Doctoral theses for Aalto University are ordered from Unigrafia. Instructions can be found on this page.

Please order your doctoral thesis at least four weeks before your doctoral defence date.

to ensure they are delivered no later than the date of public display (known as riiputus in Finnish, 10 working days before your defence date).

A total of 11 working days must be reserved for the thesis production process. Work at Unigrafia and the printing house takes place on weekdays.

DAY 1: The material will be checked the day after the order.
DAY 4: The PDF proof will be delivered on the fourth working day.
DAY 6: If the proof is approved in the morning, the schedule will be maintained.
DAY 10: The theses will be produced at the PunaMusta printing house in Joensuu.
DAY 11: Delivery to the university.

Theses will be delivered to the university in accordance with the agreement made with the university. The theses will be delivered to the delivery address approved by your university, which you can see in the ordering system when placing your order.

Correction rounds always delay the delivery time, as corrections cannot be made on the same day. After correction, a new prepress job will be done, and a new proof will be sent for approval. Each round of corrections extends the thesis completion time by about two working days.

If the layout of the pages is done at Unigrafia, the delivery time is 6 weeks. The exact delivery time will be determined based on the length of the thesis and the number of illustrations, graphs, and tables. By requesting a quote, you will also receive a proposed schedule.

If the schedule is insufficient, please arrange an expedited delivery with us in advance. We will charge €125.50 for expediting the prepress phase. If the printing time is also expedited, the additional charge for expedited work is €188.25.

The price of the thesis is calculated based on the number of pages, copies, colours used in the thesis, and selected additional services.

Further up on this page is a link to the price calculator for Aalto University doctoral theses. The form provides an estimated total printing cost. The final price is also influenced by the number of corrections made during the proofing stage. We will charge your university directly for printing support based on pre-defined billing information. Any amount exceeding the printing grant will be billed to the doctoral candidate.

If you would like a cost estimate for the layout of your dissertation, please send a request through the link on the page. Be sure to request the quote at least 8 weeks before your defence date, so we can schedule and reserve time for the graphic designer.

We require the thesis material to be submitted in print-ready PDF format, unless the design and/or layout of the thesis is ordered separately from Unigrafia. The electronic versions of the theses must be accessible by law. You can find more detailed information about accessibility in the adjacent column under Writing template and accessibility guidelines.

If the thesis will also be published in print, it is essential that all fonts used are embedded in the file. Download the instructions for creating a functional PDF in Word in English here.

You can submit the files which the doctoral thesis consists of to Unigrafia using the order form for doctoral theses.

All materials must always be submitted as print-ready PDF files. Only materials that are to be laid out (ordered separately from the graphic designer) can be sent in Word format.

If your thesis includes separate publications (articles), please name them in a way that indicates their order. For example, use names like 1_Matti_thesis.pdf, 2_Matti_art1.pdf, 3_Matti_art2.pdf, and so on. Also, upload them in the order they will appear in the thesis.

Before submission, please make sure that the files are not locked or password-protected, including articles. We are unable to use protected files.

We will email you a proof in PDF format. Please read it carefully, especially all cover texts, and check the order of the pages, page numbers, and colour pages. If you notice any errors after receiving the proof, please reply to the proof email with a new PDF of the pages to be replaced, and also provide a separate list of all corrections.

A new proof will be sent to you once the corrections have been made and the pages have been replaced. All prepress steps will be repeated for the replaced pages, and even a small correction will require the creation of a new proof and print file. Therefore, correction rounds will always take at least half an hour. We will charge for corrections based on the time spent on the work, at a rate of €108.56 per hour. The price includes one round of revisions (0.5 hours), so please make all necessary corrections at once. The minimum charge for an additional correction round is half an hour, which is €54.28.

A debate folder, or the celebratory folder for the custos and opponent, is a ring binder that contains a dissertation cut open from the spine. Between each page of text is a white page for notes and annotations.

