Doctoral and master's theses
Open access for academic work
Students can choose to make their thesis freely accessible via the University of Lille's Pépite platform. Open access for theses is considered a best practice, with many advantages:
- greater visibility, more citations,
- easier professional integration,
- better protection against plagiarism,
- consultation statistics that can lead a publisher to propose a publishing project,
- a permanent and validated online address for consultation, accessible to all.
Visit the Academic works page on the website of the University libraries and Learning center of the University of Lille (French only) to find out more about Pépite, the types of academic work and the procedures to follow, and the pre-defence printing service.
Dissemination of doctoral theses
There are various ways of disseminating theses, as set out in the Thesis Dissemination Charter (French only) and detailed on the Disseminate your thesis page (French only): immediate open access, open access after an embargo period, and restricted access (limited to the French university community), as well as confidentiality (always temporary and decided by the President of the university).
As an institution awarding doctoral degrees, the University of Lille has for several years been committed to the wide dissemination of theses.
Open access theses, for example, are systematically sent to the HAL environment dedicated to doctoral theses: HAL Thèses. Restricted-access doctoral theses are now available to members of the French higher education community (researchers, students and staff) on theses.fr and Pépite. This provision offers a wider national access to theses defended in Lille since 2006.
Open access and consultation statistics for doctoral theses defended at the University of Lille
Between 2018 and 2023, the annual rate of theses in open access averaged 79% in Lille, higher than the national average (76%).
The rate for theses defended in the last few years should be put into perspective: the data is incomplete due to the embargoes and confidentiality requested by the authors. Once the embargo dates expire, the number of theses in open access will be equivalent to, or may even exceed, that of previous years.
Where are theses defended at the University of Lille consulted? This map shows you in real time where Lille theses on theses.fr are being consulted around the world.
Presentation of the first open science awards for theses: a winner from the University of Lille
On 6 November 2024, the first Open Science Thesis Awards were presented to 8 winners in 4 thematic categories. The prizes were awarded to theses that had been defended and for which the use of open science had contributed to the quality of the scientific work. This new prize is described on the website of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (French only).
Benoît Verhaeghe was awarded a prize in the ‘Science and Technology’ category. He defended his thesis in 2021 at the University of Lille, at the Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille - UMR 9189 CRIStAL. His thesis, entitled ‘Incremental approach for application GUI migration using metamodels’, is available on Pépite.