Archival lodgement of HDR submission

Once you receive your examination outcome you should schedule a meeting with your supervisory team to review the examiners’ reports and discuss their feedback. You should decide in consultation with the supervisory team how you will address any amendments requested by the examiners.

You will formalise your amendments by writing a response to the examiners. You must detail how the amendments were made, or write a reasoned justification as to why you do not consider certain amendment to be necessary.

The recommended format for this response is as a table with columns that list the examiners’ comments, your response, and the page reference. While the presentation of this document is ultimately at your discretion, ensure you approach this document from an academic perspective and do not include your personal circumstances.

The final archival version of the submission must not contain material which infringes upon privacy. This information, which includes sensitive and/or health information and photographs, is protected by law and requires consent for collection, use, and publication. You must obtain written consent to use this type of information.

Please check that your archival submission does not contain information deemed unsuitable for public availability. This information includes:

handwritten or electronic signatures by the author or anyone else
home addresses and/or personal contact details such as mobile phone numbers
RMIT University student numbers and
the real names of survey respondents or case study subjects.
copyright permission correspondence

It is your responsibility to keep a confidential record of the copyright agreement between yourself and the copyright owner.

You must obtain author consent for using social media posts in your open access thesis. If consent is not possible, omit handles and avatars, except for your own posts.

Please refer to your Human Research Ethics Committee approval or RMIT privacy resources for detailed information regarding privacy requirements.

The RMIT Research Repository is open to the public, so it is important that you check your submission for any material that is subject to copyright, such as images, diagrams, maps and other previously published material.

You may need to obtain written permission from the copyright owners to include any copyrighted material in your submission. Please do not include the copyright permission communication in your thesis. It is your responsibility to keep a confidential record of the copyright agreement between yourself and the copyright owner.

For more information, contact the University’s Copyright Management Service via copyright@rmit.edu.au

You can also get advice from the Library if you have any questions regarding privacy or copyrighted material.

If you require an extension to lodge your archival submission due to pending copyright permissions, please contact the examinations team.

If your submission includes material that contains images, voices or names of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in either the body of your thesis or associated project files, it may be appropriate to add a cultural sensitivity statement. Your thesis and associated project files may consist of photographs, video and/or audio recordings, or printed material. These statements are most likely to be viewed when placed at the beginning of your thesis and project files. Research Repository staff will also add a cultural sensitivity statement to the 'Comments' field in the Research Repository record created for your thesis.

An example of a statement for you to use is below.

Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this thesis and associated files may contain the images, voices or names of people who have passed away.

Upon completion of examination, it is expected that HDR archival submissions are made available for public access via the online Research Repository. However, in certain circumstances, such as if a patent applies or the submission contains commercially sensitive material, an application may be made for the work to be kept from public access for a set period of time. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication and the publisher mandates that your thesis must not appear in the open access repository, you may apply for an embargo.

There are strict rules that determine whether a submission qualifies for an embargo. For further information please refer to sections 87 - 94 of the HDR Submission and Examination Procedure. For further details, contact the examinations team.

Candidates who require additional time to lodge their archival submission can apply for an extension of time. Please contact the examinations team for further information.

Archival submissions are lodged via the submission/lodgement tab of the Candidate Centre, which can be found in Enrolment Online.

To be able to lodge your final submission via the Candidate Centre, your Primary Supervisor and the Delegated Authority for your School will need to have reviewed your amendments and given their approval within the system.

To successfully lodge your archival you will need to upload as two separate PDF files:

your final thesis/dissertation and
a response to the examiners/details of any amendments made.

Please note that any submission that does not comply with the formatting standards will be returned for changes. For details on the required formatting of your submission, please refer to Submitting for examination.

For more information about lodging your final submission, please contact the examinations team.

You will receive a notification from the SGR Examinations Office once your record has been received and is ready to be considered by the Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research Training and Development, SGR for completion approval. This process takes approximately five working days, and once finalised, you will receive another email advising you of your course completion.

Your archival will be made available to the public via the Research Repository. The Research Repository is the central location for all RMIT University Higher Degree by Research digital submissions, and provides your research with a world-wide audience. Please refer to the Library’s website for information on how to manage and measure your research impact.

If an application for an embargo has been approved, the archival will be held from open access until the date of release.

Archival lodgement of HDR submission