The regulations in this section cover the submission and circulation of a research degree dissertation (thesis) for examination.
Guidance on how to submit for PGR students
18.1. PGR students work towards an intended submission date (the day they plan to submit), which must be on or before their final submission deadline (the last day that they are permitted to submit).
18.2. PGR students and their supervisors must agree on an intended submission date. At least six months before this intended submission date, students must prepare a detailed timetable of their final submission preparations in consultation with their supervisors.
18.3. PGR students must submit on or before their final submission deadline. A student who does not submit by their deadline will be deemed to have withdrawn because they will have run out of time. A dissertation submitted late will not be examined.
18.4. The final submission deadline is the maximum period of study for the relevant degree plus any approved periods of suspension or extension.
18.5. If a PGR student’s final submission deadline is on a weekend, a bank holiday or a University closure day, the student can submit on the next working day. This is so that there are staff available to assist with the submission if there are any technical difficulties.
18.6. PGR students who experience unforeseen circumstances near their final submission deadline that impact on their ability to submit can request an emergency extension from the Faculty PGR Director.
18.7. The earliest a doctoral student can submit without special permission is three months (pro-rata for part-time students) before the end of the minimum period of study.
18.8. The earliest a research master’s student can submit without special permission is one month (pro-rata for part-time students) before the end of the minimum period of study.
18.9. PGR students can request special permission to submit earlier from the Faculty PGR Director.
18.10. The Faculty PGR Director must decide whether an early submission is appropriate and must communicate their decision to the student and to the Academic Quality and Policy Office (pgr-exams@bristol.ac.uk).
18.11. The Academic Quality and Policy Office will not accept an early submission for examination unless the Faculty PGR Director has approved a request from the student.
18.12. A PGR student who is permitted to submit early must still pay their tuition fees. Early submission does not reduce the fee.
18.13. PGR students must submit two electronic copies of their dissertation.
18.13.1. A copy for examination must be emailed to the Academic Quality and Policy Office (pgr-exams@bristol.ac.uk). This counts as the formal submission and must be sent on or before the student's final submission deadline.
18.13.2. A copy must be uploaded to Turnitin for a plagiarism review. This counts as a pre-examination requirement.
In exceptional cases, the Turnitin upload can be replaced by an alternative plagiarism review. More information on plagiarism reviews is in the academic integrity and research degrees section.
18.14. The text in the examination and Turnitin copies must be identical. PGR students can remove images and other non-textual aspects, or reduce the quality of the images, from the Turnitin copy to meet the file size limit if necessary.
18.15. PGR students can submit creative and other works for examination in physical form alongside an electronic file containing the written element of their dissertation.
18.16. PGR students cannot alter their dissertation after they have submitted except where they are required to do so because their work hs been found to contain minor referencing problems, plagiarism and/or other academic misconduct, or where there are technical and/or presentational issues with the submitted file.
18.17. If a PGR student realises that there are technical and/or presentational issues in the submitted file, they can notify the Academic Quality and Policy Office (pgr-exams@bristol.ac.uk) of the problem. A student can only replace their dissertation with an altered version if the following conditions are met:
18.17.1. The changes are only technical and/or presentational, such as a corrupt file, a contents table that has not populated correctly or problems with the formatting. It is permissible to include a small amount of material that was inadvertently missed from the original file if this material has not been altered since the original submission.
18.17.2. The changes do not alter or add to text or data in the main body of the dissertation unless the changes relate to a small amount of material that was inadvertently missed from the file.
18.17.3. The dissertation has not yet been circulated to examiners.
18.17.4. The student provides a statement to the Academic Quality and Policy Office describing the changes made to the dissertation. If the changes include material that had been inadvertently missed from the file, the statement must confirm that this information has not been revised since the original submission.
18.17.5. The Academic Quality and Policy Office accepts that only permitted changes have been made.
18.18. As changes to the submitted file will not usually alter text in the main body of the dissertation, the replaced file will normally only relate to the examination copy and not to the Turnitin copy. If the changes include the addition of text that had been inadvertently missed from the file, the updated version must be uploaded to Turnitin for a new plagiarism review.
18.19. PGR students and their supervisors must not send the dissertation to examiners. Only the Academic Quality and Policy Office can circulate the dissertation or give consent for its circulation by another route.
18.20. The Academic Quality and Policy Office will circulate the dissertation to approved examiners if the dissertation was submitted on time and when the plagiarism review has been successfully completed.
18.21. An independent chair, if appointed, is not expected to read the dissertation in preparation for the oral examination, but they can request an electronic copy from the Academic Quality and Policy Office if this will assist them in undertaking their role.
