Electronic Deposit Gateway

Please be sure to review all the information on this page carefully before clicking any links.

Now that you have successfully defended your dissertation, your last remaining academic requirement is to complete the dissertation deposit.

TEACHERS COLLEGE PHD STUDENTS ONLY:

  • When uploading your dissertation to the Electronic Deposit Gateway, you must select “Columbia University” as the institution. (“Teachers College, Columbia University” is for EdD students only.)
  • If you deposit after the February deadline for a fall defense; or if you deposit after the October deadline for a spring or summer defense, you are responsible for an additional Dissertation Advisement Fee. Please contact the TC Office of Doctoral Studies for more information.

FOR ALL PHD STUDENTS:

FORMAT

The deposit goes more smoothly if your dissertation is formatted correctly. Please consult the Formatting Guidelines. (The Word and LaTeX templates meet the formatting standards.) In all cases, we recommend uploading your file several days before the deposit deadline. 

PROCESSING TIME

GSAS must review and certify every dissertation submitted; any dissertations without proper formatting or other irregularities are flagged and returned with feedback.

It takes three business days for GSAS to issue a certification letter for all deposits made within the week before any deadline. Take this extra time into account  

To plan to receive your degree in a particular degree conferral month (October, February, or May), please refer to the Dates and Deadlines page. For detailed information on deadlines to complete revisions to the dissertation, please see the Defense and Evaluation webpage.

STEPS TO DEPOSIT YOUR DISSERTATION ELECTRONICALLY

There are four tasks necessary to complete the dissertation deposit in the Electronic Deposit Gateway. They may be completed in any order, but must be complete before the deposit deadline for the doctoral degree to be conferred on time. 

Please do not leave any of these tasks of this electronic deposit process until the deposit deadline. Your dissertation deposit may not be completed on time, and you will not receive your degree in that conferral cycle. 

Log in to the GSAS deposit application (link below) using your UNI and password. This application collects critical information for your diploma and your certification letters. The application fee is non-refundable, with the exception of errors that may arise during payment processing.

While completing the GSAS deposit application, please note the following:

  • Application fields are case-sensitive.
  • The first and last name fields should reflect the student’s legal first and last name.
  • The UNI field should reflect the student’s Columbia University UNI only and not the entire Columbia University email address.
     

We strongly recommend that you submit your credit card payment via personal computer, as transactions submitted via smartphone and tablet devices are prone to technical errors.

Click here to access the deposit application.

After completing the deposit application click here to submit your payment. 

The Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) is an ongoing survey sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Education, National Endowment for the Humanities, US Department of Agriculture, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. GSAS requires completion of this survey as part of the dissertation deposit.

Please note the following points before accessing the SED website. Failure to follow these steps may delay processing of your deposit. To view a copy of the Survey of Earned Doctorates questions online, click here. For questions about how to answer A7 and/or A17, please contact the GSAS Financial Aid Office at [email protected].

When registering for the SED site:

  • For institution, choose: Columbia University
  • Students from TC should choose: Teachers College-Columbia Univ.
  • Students from TC must include [email protected] as one of the secondary notification email addresses at the end of the survey. If you omit this, we will not receive a confirmation, and your deposit will be delayed.
     

If you have read and understood the information above, click here to access the Survey of Earned Doctorates.

In this step, you will upload a digital copy of your dissertation. Your file will be sent to both GSAS and Academic Commons (Columbia’s online research repository). If you are a Law School student (JSD program), your dissertation will also be added to the Law Library catalog.

Important: Please do not upload your dissertation directly to the Academic Commons website. When you follow the steps below, your dissertation will automatically be submitted to both GSAS and Academic Commons.

You must upload your dissertation as a PDF file. If you have not already created a PDF or are unable to do so, a PDF Conversion Tool is available during the upload process. You will also need a copy of your abstract to copy-and-paste into a text box.

Before uploading your dissertation to the Electronic Deposit Gateway, take a moment to carefully review your document thoroughly. If any formatting revisions are necessary, the Dissertation Office will contact you to address these changes.

If you have included images, tables, and/or figures in the dissertation, please ensure that you have obtained copyright permissions for those materials. If you have been denied permission or have not received approval for fair use, you are not authorized to include previously published materials in the dissertation. For more information, please refer to the Copyright Law and Dissertation Preparation Guide.

Public Accessibility and Dissertation Embargoes

By default, your dissertation will be made publicly available online in an open-access repository. If you have questions or concerns about the digital availability of your dissertation, please click here for frequently asked questions on this topic.

Dissertation Embargo

If you choose, you may place a one-, two-, or five-year embargo on your dissertation. The option to request an embargo will be offered to you in the upload process under the section "Institutional Repository (IR) Publishing Options."

If you indicate your request for an embargo in this section, your dissertation will be embargoed in Academic Commons. Until the end of the embargo period, the full text of any embargoed dissertation will not be released to the public under any circumstances by GSAS or Academic Commons.

Extending an Embargo

Under compelling circumstances, GSAS may authorize an embargo to be extended beyond the period initially requested. Alumni who wish to extend their embargo should take the following step:

Send an email to [email protected] one month before the scheduled end of the embargo, briefly outlining the circumstances and explaining the reasons for the extension. The Office of the Dean will review the request, and if approved, the embargo will be extended for either one or two additional years within Academic Commons.

Search Engine Access

All dissertations in Academic Commons are indexed by major search engines.

Copyright Registration

Please note that under copyright law, you automatically hold a copyright on your work. We also require that you include a copyright page in your dissertation. Columbia Library provides extensive information about copyright issues; of particular interest is this page, which explains your rights as the author of a dissertation or of any other original work.

Dissertations that include coauthored text or materials must be registered directly with the US Copyright Office via a Standard Application.

Uploading Your Dissertation

Before beginning the upload process, please note the following, failure to do so may delay processing of your deposit.

    On the page marked "Dissertation Details":

  • Under "Advisor/Co-Advisor" section, enter the name of your academic advisor or sponsor, not the chair of your dissertation defense committee. It is important to note that having two co-sponsors is relevant only if your department confirmed this arrangement during your defense or MPhil application. If you have two co-sponsors, list your primary academic sponsor as "Advisor # 1."

If you have read and understand the information above, click here to access the upload system.

All students who pass the dissertation defense will receive from the Dissertation Office ([email protected]) an Approval Card attached to an email reminder two weeks before the deposit deadline. This card confirms to GSAS that any revisions required by the defense have been completed, and that the dissertation is ready to be deposited. Please complete the fields (UNI, full legal name, dissertation title, valid diploma address) and e-mail the Approval Card to your department administrator. They will obtain mandatory signatures from your advisor and the department chair, director of graduate studies, or program director, and will be submitted as a PDF attachment to the Dissertation Office ([email protected]). The Approval Card is required for completion of the deposit.

Teachers College PhD Students: Please complete the fields (UNI, full legal name, dissertation title) and obtain signature approval from your advisor. Email the Approval Card to the Teachers College Office of Doctoral Studies ([email protected]). The Teachers College Office of Doctoral Studies will obtain the Provost and Chair’s signatures before submitting to the Dissertation Office ([email protected]).

Questions?

For questions about the deposit process, please contact the Dissertation Office at [email protected].

108 Low Memorial Library
(212) 854-8903
[email protected]