strathclyde university thesis repository

STAX is the home for electronic theses and past exam papers at the University of Strathclyde. The repository includes:

• theses submitted for higher research and doctoral degrees;

• past exam papers for undergraduate and taught postgraduate classes;

• a selection of other publications for which we hold digital files.

STAX records also appear in our main library catalogue,  SUPrimo .

STAX contains a mixture of Open Access and restricted files.  Please note you may need to log in with your DS username and password to access some restricted files . 

If a thesis is under moratorium, this will be indicated in the record and the file will not be available to download until the moratorium has expired. 

See our page on the Library’s  Theses Collection  for more information on our print and electronic thesis holdings.

See our page on the Library’s Electronic  Exam Papers Collection  for more information on accessing past exam papers.

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University of Strathclyde Theses and Exam Papers

Repository information.

• Theses and Dissertations
• Reports and Working Papers
• Other Special Item Types

Organisation

Open access policies, record information.

Open Access research that better understands changing marine ecologies...

Strathprints makes available scholarly Open Access content by researchers in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics .

Mathematics & Statistics hosts the Marine Population Modelling group which is engaged in research into topics surrounding marine resource modelling and ecology. Recent work has included important developments in the population modelling of marine species.

Explore the Open Access research of Mathematics & Statistics . Or explore all of Strathclyde's Open Access research...

Strathprints

About strathprints.

What is Strathprints? Improving the visibility and impact of Strathclyde research: how does Strathprints do it? How do I deposit my research outputs in Strathprints? What is PURE? How long does it take to deposit (and 'validate') my research outputs? What is the "EPrints request button" and why have I received an email from Strathprints requesting I send a manuscript to a user? What software does Strathprints use? What policies does Strathprints have relating to metadata, content, etc.? Where can I learn more about copyright in relation to Strathprints? Where is the Strathprints "notice and take down policy"? Does Strathprints have information about any cookies it uses and, if so, what for - and any personal data collected? I like the banner images you have used in Strathprints. Where did you source them? Where can I access Strathclyde's Open Access theses? How do I deposit a thesis?

What is Strathprints?

The Strathprints institutional repository is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate Open Access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output. The management of Strathprints is performed by the Scholarly Publications & Research Data team based within the Information Services Directorate (Library).

Repositories like Strathprints are an important instrument of Open Access and alternative approaches to scholarly communication because they make research papers and other scholarly outputs freely available on the Internet, thereby maximising their visibility and potential impact. The benefits of Open Access are such that governments and most research funders now have policies for making research outputs openly available. Our Open Access @ Strathclyde pages explain more about this and the different approaches to making scholarly work openly accessible.

Improving the visibility and impact of Strathclyde research: how does Strathprints do it?

One of the unique features of institutional repositories is that they support a wide variety of technical protocols that enable discovery tools, from generic academic search tools such as Google Scholar to more specialist tools such as CORE or BASE , DS Dimensions , or Lens.org , to interoperate with Strathprints. This allows these discovery tools to learn about the research outputs Strathprints contains in a way these systems prefer, but also enables these systems to direct their users to the research which Strathprints holds. Tools like CORE , an important component of scholarly open infrastructure, can harvest and aggregate content from Strathprints, thereby enabling exciting text and data mining (TDM) functionality , capable of unlocking new scientific discoveries.

Systems like Strathprints are also central to new in-browser Open Access tools such as Unpaywall , CORE Discovery and the Open Access Button , allowing users to discover openly available research papers whenever they encounter a paywall.

The diagram below illustrates some of the many systems Strathprints exposes data to and interoperates with, which in addition to those already mentioned, also includes 'LinkOut' with PubMed Central , discovery via all the major web search engines and academic search engines (e.g. Microsoft Academic Search and Google Scholar ) and WorldCat .

How do I deposit my research outputs in Strathprints?