Debate folders are not yet common at Aalto University, but they are almost always ordered at many other universities. Typically, three folders are ordered: one for the opponent, one for the custos, and one for the candidate. The price for one folder is €2510.

In the order form, there is a section to indicate the required number of Debate folders. It is an additional service and is not eligible for university printing grants.

Debate folders are produced in connection with the printing of the doctoral thesis and cannot therefore be ordered retroactively.

Printed theses are delivered approximately six days after the proof has been approved.

We will send six copies of the printed thesis to the National Library, while the rest will be delivered to your faculty. The university covers the delivery costs to the faculty. The printing house will notify you when the work is completed.

Unfortunately, the exact time of delivery cannot be scheduled separately, and the driver will not call in advance. Please ensure that there is a recipient available at the delivery address for the entire day, especially during the summer months.

Unigrafia will deliver an electronic copy and the copies for the National Library directly. You will need to handle the distribution of the other copies yourself. The six copies sent to the National Library are included in the print run.

Unigrafia delivers the electronic version of the doctoral thesis directly to the Aaltodoc publication archive 15 days before the beginning of the public display (riiputus). This version includes all parts of the doctoral thesis including articles or essays.

With the doctoral student's permission, the doctoral thesis can also be published openly in Aaltodoc. The publication takes place during the time of the public display of the doctoral thesis. Articles and essays are always removed from the version published in Aaltodoc before publication.

The doctoral student must use a uniform title pages and abstracts for their doctoral thesis. The first page of the thesis is the title page. The title page must state the name of the thesis and the author and the date and place of the public examination. On the back of the title page, you will find bibliographic identifiers such as ISBN numbers. ISBN numbers can be ordered using Unigrafia's order form, which can be found at the top of this website.

Unigrafia has implemented a Word writing template with the university. This template includes the uniform title pages and abstracts. If you have done the content pages for your thesis by using a LaTeX, for example, you have option to use a separate Word writing template available for the title pages and abstracts of your doctoral thesis. Download the writing template from the link that can be found at the top of this site.

Doctoral theses of Aalto University have standard covers. You can view examples here.

Customized covers

Aalto ARTS occasionally publishes doctoral theses in this series with a distinctive design a few times a year, and these are also funded by the university. Customized designs are not currently an option for anyone else in this publication series.

Images

Image originals can be delivered to the press as digital images, photographs, slides, negatives, or drawings. There is always an additional charge for processing or embedding separate images into a file.

Generally, images and charts in dissertations are already placed within the prepared file. If you are doing the layout yourself but want a graphic designer to edit your images or charts in advance, make sure to order this service from a Unigrafia designer in good time.

Digital images can be divided into two groups – tone images and line drawings. Tone images include colour images and images containing different shades of grey. Tone images can be either photographs or drawings.

Line drawings include logos and simple drawings without shading, as well as images mainly consisting of text.

The best image formats are TIF, EPS, and JPEG. The resolution must be 300 dpi for tone images and 600 dpi for line drawings. For online versions, a lower resolution (72 dpi) is sufficient, but Unigrafia will handle resolution reduction for the online version as needed.

If you are scanning images for your dissertation, it is recommended to save them in TIF format. Consider any necessary resizing when scanning images, especially if the printed image will be larger than the original (e.g., stamps). Images can always be reduced in size, but it is not possible to enlarge them without compromising the quality.

If you are scanning text, such as an image from a text document, it is recommended to save it as a 1-bit black-and-white image with a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Adding an image in Word

You can safely add images to a Word document. Ensure that you use high-quality print settings when saving the PDF file to upload to the publishing platform or Unigrafia’s order form.

If you order graphic design and layout from us (price calculated separately), you can send images and text files separately. Otherwise, images must be embedded in place within the PDF file.

Note that if an image or another element reaches the edge of the page, you must add a 3mm bleed to each page, and elements that extend to the edge (such as an image or background colour) must extend 3mm ‘outside the page.’

The printing machine does not count the number of text characters or images. However, you must provide us with a list of all coloured pages, as we handle them differently in the prepress department.

