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Thesis Preparation: Your thesis in UL's Research Repository

The library helps students to refine their research topic, source material for a thesis and provides tools to manage your bibliography. Consult the library's thesis writing books as you prepare to work on your thesis.

Your Thesis in ULIR

All University of Limerick Research Theses as well as selected Taught Masters are deposited in the University of Limerick’s Research Repository.

Benefits

  • The thesis is available electronically as quickly as possible benefitting the student and University in terms of discoverability, impact and reputation
  • All items in the UL Research Repository are indexed by Google Scholar making them discoverable and citable
  • It provides a permanent and citable web link for your thesis.

Publishing your thesis

Students retain copyright for their theses and are free to publish or distribute their thesis elsewhere. Since an e-thesis is disseminated widely via the internet, it could be considered a publication.  The United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCORR) maintains a list here of monograph publishers' policies with respect to open access theses and prior publication.

If you have identified a publisher then it is best practice to contact them about their policies around Open Access theses. If your publisher considers the e-thesis a prior publication then you should request an embargo on your e-thesis.

Requesting an embargo

While the UL Research Repository is an open access repository for scientific and scholarly publications in digital form, it should be noted that access to items deposited in UL's Research Repository can be restricted or embargoed if required. For an embargo to be applied the author must have applied for and received an embargo on their thesis. Instructions on how to apply for an embargo are on the Graduate and Professional Studies.

Depositing your thesis with the library

All Research Masters and Ph.D. thesis are passed to the library by the Graduate School following the graduations. Where there is no embargo, theses are made available in hardcopy for consultation in the library, and electronically on our open access Research Repository. Full details on how to submit your thesis are available from the Graduate School (https://www.ul.ie/gps/research-thesis-submission). Contact the UL Research Repository administration (ir@ul.ie) for information on depositing the electronic version of your thesis.