Submitting Your Thesis or Dissertation

The Graduate School uses the Clemson OPEN ETD portal for thesis and dissertation submissions for the format review process as well as for electronic publishing and archiving of your work. Ultimately, your work will be available through the University’s Clemson OPEN repository.

Do not send your manuscript file directly to the Graduate School’s manuscript reviewer.

When you have defended and finalized your thesis or dissertation manuscript and are ready for review, use the Clemson Libraries’ Clemson OPEN ETD upload portal. Our publishing service is provided by bepress and Digital Commons. This is a free service; there are no fees required to upload, publish and archive your thesis or dissertation.

On the Clemson OPEN portal, look for the buttons that read “Submit Your Thesis” and “Submit Your Dissertation.” While the two academic manuscript terms are used interchangeably at many institutions, Clemson University prefers the term “thesis” for master’s/specialists’ manuscripts and “dissertation” for doctoral manuscripts.

Some programs still require that you order a printed, bound copy of your ETD for the departmental archive. Manuscript Review cannot assist you with bound copy orders.

You can request an embargo, or delay of publication, for certain circumstances like pursuing a patent or meeting the terms of a publishing agreement with a research journal.

You can find more details including copyright information, how to include special characters in metadata and when and how to expect results in our PDF Reference, Step 4: Submit Your Manuscript for Format Review and Publishing (PDF).