Once you have finished your doctoral thesis, and following the instructions of your supervisor(s) and tutor, you can request the deposit of your thesis. To do so, go to the Sigma application, in the section Online thesis deposit. All the detailed information is also available in the Guide to apply for the deposit of the doctoral thesis..
Information to take into account before applying for the deposit online
You must complete the application for deposit before the expiry of the maximum period of stay in your doctoral studies as stated in your transcript. This is the date by which your thesis must be in VA- To be validated by the administrator.
If you have not submitted your online deposit application before 30 September, you will have to register for the next academic supervision, provided that you have not reached the end of the maximum period of stay.
The online deposit application has an expiry date. Once you start the application, the home screen will show the date on which you start the process (date of registration). You have two months from that date to complete your application. If you do not do so within that time, it will expire and you will have to start again.
- If your deposit has expired, within the same academic year, you have to make a new deposit application. This is possible as long as the maximum period of stay in the doctoral programme has not expired.
- If your deposit has expired and a new academic year has already started (the academic year ends on 30 September), you must register for the next academic year and pay the amount of this registration fee, as long as you have not exhausted the maximum period of permanence in the doctoral programme.
Check that the directors and your tutor that appear in Sigma are correct. If there are changes or the information is not correct, you should contact the Doctoral Programme Coordination Office as soon as possible. Remember that if you change one of your directors or tutor, you must sign another commitment document.
Check that you have validated the DAD, as well as the positive report on the research plan issued by the director and tutor and the positive evaluation of the academic committee of the programme on the research plan and the DAD.
If you wish to apply for the International Doctorate mention, the Industrial Doctorate mention or if your thesis is an international co-dissertation, check that you have completed the corresponding activities in the DAD. If you have any doubts about how to record your activities in the DAD, please consult the video available on the ESDUVa website.
- File of the doctoral thesis. If the thesis is a compendium, you must also attach another copy in which you will have replaced the scientific articles that make up your doctoral thesis with the DOI corresponding to each of them.
- Report from the thesis supervisor to validate the application for deposit.
- Scientific contribution that accredits the quality of the thesis (ordinary thesis).
- Justification of the contribution presented to accredit the quality of the thesis (ordinary thesis).
- List of articles for the presentation of the thesis by compendium of publications (thesis by compendium).
- If the contribution submitted has co-authors, waiver document for non-doctoral co-authors (as many documents as co-authors, without grouping them together, as this invalidates the electronic signature).
In addition, you may need:
- Details of the members of the examining board and external experts. This information can be entered by the PhD student, the supervisor or the Academic Committee.
- Reasoned request for embargo.
Important. The names of the files must not contain accents or special characters.
The thesis file must be in pdf format and use the EsDUVa cover page model (see doctoral thesis forms). If the thesis is a compendium, you must prepare another copy in which you will have replaced the scientific articles that make up your doctoral thesis with the DOI corresponding to each of them. This copy is the one that will be published openly in the Document Repository of the University of Valladolid.
Consult the Procedure on authorisation, defence and publication of doctoral theses with limitations on the dissemination of the results (Published on the electronic bulletin board on 23/05/2022).
Once the doctoral thesis has been approved, the University will take care of its archiving in open electronic format in an institutional repository UVaDOC. For more information https://uvadoc.uva.es/
If the defence of your thesis is to be virtual, i.e. when all the participants (the examining board and the PhD student) attend by videoconference, authorisation from the Doctoral Theses Committee is required. You must include a reasoned request to the president of the Doctoral Thesis Committee, who may accept or reject the request.
It is recommended that before submitting your thesis, you log in to Turnitin to make a similarity assessment of your thesis file. Once you have obtained the Turnitin report (which includes the percentage of similarities and the shaded text of the thesis), you can incorporate it as additional documentation at the time of making the online deposit and a document stating the reasons for the similarities detected, if there are any.
Online thesis deposit application
All the detailed information is also available in the Guide to applying for the deposit of the doctoral thesis.
The start screen shows the date on which you start the process (date of registration). You have two months from that date to complete your application. If you do not do so within this period, it will expire and you will have to start again. Your application must be completed before the deposit authorisation deadline.
Check your details and modify and/or complete those that are necessary, so that they are shown exactly as they appear on your DNI/Passport, without abbreviations and correctly accented.
Check that the information about your thesis in your file (title, lines of research, language, tutor, supervisor, mentions or co-supervision) is correct.
Indicate if your thesis is a compendium of publications.
If your supervisor(s) have indicated this and have provided you with all the necessary information in advance, you can include the details of the members of the examining board and the external experts who will assess your thesis. In any case, it is the Academic Committee of the PhD Programme who finally decides who the external experts will be and who makes the proposal for the examining board.
All doctoral theses defended at UVa must be accessible in the UVaDOC repository. In case you wish to request an embargo period or in the case of theses subject to confidentiality, you will have to indicate for how long and you must upload a reasoned request.
In these screens you will have to attach the documents required for the deposit indicated above. Remember that if your thesis is a compendium you must attach a copy publishable in UVaDOC (replacing the scientific articles by the corresponding DOI). The name of all the files you upload to the application must not contain accents or strange characters.
If you have made a mistake in the documents you have attached and you have already saved it, you can either withdraw the application or inform your director so that he/she can backtrack your application and you can change the file before the deposit reaches the validation of the Academic Committee.
On this screen you can submit your application or withdraw it. Before submitting the application you can look through all the tabs and check the documentation to make sure you have not forgotten anything. If anything is missing, the application will notify you so that you can correct it.
Once confirmed, your application goes from the status SI-Incomplete Application to VA- To be validated by the administrator. From that moment on, your application will have administrative effects.
Once the ESDUVA administration staff have checked the formal requirements, your application will be sent to the thesis supervisor(s) (status DI-A validated by the supervisor) and to the tutor (status TU-A validated by the tutor) so that they can validate the application and incorporate the appropriate information.
If the supervisor(s) or tutor are not satisfied with part of your application for deposit or with the documentation that is incorporated, they may return the application for you to correct it.
It is possible that your application has passed the validation and report of the supervisor(s) and tutor and, when it reaches the Academic Committee of the doctoral programme (CO-A status validated by the coordinator), it will be returned to you to correct some section.
Finally, the deposited thesis will go to the Doctoral School, where the Doctoral Thesis Committee (status ED-A validated by the EsdUVa) will examine the documentation received, check that the proposed examining board meets the quality requirements established in these regulations and, where appropriate, the observations submitted during the public exhibition period.