All research active staff based at the University of Strathclyde can deposit their research outputs in Strathprints via PURE. PURE (DS account required) is the University's current research information system and is used to capture the research activities of the University, consolidating it with data from corporate systems, in order to provide users with a single source of information.

Research outputs uploaded to PURE will progress through a process of 'validation' before being approved, after which they will be automatically deposited in Strathprints. Note that the process of validation, among many other things, seeks to ensure outputs deposited in Strathprints do not infringe copyright.

Further information on the PURE validation process is available from the Open Access @ Strathclyde pages , with guidance documentation available from the Development and Training Gateway (DS account required).

How long does it take to deposit (and 'validate') my research outputs?

Research outputs must undergo a process of validation before they can be deposited in Strathprints. The Scholarly Publications & Research Data teams is responsible for validating hundreds of items and depositing hundreds of files per week. The process of validation is largely undertaken on PURE and can be time consuming, entailing Open Access compliance checks, file handling tasks (e.g. to improve accessibility, digital preservation ingest, etc.), publisher policy checks, metadata creation, and many more. Some form of prioritisation is therefore required based on the type of content submitted for validation.

Current Standards

• We will respond to email enquiries received via [email protected] within 3 working days
• We will validate prioritised REF outputs within 7 working days

Please ensure that when updated publication profiles are required for promotion panels, that notice of at least two weeks is provided. Please contact [email protected] in advance if you have a considerable number of publications to submit.

Where a large number of items are submitted for validation with no prior communication, a Fresh Service ticket may be raised to monitor progress. An estimate on the time to validate such records will only be possible with reference to the existing workload at this time and the nature of the deposited items.

To minimise the amount of record editing and corrections required, please consult the published guidance carefully before depositing, editing or deleting records in Pure.

What is the "EPrints request button" and why have I received an email from Strathprints requesting I send a manuscript to a user?

The "Request eprint" link is a feature of Strathprints and is displayed on the abstract page of research outputs. The link is displayed to users when a record about a research output contains:

• one or more restricted documents (e.g. one or more of the outputs is under a temporary embargo), or;
• no documents (e.g. the Strathclyde author has failed to deposit a research output).

By clicking the "Request eprint" link, users can submit a request to Strathprints which, in turn, generates an email to the author (or other recipient determined by EPrints) requesting a copy of the restricted/missing items.

The "Request eprint" link therefore facilitates so-called Almost Open Access . Strathclyde authors are encouraged to respond positively to such manuscript requests since they are a key mechanism of providing legitimate and legal access to research outputs that are not Open Access or might otherwise be inaccessible.

What software does Strathprints use?

Strathprints is powered by EPrints 3.4.2 , free repository software developed by the University of Southampton , employing MariaDB , Apache Webserver , Red Hat Enterprise Linux , Perl , mod_perl , Digital Object Model (DOM) , Resource Description Framework (RDF) and XML . EPrints supports the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) , Linked Data , Semantic Sitemap Extension [PDF doc] , and many more...

What policies does Strathprints have relating to metadata, content, etc.?

Strathprints has a number of policies governing the use and re-use of metadata, data, and content as well as policies for digital preservation and the deposit of content. Details of these policies are available from our Strathprints policies page. For policies governing Research Data Management please consult the RDMS pages .

Where can I learn more about copyright in relation to Strathprints? Where is the Strathprints "notice and take down policy"?

Some guidance on copyright is available within Strathprints ; but more detailed information and assistance is available from Information Governance and Compliance .

Every effort has been made to ensure that no deposited content infringes any third party property rights or otherwise infringes applicable laws. Strathprints operates a notice and take down policy should you discover any content that you consider to infringe your rights.

Does Strathprints have information about any cookies it uses and, if so, what for - and any personal data collected?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are used widely across the web to make websites work more effectively, as well as to provide information to the owners of websites. Users placing EPrint requests (e.g. for embargoed content) should note that minimal personal data are collected and some cookies are used to assist in the operation of Strathprints. Further information about the nature of these cookies, how they are used, and personal data collected is available from our cookie & privacy information page .

