Reminder: Students - submit your thesis electronically to your department or program.

Please pay close attention to the following sections of the Specifications for Thesis Preparation:

• Formatting
• Joint Thesis
• Copyright (and review the copyright and licensing section below)
• Permission to Reuse or Republish a Thesis
• Changes to a Thesis After Submission

Here are some sample title pages to assist you with formatting:

• PhD thesis with a CC license
• Multiple authors thesis
• Dual degree with extra committee members

You can also use the official MIT Thesis Template in Overleaf, which is already formatted for the Thesis Specifications.

Submit the following:

• A PDF/A-1 of your final thesis document (without signatures)
• Signature page (if required by your department; your department will provide specific guidance)
• Source files (not required)
   

File naming

Files must be named according to this scheme: authorLastName-kerberos ID-degree-dept-year-type_other.ext

• Thesis PDF: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2024-thesis.pdf
• Signature Page: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2024-sig.pdf

Please review the Holds section of the Thesis Specifications. The Office of Graduate Education oversees the policies and procedures for requesting a temporary publication hold of your thesis. They offer a publication request form.

Note: Request for temporary holds must be submitted prior to graduation.

To contact OGE and the Vice Chancellor's office, email ovc-thesis-holds@mit.edu
To contact the Technology and Licensing Office, email tlo@mit.edu

The Libraries' Thesis Form must be completed by the day of graduation.

The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis. You will be asked to confirm or provide:

• Your name as it appears on your thesis (Family Name, Given Name Middle Name)
• Thesis title
• Department or Program
• Degree(s)
• Abstract
• Supervisor(s)
• Copyright (see the Copyright and Licensing section below)
• ORCID iD

You may, optionally, choose to apply a Creative Commons License to your thesis. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. For more information about CC, see Creative Commons About page.

Before you apply a CC license or CC0 (public domain), to your work, please note that the licenses cannot be revoked. This means, once you apply a CC license to your material, anyone who receives it may rely on that license for as long as the material is protected by copyright, even if you later stop distributing it.

• To determine which CC license is right for you, use the CC license chooser
• Note: You do not need to apply a CC license to your work. If you choose not to have a CC license, you should write "All rights reserved." next to your copyright.
   

Formatting Your Copyright Statement

• Following the instructions in the thesis specifications under How To Copyright your Thesis.
• If using a CC license, replace "All Rights Reserved" with your chosen CC license (CC-BY-NC 4.0).
• Remember to also include the following statement below your ©: "The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license."

What Copyright information to submit to the Libraries

• You will choose from the following Copyright options:
  • I hold copyright (if you choose this option you will have the option of also choosing a CC license)
  • I hold copyright and give it up to the public domain (this means that your thesis will be released openly under CC0 "No Rights Reserved" and opts out of copyright and database protection. This may not be revoked.)
  • This is a work of the US government
  • Another person or organization owns copyright
     

For more information

Review the Copyright section of the Thesis Specifications.

What is ORCID?

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a method of linking research-related items, such as articles as datasets, to these identifiers.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. The goal is to support the creation of a permanent, clear, and unambiguous record of scholarly communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and contributors.
 

Register for an ORCID ID

This process also associates your ORCID with your MIT profile. Once you have the ID, you can build your profile through the "import works" button. This will associate your papers, data sets, and other research output with your ID. You can then include the ID as a link on your CV or web page. You can also create an ORCID account without linking it to your MIT profile.

See our ORCID FAQ for more information.

Overview

All theses are required to be submitted to the Libraries' for publication on DSpace@MIT. ProQuest submission is optional.

If you want your thesis available in ProQuest's Dissertation Database, you can submit your thesis directly to ProQuest. Be sure to review ProQuest's Instructions and FAQ before submitting. To submit your thesis, go to the direct submission page and create an account. MIT no longer has a partnership with ProQuest, so you will not find MIT on the list of schools. Select "Other" or "I did not find my school".
Note: ProQuest requires proof of degree, so you cannot complete your submission until after graduation.
 

Access and payment options

ProQuest offers two publication routes. For detailed information, see ProQuest's publishing guide.

• Traditional option
  • You pay no fees
  • Your thesis is available only to ProQuest's paid subscribers
  • You can receive a royalties percentage, if your thesis generates enough sales
• Open Access option
  • You pay $95 to ProQuest
  • Your thesis is available to anyone
  • You cannot receive any royalties

Have questions?

Contact us at mit-theses@mit.edu