Submitting your thesis for examination

You are required to submit your PGR thesis to College on, or before, the Maximum End Date of your degree programme; this is your absolute deadline for submission and can be found via your MyEd Portal / student record. 

You may submit your thesis to the College Office up to 3 months before the end of your Prescribed Period of Study.  If you wish to submit earlier than 3 months you should discuss this with your supervisors.  An Early Submission request must be made to the College Office and they must grant approval.  It is unlikely at an early submission request will be approved without the agreement of your Principle Supervisor. If you plan to submit early then you will need to submit the below form to college as early as possible. 

Early Submission Approval (54.6 KB Word)

If you think you will need longer to complete your thesis and will not be able to submit by your current programme max end date, you must contact your supervisor and the Informatics Graduate School immediately.  You will need to submit a formal request for a programme extension to the IGS, so that College can action an extension to your programme max end date and your thesis  submission deadline.  

Extension to your deadline

You will be charged continuation fees for PGR programme extensions, which is calculated per month. Please refer to the UoE PGR tuition fee webpages for the most up to date information.

PGR Tuition fee

If you are sponsored on a student visa, please be aware that you may also need an extension to your visa; you should contact the UoE Student Immigration Service for information. 

Student Immigration Service

Thesis submission for examination is now electronic only; all PGR theses are submitted to the College PGR Office (not the IGS office). The University's DataSync file hosting service is the preferred method for submission of the electronic version.

Please also read the above information on this page when submitting electronically though the submission of soft bound copies is currently not required. 

DataSync – uploading the PDF copy of your thesis for examination

1.         Go to: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/computing/desktop-personal/datasync and follow the instructions under ‘Getting Started’ to activate your DataSync account.

Note: your Active Directory username and password are your MyEd login details.

2.         Upload your thesis as a PDF file by clicking on the + button and then ‘upload’.

3.         Click on the ‘share’ symbol next to the file and a panel will appear on the right hand side. Select the ‘sharing’ tab and then the ‘public links’ tab. Select ‘create public link’.

4.         Password protect the link (please use a unique password for this purpose).

5.         Set an expiry date on the file of one year.

6.         Add pgrcse@ed.ac.uk to the ‘send link via email’ box. In the ‘add message’ text box, add your name and student number so we can identify your thesis and the password to the link.

7.         Click ‘share’.

For any problems using DataSync, please contact the IS Helpdesk on +44(0)131 651 5151 or use their online enquiry form.

If the Nomination of Examiners process has successfully concluded, the College Office will be able to send your thesis to your examiners within 5 working days.  If the examiners have not been appointed yet, there may be some delay in sending your thesis to the examiners. 

Nomination of examiners

Your viva must not be organised until your examiners have officially received a copy of your thesis and the examination paperwork from the College Office.  This benefits you as it gives the examiners suitable time to read and preliminarily examine your thesis before the viva; examiners must complete a report form before your viva. 

Your internal examiner is responsible for organising the logistics of your viva (e.g. contacting all necessary parties, confirming a date / time / location etc).  In many instances, the internal examiner will ask the Level Admin team to assist with room bookings and examiners travel/accommodation arrangements.   

Please read the Examination Process page for more information.

Examination process

Examiners will normally be expected to read the thesis within three months of receiving it; but candidates should allow for examiners' other commitments. If, because of visa restrictions, overseas candidates must return home promptly at the end of their period in Edinburgh, they and their supervisors must ensure that an allowance is made for this time when submitting the thesis.

The University takes plagiarism very seriously and is committed to ensuring that so far as possible it is detected and dealt with appropriately.

Plagiarism is the act of including in one’s work the work of another person without providing adequate acknowledgement of having done so, either deliberately or unintentionally. At whatever stage of a student’s course, whether discovered before or after graduation, plagiarism will be investigated and dealt with.

• Acknowledged all the sources they have used whether they be books, journal articles, any other printed material, or the internet (note that the references to sources on the internet should be as detailed as those for journal citations, including author, title, full url/web address, and the date you accessed that url)
• Used normal academic conventions such as quotations or indentations to identify direct quotations from others' work
• Acknowledged the sources if they have summarised or paraphrased someone's work
• Acknowledged any help they have received in writing their thesis, or gathering data for it, whether this be in an acknowledgement list or at the appropriate points in the thesis. This might include assistance with techniques, external collaborations, provision of substantial materials etc.
• Acknowledged their colleagues where information used in their thesis has been gathered in conjunction with other workers (such as team-working in laboratories).
• Students must consult with their supervisors on any issues relating to acknowledging the ideas or work of other people, and ask their supervisors to be mindful of their plagiarism concerns when they are reading thesis drafts.

We strongly recommend you read the following Guidance document:

Plagiarism guidance