to be removed from this collection, you can request this at any time by emailing data-protection@port.ac.uk

Submission requirements in relation to dissertations and MPhils

  1. The dissertation must be submitted on a DVD, CD-ROM, USB stick, email attachment or Google doc (permissions to share/edit must be granted ).

  2. The main text of the dissertation must be in a single file; appendices and artefacts can be in separate files.

  3. The main text file must be in Adobe Acrobat PDF (preferred option) or in Word format.

  4. The text should include the following elements (perhaps on a cover sheet)

    • Student's name
    • Full title of the dissertation
    • Abstract of the dissertation
    • Name of degree for which submitted e.g. MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies
    • Name of the student's department
    • Year in which the dissertation was submitted

  5. Undergraduate and Postgraduate Taught dissertations must include the student’s explicit consent to the processing of their data, as per the University’s Protocol for the sharing of Undergraduate (UG) and Postgraduate Taught (PGT) Dissertations (April 2019). We are unable to accept any dissertation that does not include this explicit consent.

  6. MPhils must include the standard declaration required by the University of Portsmouth's Research Degrees Operational Handbook

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