The contents are sent to us as a PDF file, but they do not need to be the correct size. If they are made in A4 size, we will scale them to the final B5 size at Unigrafia. If the thesis includes separate articles, please send them separately. We will scale each one individually and assemble them into a final version.

Margins
Typically, the page size when writing is A4. However, the final size of the thesis is B5, which is 84% of an A4 page. The left and right margins of the dissertation pages must be at least 2.5cm in A4 size, as the margins will also narrow when the page size is reduced. Binding the thesis will further reduce the inner margins. The top and bottom margins can be 2.5cm or more. The same rule applies to two-column theses.

You can test the layout's functionality yourself by reducing printouts of the manuscript using a regular copier.

Page numbers
Page numbers are usually placed at the bottom of the page and centred, making them easy to find. The commands (Insert – Page Numbers…) will take you to the page number menu. Select (Position: – Top of page (Header) and (Alignment: – Center). The first page should not have a page number, so uncheck the option (Show number on first page).

If you want the thesis’ page numbers to always be on the outer edge of each page, keep in mind that even page numbers should be on the left-hand pages and odd page numbers on the right-hand pages. For left-hand pages (with even numbers), left alignment should be chosen for numbering. In Microsoft Word, the page numbering should be selected to appear on the outer edge of the pages.

It is recommended to use the Word template designed for Aalto University doctoral theses, where the settings are preconfigured for both printed and electronic publications.

The thesis should be limited to a maximum of two different font types. For example, sans-serif fonts (like Arial) can be used for headings and references, while serif fonts (like Georgia) should be used for the body text. The distinction between headings and body text must be clear for accessibility and readability purposes. Remember to indicate the structure of the publication by using styles in your word processing software (Word). Specify the correct fonts in advance for each style: headings, body text, captions, etc. 

The thesis is usually written in A4 size. In that case, you can choose the following fonts:

For the main heading font (level 1), use Arial Bold (bold version), with a point size of 16.

For body text, use Georgia, point size 12, line spacing 15 (or for example, 1.2).

For section headings (level 2), use Arial Bold, point size 14.

For subheadings (level 3), use Arial, point size 14.

For references and captions, use Arial, point size 10, line spacing 10.

Note that if the layout is done directly in size B5, meaning a page size of 176 x 250mm, the font will be about 2 points smaller!

Embedding fonts in the file
If the thesis will also be printed, it is important that all the fonts you use are embedded in the file. Download instructions for creating a working PDF in Word in English here.

The university recommends standard materials for dissertations. A fully coated multi-layer cardboard, Invercote Creato 260g, is used for the cover, and a non-coated, fully white basic paper, Multioffset 100g is used for the inner pages. These are also the standard materials listed in the price list.

For a small additional cost, you can also choose higher-quality papers.

In the Bright package, the inner paper is lightly coated G-print 115/m², and the cover is made of fully coated Galerie art silk 300g/m² cardboard. These have a slightly softer hue and are clearly of higher quality than the basic paper option.

In the Natural package, the Olin Design Regular Soft White quality is used. This paper has a slightly cream tone, is uncoated, and is non-woodfree. Cover paper is 300g/m² and inner paper 120g/m².

Higher-quality materials may increase the price by about 5-10%. The share of the cost covered by the printing grant is always calculated based on a thesis produced with standard materials, even if the thesis is printed on different materials.

Unigrafia has written guidelines for creating an accessible file using Word with a template that you can use for writing your doctoral thesis. The layout defined in the writing template is suitable as-is for most doctoral thesis, and you can use it to directly create a print-ready PDF of your thesis.

Customized writing templates for Aalto University doctoral theses can be downloaded on this page in Finnish, English, and Swedish.

If you import text into the template from another file, do not copy the styles you used; instead, import the plain text only (do not keep the source formatting). If you keep the source formatting, it may interfere with the template.

For more information on accessibility, you can refer to the guidelines on Accessibility Library Celia’s website.