Theses

This section is for researchers who would like to find and read theses from Oxford Brookes or other universities.

Oxford Brookes theses

A copy of every Oxford Brookes PhD and MPhil thesis is deposited with the Library in print format (also known as a 'hardcopy'), online format (also known as 'electronic' theses or eTheses), or in both print and online formats. Oxford Brookes theses submitted from 2021 onwards are only available from the Library in online (or 'electronic') format.

To find print and online Oxford Brookes theses you can search LibrarySearch by author, title, keyword, while for only the online theses you can browse or search our repository RADAR.

Locating theses from other institutions

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses provides access to multi-disciplinary dissertations and theses from around the world, offering over 5 million citations and 3 million full-text works from thousands of universities.
• EBSCO Open Dissertations: enables you to search for thousands of open access dissertations
• British Library’s EThOS project: a theses digitisation project. You can search across 500,000+ theses for free and download / order full text where available. You will need to register and log in if you want to download a thesis or to order digitisation of a thesis.
• CORE: CORE (COnnecting REpositories) is an aggregation of open access content from UK and worldwide repositories and open access journals. It includes access to theses.
• DART-Europe: provides details of European theses with access to full text where available.
• National Library of Australia Trove Service: a free repository of Australian material, including almost a million Australian theses.
• Global Electronic Theses and Dissertation Search: a database of open-access electronic theses and dissertations worldwide from the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.

This section is for postgraduate researcher students who will be submitting an online PhD thesis as part of their doctorate degree.

What is 'third party content'?

Many theses will include text, images, or other materials that were originally created by other people - this is known as 'third party content'. Material that might be in your thesis and which could be considered third party content includes:

• Lengthy quotations and extracts from publications such as books or journals even if you have attributed them correctly.
• Patented material
• Models/diagrams copied as found from books, even if attributed correctly
• Maps, such as Ordinance Survey photocopies, or taken from books, even if attributed correctly
• Photocopies/scans of paintings and other artworks, or manuscripts and historical documents.

Sometimes students believe they can reproduce third party material in their thesis if they provide a reference to the original - but this is not the case. See the next section for more details.

Using third party content in your online thesis

Third part content is the intellectual property of other people, which means you may need the permission of the copyright holders before including the material in the version of your thesis that will be publicly available on the institutional repository of Oxford Brookes. Here are some conditions under which you can use third party content in your online thesis:

1. The third party content has been given a licence (e.g. a Creative Commons licence) which allows you to use the material in your online thesis without contacting the copyright holder.
2. A formal legal exception to copyright law means you can include the third party content in your online thesis without the permission of the copyright holder.
   
3. The work is 'out of copyright', meaning that the duration of copyright protection has expired.

4. You have contacted the copyright owner of the third party material and they have given you permission to include the material in your online thesis. To request permission first establish who the copyright holders are (there may be more than one), try to contact them (here is a template letter that you can adapt), and keep records of all communications (separately from your Oxford Brookes email).

If none of the above conditions apply then you must remove the third party content from your the version of your thesis that will be publicly available before you upload it to RADAR. This can be done individually or in bulk:

• Individually: remove each item of third party content that you do not have permission to use in your online thesis but leave a similar amount of blank space so that the pagination is unchanged.
• In bulk: when writing your thesis put all the third party content that you do not have permission to use in the publicly available version of your thesis within a single section of your thesis (e.g. an appendix), then remove that particular section before uploading that version of the thesis to RADAR. For example, Thompson's thesis The furrowed face originally had an Illustrations section (see the Contents List) that is not actually included in this online version of the thesis (though the bibliographic details of the sources are included in the List of Illustrations).

Whichever way you remove the third party content, please remember these two key points:

1. Remember to include the bibliographic details of all the third party content in the main body of the text and/or in a separate section so that the readers of your online thesis can easily find the original sources for themselves. Ideally this will also include an electronic hyperlink to each resource (preferably a persistent link, e.g. a DOI).
2. For any third party content that you do have permission to use in your online thesis, ensure you state this clearly directly underneath the third party content (e.g. 'Used with permission of the author / publisher /photographer / author /creator' or 'Used under the terms of the licence...', etc.).

Sources of information relating to using third party content:

• General guidance on using third party content by the Intellectual Property Office of the UK Government
• Duration of copyright by Copyright User
• Quotation and copyright by Copyright User
• Using images by Oxford Brookes as part of a Moodle course called 'Copyright and Publication'
• Digital images, photographs, and the internet by the Intellectual Property Office of the UK Government
• Creative Commons licences are often used by publishers and authors to state how online materials can be reused by other people

Personal data and issues of confidentiality

Personal data and confidentiality are usually separate issues from copyright and third party content, but the involvement of human participants in your research (or the inclusion of material that identifies individuals in your thesis) also requires special consideration when submitting the electronic version of your thesis.

Sources of information on personal data:

• Data protection and privacy: considerations for research by Oxford Brookes
• Guidelines for informed consent by Oxford Brookes
• GDPR and Research – An Overview for Researchers (PDF) by UK Research and Innovation