UTUGradu

If you are the responsible student, you will receive an email from the UTUGradu system (noreply@utu.fi) when your supervisor has initiated the examination process, and you are requested to fill in the information on the UTUGradu thesis form and submit the work to Turnitin originality check. Before this, however, the thesis file needs to be PDF/A converted and validated.

To ensure that the beginning of the examination process will move on without problems go through the instructions on completing the thesis.

Be careful! Make sure that you are converting and submitting the latest and finished version of your thesis. After submission, you can not make any changes to the thesis file yourself.

What is PDF/A? 

• PDF/A is a document format for long-term storage and archiving. Its filename extension is .pdf. There are several types of PDF files, and not all files with a .pdf extension are PDF/A files.
• To ensure that the file is a PDF/A file, the work is uploaded to the PDF/A validation tool before submitting the work to Turnitin.

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How to convert your thesis into a PDF/A format

Remember to title your thesis file as instructed and also include a control mark of the Turnitin originality check to the bottom of the title page (see "Completing the Thesis" tab).

The entire text of the thesis has to be in one file, including the title page, abstract, the appendices etc.

 

PDF/A conversion with Muuntaja

You can convert your thesis into a PDF/A file with the Muuntaja service (https://muuntaja.utu.fi) offered by University of Turku. You can upload different file formats (including .docx or .pdf) to Muuntaja and it automatically converts your file into a PDF/A-format.

Upload your file under the “Upload file” -tab. After uploading, your file will be automatically converted.

You find your uploaded file under the “Your uploaded files” –tab. You can save your converted file from “Actions” column by clicking “Lataa PDF”.

NB! If the file opens after saving to read mode, DO NOT click on "Enable Editing" at the top of the file. This can cause the PDF/A settings to disappear from the file.

After the conversion, browse the PDF/A file and check that all text and image elements are displayed as you intended. Also, pay attention to abstraction.

If you find problems with your work, please review the conversion instructions first. You can also try to save your original file (e.g. docx) into normal PDF first and then try conversion again. If you cannot find a solution in the instructions, please contact utugradu@utu.fi. 

How to save Word-file to PDF

Save your Thesis to PDF file (for example in Word choose Save as and Save as type select PDF (*.pdf)

    

NB! If you are Mac-user and you have problems with conversion, please contact support utugradu@utu.fi. 

If the above steps were successful, you can now proceed to validate your file supervisor in the PDF / A validator of the Moodle course area. Instructions for this can be found in the second tab in this box (see above).

 

If you have converted the thesis file into a PDF/A file successfully, you should then validate it (check if the converting has actually succeeded properly) in the PDF/A validation tool. Remember that you must have received an email about initiated UTUGradu-process before you can submit your thesis into PDF/A validator and Turnitin originality check.

 

1. Go to the supervisor’s Moodle course, the link will be available in the email sent by the UTUGradu system.

• Access to the Moodle course might require signing in with the University of Turku username.

2. Find “Check your finished thesis here” on the Moodle course and click the validator task icon (see fig.), which will open the upload page.

• The file must be named as instructed and the file name should not include spaces or å, ä and ö characters (see tab "Completing the thesis") . 

 

3. Click “Browse” and find the correct PDF/A file on your computer (see fig.). Click "Upload pdf for validation” and the validator will start to validate the thesis. This could take up to ten minutes depending on the size of the work. Don't close the window until the validator has finished validating.

• The validator will give a notification when the validation is successful.
  • You will receive a "Success! File has a valid PDF/A - format" notification for a successful validation.

 

• Error message will be displayed if the validation was not successful. Fix the reported errors in the file (and read again the instructions about the converting of the file) and validate it again until you get a notification of a successful validation. 
• If you have followed the instructions on this page as well as those of the validator but the validation is still not successful, please contact utugradu@utu.fi. Remember to add Thesis in it's original Word. docx file (or similar) in this email.

After a successful validation, you can move on to the next step which is the Turnitin originality check of your thesis. Click “Next” at the bottom of this page to move forward in the instructions.