I like the banner images you have used in Strathprints. Where can I find them?

In the spirit of Open Access, all the banner images Strathprints uses are openly available via a number image repositories, either under a CC-BY (attribution) or CC-0 (public domain) licence. Tools used included Wikimedia Commons , Europeana , Unsplash and Pixabay .

Where can I access Strathclyde's Open Access theses? How do I deposit a thesis?

Good question! Although you may find some digital theses within Strathprints, the true home of Strathclyde theses is actually STAX . STAX is a separate Strathclyde repository service for storing and sharing digital theses but also some other forms of grey literature. STAX enjoys similar levels of visibility and exposure as Strathprints and ensures theses are appropriately managed over time. Note that the process for depositing theses is different since both thesis submission and deposit are connected to successful completion of postgraduate qualifications. Further information on the University of Strathclyde thesis submission process is available from the main University website .

University of Strathclyde

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Dissertation Structure - a Guide

Dissertation.

Summary of your dissertation including key findings.

Introduction

Setting the context of your thesis, what issues are you going to address in your thesis and why?

Link your research question/hypotheses with the gaps in existing literature.

Literature Review

What research has been done? What do they say about your research problem? Establish the gaps, issues, contradictions in existing literature on your research topic. Link your research question/hypotheses with the gaps in existing literature.

Establish gaps, issues and contradictions in existing literature on your research topic.

Provides with a viewpoint, a philosophical stance about research. What are the theoretical foundations for your approach?

• What approach does your research questions/hypothesis necessitate? Why? (Justify your methodological approach)
• What is a theoretical background for this approach? (Describe your methodological approach)
• Which methods are linked to it?
• Which methods did you decide for and why? What other methods could you have chosen but did not and why?

Methodology chapter

How, why and what chapter: How are you going about gathering your data.

Contains information about methodological approach/methods/sampling procedures/ethics /validity and reliability of your data collection. In particular you should answer the following questions:

• How are you going about gathering your data? How will you evaluate the data?
• How do you choose your participants? (Describe and justify your inclusion and exclusion criteria)
• What kind of ethical considerations your research project encounter? How you will deal with them?
• Does your data reliable? Explain how you ensure reliability of your data.
• How do you validate your data?

Show your data, does it or does it not answer your research questions, proof your hypotheses? Why or why not?

Did they prove or discard issues raised in the literature review?

Discussion/Interpretation

What implications do your findings have? Did they prove or discard issues raised in the literature review? What do your findings mean in context of your profession?

What do your findings mean in context of your profession?

What kind of implication your findings brings into to theory/policy/field of study?

Conclusion/Implications

So what? Impact on your field. What kind of implication your findings brings into to theory/policy/field of study ? What kind of contribution your findings brings to theory/policy/field of study?

What kind of contribution your findings brings to theory/policy/field of study?

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STAX: the new home for Strathclyde Theses and Exam Papers Provider   Library & Information Resources Staff Training

STAX: the new home for Strathclyde Theses and Exam Papers

Duration 1 hour

Course type webinar, booking status archived, is this course right for me.

Target Audience: LIR staff

In July 2021 the Library officially retired Digitool and moved to a new system for hosting theses and exam papers. STAX is an open source repository built using a system called Samvera, which allows us to carry out a number of tasks that weren't possible in Digitool, as well as helping to make cataloguing simpler and more efficient. Colleagues from Library Systems, Scholarly Publications & Research Data, and Cataloguing & Metadata were involved in choosing and implementing the new system, and moving all the data from Digitool to STAX. In this session we'll talk about why we chose STAX, how we set up the new system, what changes are still to come, and what difference it all makes to Library users and staff.

Prerequisites

Research data management & sharing Data deposit

The decisions governing where and when to deposit a dataset vary depending on a number of factors. Typically deposit provides mechanisms for managing the access to and preservation of completed project data, data supporting a research publication or thesis.

