Welcome to Submission Page of Theseus Open Repository of the Universities of Applied Sciences

Open or restricted collection?


When you upload your thesis in Theseus, you also give permission to make the submitted thesis available online to be read, browsed and printed free of cost. Theseus is primarily an open collection, where theses are stored as open access publications publicly available on the internet.

Some Universities of Applied Sciences offer their students the possibility to store their thesis to a restricted collection.

What is the Theseus restricted collection?

The options for storing to Theseus are either:

  1. Open collection i.e. the thesis in the open Internet
  2. Restricted collection i.e. limited use only in IP-addresses specified by your university

The restricted collection is a closed section of Theseus open repository. Access to this section is granted only from IP addresses specified by your university. The restricted collection is currently in use in the following universities: Arcada, Centria, DIAK, Haaga-Helia, HUMAK, JAMK, KAMK, LAB, Lapland UAS, Laurea, Novia, Oamk, Polamk, SAMK, SeAMK, Savonia, TAMK, Turku UAS and VAMK.

If your university uses the restricted collection, there will be two options on the Item submission page. You can choose on the thesis submission form storing either to the open or restricted collection. If your university does not yet use the restricted collection, the open collection is the only possible selection.

How do the options differ in practice?

The thesis metadata (author, name of the thesis, keywords, abstract) is available on the internet. However, when storing the thesis to the restricted collection, the full-text pdf-file will open only when it is accessed from IP-addresses which have been specified by the university.

Thesis visibility on Google:

  1. Open collection: Thesis stored to Theseus open collection is findable and accessible through Google.
  2. Restricted collection: Only the metadata and basic information (author, name of the thesis, keywords, abstract) are findable and accessible through Google, but the full-text of the thesis is not accessibile.

A thesis is always a public document, in principle available to all interested readers (Act on the Openness of Government Activities 21.5.1999/621). Universities must guarantee access to a thesis, regardless of it being stored in the restricted collection.

Which collection to choose?

All Universities of Applied Sciences in Finland have signed the declaration of open science and students are encouraged to publish open access whenever it is possible. Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences recommend using the Theseus open collection. Thesis stored in the open collection can be linked in your CV or personal portfolio.

Theseus is a reliable open repository administered in collaboration by the AMKIT Consortium and the National Library of Finland.

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