What you need to know about theses and reposiTUm

In Austria, all theses (diploma theses, master theses or doctoral theses) must by law be published (Universitätsgesetz 2002). To fulfil this obligation, a printed copy of your thesis is made available at TU Wien Bibliothek. With doctoral theses, an additional printed copy is held at the Austrian National Library.

In addition to the printed copy, submitting an electronic version of all theses has been mandatory at TU Wien since 01 September 2013. The approved final version of the thesis is uploaded in TISS by the thesis supervisor. From 01 October 2022, publishing the electronic version via reposiTUm, opens an external URL in a new window, TU Wien's open access platform, is mandatory for all theses. Publication on reposiTUm guarantees that your thesis remains accessible in the long term, that a persistent identifier is created for the thesis, and that the full text can be found on CatalogPlus and viewed from anywhere in the world. This makes your research findable and citable - in short, visible.

Before publishing the electronic version on reposiTUm, opens an external URL in a new window, please remove personal data, in particular your address and telephone number, from the manuscript.

Requesting an embargo period for your thesis

During the submission process, you can request an embargo period for your thesis for economic or legal reasons (§ 86 Universitätsgesetz 2002). This means that your thesis is made accessible at a later date. The request must be made to the dean of studies during the submission of the thesis and must be approved by the dean of studies. Once the embargo period is approved, neither the printed version nor the electronic version of the thesis can be read or used (including the abstract). The maximum embargo period is five years; the embargo can be lifted at any time at your request.

Please note that you need to enter the embargo in the TISS thesis form, and upload the embargo request. This is important because entering all information on the embargo in TISS is the only way to make sure TU Wien Bibliothek will know about the embargo when your thesis PDF is sent on to us.

In CatalogPlus, the end date of the embargo period is visible in the "Description" field of the item in the GetIt area.

Cumulative doctoral theses

A cumulative doctoral thesis consists largely of journal articles. If you want to choose this type, you need to have it approved by the dean of studies when submitting the thesis topic. The Directive of the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs concerning the writing of theses by publication at TU Wien, opens an external URL in a new window (German-language version, opens an external URL in a new window) is binding.

With a cumulative thesis, you need to take care that rights of the journal articles' publishers are not infringed. If you have retained the exploitation rights, a secondary publication will be possible. This applies particularly to open access publications under a Creative Commons license, opens an external URL in a new window.

Otherwise you will need to obtain your publisher's permission. Many publishers have exceptions for theses, but there may be restrictions or different regulations for the print and online version. It is important to always cite the published version correctly (citing the DOI and URL).

Read more on open access on our pages on publishing.

Making your PDF file barrier-free

Make sure your PDF file is barrier-free, so that everyone can access your scientific work without restrictions. The submitted thesis PDF should conform to the PDF/UA standard, as required by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and PDFs created from original LaTeX files should conform to PDF/A-2u.

Use the online tool Asura, opens an external URL in a new window to test your PDF file for accessibility, merge several parts into a single file and optimise it. The tool is available on the TU Wien campus, or via a TU Wien VPN connection.

If you have any questions on accessibility or require assistance, contact us, opens in new window.