Pure  is the data repository for research undertaken at University of Strathclyde. However there may be circumstances where deposit with an external repository is a more appropriate option.  

Deposit in Pure

Depositing in Pure will ensure that data complies with funder open access requirements and are professionally curated in the long-term. 

Depositing in Pure is a straightforward single sign-on self-deposit process involving the following steps:

• Log on to Pure
• Select the “Datasets” option from the left-hand menu and click on the “+ Add content” option to open a new dataset record template
• Complete all relevant metadata fields in the template following our guidance in Describing your dataset in Pure .
• Upload all relevant data files from a networked university computer and set the required visibility, licence and type options. See Uploading datasets to Pure for guidance
• Set the status of the record to ‘for validation’ and save the record using the drop-down menu at the bottom of the record

The record will be reviewed by a support officer and, if it complies with minimum metadata requirements, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) will be minted and the record validated. The record and data will then be made available in the Data Sets section of the Knowledgebase portal , subject to any applied embargo or access restrictions.

Further guidance on the joint steps required to publish both research publications and data can be found in the LibGuide : Integrated Workflow for Publications and Datasets

Does data have to be Open Access?

In most cases the default setting for deposited data is open access. However there are circumstances where access to data can be restricted either permanently or for a limited embargo period.

Common circumstances for restriction include:

• Data Protection
• Ethical approval
• Commercial contraints
• Sensitive content
• Moratorium on thesis data
• Period of exclusivity for data creators

Pure offers a range of data visibility and access options to support your data and research requirements, contact the RDMS team for further advice.

External Data Deposit

Research data produced at University of Strathclyde should be offered for deposit in PURE unless circumstances determine that a more appropriate repository is chosen, these include:

• The funder of the research mandate a specific data repository
• In joint research projects the data is deposited in the repository of a collaborator
• A specialist or disciplinary focused repository exists that provides data with greater impact
• Certain types of data, typically software or code, are better served in a version control repository such as GitHub

The only local requirement for external deposit is that a corresponding dataset record must be created in Pure which references and links to the external repository. Other criteria also apply to the suitability of external repositories. If you are uncertain where to deposit please contact the Research data management & sharing team for further advice.

Our faculties & departments

Engineering.

• Faculty of Engineering
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• Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
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Dissertation / Project Support: Home

• Literature Reviews
• Literature Searching
• Research Methods
• Introduction to EndNote online (web)
• EndNote Desktop This link opens in a new window
• OSCOLA (Law)
• Vancouver (NLM/PubMed)
• Faculty Librarians
• Further information and support

Dissertation and Project Support

Thinking about topics for your dissertation? Wondering what a literature review looks like? Curious about how to create a questionnaire? Worrying about writing up and/or referencing? This guide pulls together useful information no matter what stage you are at in your dissertation journey. From explanations of what a good literature review is , to how to conduct one , to finding out more about research methods , to the joys of referencing , this guide will provide you with the resources you need. If you can't find what you're looking for within the guide, you can contact your Faculty Librarian for a one to one appointment.

In addition, the Further information and support sectio n provides more resources including support on planning and writing your dissertation from our colleagues in Learner Development Services (book an appointment with one of the team) and options to sign up for Dissertation support sessions. This section also has resources for those working on more advanced research (PhD, MRes, MLitt etc)

To start you off, here are some great titles on writing a dissertation available within the Library collections. 

Books and eBooks on Dissertations

Dissertation regulations and guidelines

Each Faculty and/or Department will have their own regulations or guidelines for your dissertation or project. These regulations may cover topics such as:

• The length of your dissertation
• Page and text formatting: such as font type and size, line and paragraph spacing
• Layout: details on Front, back and content page requirements
• What referencing style to use

If you are unsure what the requirements are for your dissertation, your supervisor or department will be able to advise

• Next: Literature Reviews >>
• Last Updated: Apr 17, 2024 12:32 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.strath.ac.uk/dissertation

• Help & FAQ

Mathematics And Statistics

• University Of Strathclyde
• Faculty Of Science

United Kingdom

Student theses

• 1 - 25 out of 89 results
• Title (descending)

Search results

A combined perfectly matching layer and infinite element formulation for unbounded wave problems.

