An introduction to WRAP

The University of Warwick has established a repository under the Warwick Research Archive Portal to house electronic copies of journal articles and theses written by its staff and research students. This repository will become a record of what has been written and will preserve digital copies of that written work, whilst also making it available on the web to researchers and others. More information about this is available on the Library’s Web site.

From October 2008 all University of Warwick PhD students must submit a full electronic copy of the final version of their thesis, in addition to the print copies already required. What happens to that electronic copy in WRAP is up to the student: students guidelines are available online, to help them to decide.

Access to theses

Students must submit the full electronic version, but will be asked to select one of the following options, on submission (see the Library Declaration and Deposit Agreement ):

• This thesis can be made publicly available online.
• This thesis should not be made publicly available online.
• This thesis can be made publicly available online only after the following date……………………………(please tell us the date)
• I am submitting an additional, abridged version which can be made publicly available online, whilst the whole version cannot be.
  

It is very important for students to consider what access we should allow to the electronic copy of their thesis that we will hold in WRAP. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Sensitivity or publication.
2. The thesis contains third party copyright material.

Sensitivity

University rules permit students to request an embargo on access to a thesis for a specific period. This would apply to both the print and electronic versions, and if an embargo is applied, the candidate should inform us that the electronic version of the thesis should not be made publicly available online, upon submission.

A candidate who is preparing content for publication might also prefer that the electronic version of his/her thesis ought not to be made publicly available until after the date of that publication.

Third Party Copyright Material

It is illegal to make an electronic version of a thesis available if that thesis contains third party copyright material, for which the author does not have permission from the copyright holders to include, in the same way as you would expect to have to when preparing content for publication. Further information on what constitutes third party copyright material, including information about applying for permission to include it is provided in the students' guidelines.

Supervisors might wish to encourage students to apply for permission at the earliest possible opportunity, owing to the delays that often occur when applying for permission to use copyright material. Students might need reassuring that they do not have to apply for such permission at all, nor pay for it if a rights holder requests payment.

Why does the University require electronic submission?

Students are being asked to submit electronically due to changes in information creation, storage, provision and publication. All students must submit complete copies in order that the University will have a complete record of PhD theses. We are reserving the right to change the formats of files for preservation/access needs. The other purpose of electronic copies is to showcase the work held in WRAP, making it easily accessible online and thus furthering the sharing of scholarly information.

The submission of a print version remains a requirement as this is the authoritative copy.

What about plagiarism?

Since students work will be run through Turnitin in future, it will also be held there as a record for others' work to be checked against. The electronic availability of work makes plagiarism more detectable. See the e-learning web pages for more information on plagiarism.