Publishing your doctoral thesis

Aalto University has certain requirements for the elements and information printed in the published thesis. The university publishing support will give you more information about the publishing of your cotutelle thesis within the Aalto university DOCTORAL THESES series and the ISBN numbers. Please contact [email protected]. 

You can publish your doctoral thesis as a duplicate (or dual) publication, i.e. publish it in a partner organisation’s publication series in addition to an Aalto series if the partner organisation, such as a research institute, has been a major contributor to the research work for the doctoral thesis.

Aalto-VTT dissertation series is not available anymore. Please acknowledge the collaboration in the thesis itself.

The university publishing support will give you more information: [email protected].

Aalto ARTS doctoral students's doctoral theses are published mainly through the Aalto University publication platform. The doctoral student may, however, apply to publish their thesis book with ARTS Theses. The decision is made by Doctoral Program Committee.

More information about publishing with ARTS Theses (aalto.fi)

The printed version of an article/essay thesis includes the summary part as well as the articles/essays. You need to obtain permissions to republish your articles or published essays in your printed thesis. If your articles or essays have been published open access under Creative Commons (CC) license, no permissions to republish are required.

How to obtain the permissions to republish the articles/essays in the printed thesis?

Usually, the publishing agreement or web pages of the publisher clearly state whether it is allowed to republish the article for author’s scholarly purposes, including doctoral thesis. If the information is not available in these, you can use the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service to request permissions from publishers. The service is most often free of charge, depending on the publisher though. 

If you have any questions or problems in interpreting the permission texts, you can contact Aalto University’s legal counsel Maria Rehbinder. 

Please note that it is the responsibility of the doctoral student to request the needed permissions and to archive the permissions.

Your doctoral thesis will be published with your permission in Aaltodoc publication archive.  

Give your permission with permission form for electronic publishing (permission form A) For article and essay theses our policy is to publish only the summary part of the doctoral thesis without the individual articles or essays.  

However, the articles or essays will be linked to your doctoral thesis page in Aaltodoc with DOI numbers if available. Also, the manuscript versions of your articles or essays will be linked to the page if they are available in the Aalto University’s research portal. Read more about the manuscript service of the RES Open Science and ACRIS team. 

In the case of monographs, the whole thesis is published.  

Open access publishing (i.e. giving permission for publishing the Aaltodoc version of your thesis) is recommended and compliant with the Aalto University goal of promoting open science. Open access publishing allows doctoral theses to be disseminated efficiently to a wider audience, thus increasing their visibility. 

Doctoral theses are produced through the Aalto University publication platform (in some cases, through ARTS Theses). 

• The publication platform can be used to generate a presentable PDF version of the thesis already for the pre-examination process.
• The platform generates the standard front and back covers to doctoral theses. 
• The platform also generates the title pages and the abstract pages to the doctoral thesis.
• The platform automatically generates the required ISBN and ISSN numbers along with the Aalto University serial numbers.

Read instructions and start using the publication platform (aalto.fi)

Recommended templates

When producing the content parts, the following templates are recommendations:

1. Word template (7.4.2014, .dotx). Instructions for the template (pdf) 
2. Word template with narrow margins (22.8.2016, .dotx)
3. Template for LaTeX users (Aalto LaTeX pages in wiki) – The LaTeX template is not exactly identical with the Word template. You can use it anyway.
4. Errata-page template (.dotx)

• Layout model for Word (pdf): instructions for the typographic settings (1.6.2016) 

You can also buy professional layout and paging services from Unigrafia. Enquire about the service: [email protected].

Examples of correctly formatted theses

Below you will find samples of correctly formatted theses. Use them as your help to see how the page layout and page numbering is done. You can also see how the thesis looks when it is ready.

• Example of a thesis from the Schools of Technology (article-based, author: Risto Vanhanen)
• Example of a thesis from the School of Business (essay-based, author: Pii Elina Berghäll)
• Example of a thesis from the School of Business (essay-based, author: Mikko Riepula)

Unigrafia uses standard materials for content and cover. Unigrafia offers also two other material packages from which you can choose with additional cost. If you are using other printing house for printing than Unigrafia, make sure the materials are in accordance with Aalto University’s standard.

Aalto University recommends using Unigrafia for printing, but the doctoral student can choose freely any printing house. In such case the doctoral student requests offers from the printing houses themselves and is independently responsible for the whole printing process and for completing each required step of the process according to the publication schedule.

If you consider to use another printing house than Unigrafia, please be in contact with [email protected] well before the publication phase of your thesis.

The student will select the printing house in the publication platform. In practice, there are two options in the platform: Unigrafia or Other printing house. If the student chooses other printing house, they will receive instructions from the university publication support on how to proceed with the printing.

If the headings or abstracts of your publication contain (mathematical) special characters, please copy the title and abstract in question to a single PDF file and e-mail it to [email protected]. Please, write in your mail instructions for placing the characters.This service is subject to a charge. – Note. On the publication platform it is possible to write subscript and superscript indexes to the abstracts.

If you are using LaTeX, you can download an abstract with special characters on the publication platform. Make a right size abstract on the Aalto series LaTeX template (link above) with the class option “abstracts”.  Choose the latest version of the template and read the documentation carefully and see also the example.

The minimum number of printed thesis is 22 copies. Of these, one copy to the Aalto University Learning Centre and six copies to the National Library for legal deposit purposes. The rest of the printed copies (15 copies) go to the doctoral student and their school. Check the number of copies required by your School (aalto.fi). 

Aalto University's departments pay max 230€ + vat of printing costs per doctoral student. This covers the cost of 22 books. The fee includes one correction round of the proof. All the rest will be charged from the doctoral student.

Note: in case you publish your thesis through ARTS Theses, the costs covered and the number of books printed are explained separately.

Printing cost calculator for doctoral thesis available at the page Doctoral student forms

The printing house Unigrafia will send the invoice directly to the your school or department. You will need to fill in the invoicing information in the publication platform. Please note, that you are required to add your school's/department's cost centre code to the order (see below). Unigrafia cannot proceed with the printing without the proper invoicing information.

Aalto University's invoicing address and reference practices

If the doctoral student is using other printing house than Unigrafia for printing, they will pay the printing costs first themself. The costs can be claimed back from the school provided the copy of the original invoice is included with the claim. The original invoice should be kept until the reimbursement has been issued.

Note: Do not use Aalto University's address for the invoicing information if you are paying the costs yourself. Use e.g. your own home address.

Delivery address: The printed books should always be delived to your School and not your home address. Please enter the address given by your School to the publication platform, check the address from Distribution of thesis.

Cost centre codes

When the doctoral thesis is approved and published, it is not possible to edit the contents afterwards. However, you can point out the corrections with a separate Errata page attached to the thesis. The errata PDF is linked to the web page of the thesis as a separate file. Send the pdf to to [email protected].

Download Errata template

The printed version is archived in the National Library of Finland. 

The electronic archive file of the doctoral thesis contains the entire thesis, and, in the case of an article or essay thesis, also the articles or essays included in the thesis. The electronic archive file must be in PDF/A-format.

Aalto University theses are public documents. For this reason, the archived thesis file is available for viewing on selected workstations connected to Aalto University’s closed network, for example the customer workstations in the Aalto University Learning Centre. In addition, electronic thesis file will be electronically sent by the Learning Centre to anyone requesting a copy. Read more about the Theses as public documents.