Supervisor: Mulholland, A. (Supervisor) & O'Leary, R. (Supervisor)

Student thesis : Doctoral Thesis

Algorithms for exploring structure in complex networks

Supervisor: Knight, P. (Supervisor), Ramage, A. (Supervisor) & Barrenechea, G. (Supervisor)

A linear algebra approach to graph melting

Supervisor: Kitaev, S. (Supervisor) & Langer, M. (Supervisor)

A model for ultrasonic transducers in a high-temperature regime with boundary dynamics : an evolutionary equations approach

Supervisor: Langer, M. (Supervisor) & Waurick, M. (Supervisor)

A multilevel approach for approximating the inverse Hessian in four-dimensional variational data assimilation

Supervisor: Ramage, A. (Supervisor) & Knight, P. (Supervisor)

Applications of multivariate statistics in honey bee research, analysis of metabolomics data from samples of honey bee propolis

Supervisor: Gray, A. (Supervisor) & Robertson, C. (Supervisor)

A probabilistic approach to modelling ultrasonic shear wave propagation in locally anisotropic and layered heterogeneous media

Supervisor: Tant, K. M. M. (Supervisor) & Mulholland, A. (Supervisor)

A statistical analysis of spatially linked time series using data from the TOXBASE database to study Emergency Department and NHS phone line management of poisoned patients

Supervisor: Robertson, C. (Supervisor) & Rushworth, A. (Supervisor)

A unified population model of Calanus finmarchicus and C. helgolandicus in the North Atlantic

Bioeconomic modelling of seal impacts on west of scotland fisheries, centrality analysis for modified lattices.

Supervisor: Akartunali, K. (Supervisor)

Convex hulls of planar random walks

Supervisor: Mao, X. (Supervisor) & Wade, A. (Supervisor)

Data mining for exotic pathogen spread

Detection of safety signals in randomised controlled trials.

Supervisor: Robertson, C. (Supervisor) & Young, D. (Supervisor)

Determination of the optimal age to vaccinate against dengue using a tetravalent dengue vaccine in Brazil

Supervisor: Greenhalgh, D. (Supervisor) & Kelly, L. (Supervisor)

Development and testing of early detection systems for seasonal and pandemic influenza

Dimension reduction methods for non-stationary multivariate time series.

Supervisor: Pan, J. (Supervisor) & Mao, X. (Supervisor)

Domain decomposition methods for time-harmonic elastic waves

Supervisor: Dolean Maini, V. (Supervisor) & Pytharouli, S. (Supervisor)

Ecological studies of Clostridioides difficile and COVID-19 infection with the application of space-time risk models

Supervisor: Robertson, C. (Supervisor) & Kavanagh, K. (Supervisor)

Effects of fractional time derivatives in predator-prey models

Supervisor: Ramage, A. (Supervisor) & Mottram, N. (Supervisor)

Efficient discretisation and domain decomposition preconditioners for incompressible fluid mechanics

Supervisor: Dolean Maini, V. (Supervisor) & Barrenechea, G. (Supervisor)

Efficient moving mesh methods for Q-tensor models of liquid crystals

Supervisor: MacKenzie, J. (Supervisor) & Ramage, A. (Supervisor)

Encoding graphs by words and morphisms

Supervisor: Kitaev, S. (Supervisor) & Weir, G. (Supervisor)

Epidemics under environmental noise described by stochastic SIS model

Supervisor: Mao, X. (Supervisor) & Pan, J. (Supervisor)

Error and stability analysis for B-spline finite element methods