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Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs

 

Steps in ETD Submission

These are the steps to follow as you finish your dissertation or thesis, prepare to graduate, and submit your final, approved manuscript to ProQuest.

  1. Write your thesis or dissertation using your preferred word processing program. Use university formatting guidelines and incorporate any school-specific guidelines required by your GW school or college.
  2. Put the correct degree conferred date on the title page of your manuscript. University conferral dates are listed on the ETD Approval Deadlines page.
  3. Familiarize yourself with the material on our ETD website and at the ProQuest ETD Administrator website so you know what is involved in preparing and submitting an electronic thesis or dissertation. You may create a login and password at the ProQuest submission site anytime, but we recommend that you only submit your final, approved manuscript.
  4. Consider Copyright Compliance
    • Get permissions to use others’ works. If your dissertation includes extended quotations, published scales or tests, or other materials owned by others, seek permission from the author(s). Additional information can be found under the webpage Fair Use. You can obtain permission from an author or publisher using the publisher using the sample letter below.
    • Get permission to reuse your own previously published work in your dissertation or thesis. Inclusion of your own previous or future publications, including co-authored works, requires publisher’s permission and may impact your ETD publishing options.
    • Allow enough time for copyright permission requests! Obtaining permissions can take a while, so start the process well before you are ready to submit your final manuscript to the ProQuest ETD Administrator. For copyright guidance, make an appointment with the Library’s Copyright Compliance Officer.
  5. Defend your dissertation and make any changes required by your committee following the defense. If you are completing a Master’s Thesis, make all final changes requested by your thesis advisor.
  6. Obtain final signoffs. Show the final version of your manuscript with all changes to your dissertation director or thesis advisor. Obtain their approval of the final version and ensure you follow all school or college procedures. Both you and your director or advisor must sign the ETD Access Approval Form and submit it to your school or college’s graduate office.
  7. Doctoral Candidates Only: Complete the Certification Page (this replaces the signature page in the electronic document) and insert it in the electronic dissertation immediately after the title page. Fill in the date of your dissertation defense and the names and professorial titles of the members of your committee (Only include your dissertation director(s) and the two readers who are members of the core research proposal committee). Use the GW Online Directory for correct names and professorial titles.
  8. Take care of other preparation for graduation tasks.
    • Complete all course work required for graduation
    • Apply for graduation
    • Register for the semester in which you will graduate
    • Pay any unpaid GW bills
    • Update the address to which your diploma is to be sent on GWeb
    • Complete the the online Student Graduation Survey. Doctoral Candidates only: also register and complete the Survey of Earned Doctorates online or in hard copy and submit to your graduate studies or doctoral program office.
  9. Convert your thesis or dissertation to PDF. You must convert your manuscript to a single Adobe PDF file. Supplementary files such as data sets, oversize pages, etc. may be added as Supplementary Files in any format.
    • An easy to use converter for Microsoft Word or RTF format documents is provided on the ETD Administrator site once you log into your account, or you can upload a PDF file directly. Be aware that a considerable delay may occur in this process during periods of peak activity.
    • If your dissertation is not in Microsoft Word or RTF format, ProQuest’s ETD Administrator FAQs page provides options for converting Native, Postscript, and TeX/LaTeX files to PDF. Adobe DC is also available for download, free of charge, as part of Creative Cloud. Alternatively, Acrobat DC is available for student use in Gelman Library and computer labs on the Foggy Bottom, Mount Vernon, and Virginia Science & Technology campuses. For information on the availability of the student computer labs, please go to the Academic Support Services page describing the facilities.
  10. Carefully check the PDF file. Strange things can happen when a document is converted to PDF (unexpected formatting, missing pages, etc.), so it is important to check the PDF page by page before submitting your manuscript.
  11. Prepare for going to the submission site. Have your PDF manuscript file and any supplementary files you want to upload, your Abstract in Word or another word processing program, your thoughts about keywords for your dissertation, forwarding address information, and your credit card ready when you go to the submission site.
  12. Submit the final, approved copy of the dissertation. Go to the GW ProQuest ETD Administrator website and follow the instructions for submitting a thesis/dissertation. You will need your credit card handy for any optional ProQuest services you order online. You can start the process, logout, and login again later; your work will be saved.
  13. Submit the completed ETD Access Approval Form to your ETD School Administrator or Program Coordinator when you have uploaded your dissertation or thesis to the GW ProQuest ETD Administrator website.
  14. You will receive an email acknowledging receipt of the submitted thesis or dissertation. The document will be reviewed by the Office of Graduate Affairs’ ETD Administrator and then by your college or school’s graduate studies or doctoral program office before it is approved and transmitted to ProQuest. If something is wrong with the file(s), your School ETD Administrator (via proquest.com) will contact you at the email address you provided in your ETD Account. ProQuest’s instructions for revising and re-submitting your manuscript appear on their page ETD Administrator: FAQs.
  15. Check the status of your submission: log into your ETD Account and click on the tab labeled My ETDs. The status is displayed as a hyperlink next to the Status field. A detailed status explanation appears on the ProQuest website. You may also find information about the status of your submission by clicking on the HISTORY tab in the left-hand navigation bar in your ETD Account.
  16. You will receive an email when your submission meets all requirements and has been accepted. After receiving the confirmation, allow 6-8 weeks for ProQuest to complete its checks, convert the document to microfiche, and make the dissertation available through the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.
  17. Hard copy orders of your thesis or dissertation, if applicable, will take about 4-6 weeks after ProQuest has received your submission. Please check the ProQuest Support Site (Orders) page for updates.