PDF Guide

Contents

Instructions for creating PDF documents

Your work must be available as one PDF File (rather than multiple, individual files). We strongly recommend to create a PDF file with navigation controls. That is either with bookmarks or with a hyperlinked table of contents. It is absolutely neccessary to disable any security settings.

PLEASE NOTE: If you do not want to publish your curriculum vitae (CV) in your electronic thesis, please remove this page from your PDF file before submitting.
Please do not include a signed "affidavit" in your PDF.

Create a PDF with Word

Minimum requirements for Word documents

To ensure that your PDF file has a hyperlinked table of contents, please mark all headings in the Word documents appropriately. You can do this in the following manner:

Place the text curser in the respective header line and choose "Heading n" in the "Styles Menu", where n is the hierarchic rank of your heading.

With cumulative dissertations it is advisable to use at least the table of contents, introduction and synopsis as headings. See the section "Cumulative Dissertations".

Creating PDF documents

With Adobe Acrobat Pro

If you have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro (purchase required), we recommend that you use this program. This software is also available on all computers in our Learning Resources Center (LRC) . There, you can create your PDF (- on request with the assistance of studIT staff) - from all popular text formats.

  • Open Adobe Acrobat Pro.
  • Choose "Create PDF" and "From file..." from the file menu. Select your file on your computer and click "Open".
  • Go to the "Edit"-menu and select "Preferences" or "Settings ...". Then select "document" in the "categories" dialog box. Make sure that the Option "‚Save as‘ Optimized for Fast Web View" in the list on the right is checked. Then click "OK".
  • Go to "File" menu and select "Properties...". The "Description" tab allows you to specify the title, author, keywords etc. for your document. These data are displayed, for example, in the results list of a Google search.
  • Finally, choose the "Security" tab and set "No Security" as security method.
  • Please save your settings by clicking "OK".
  • Now save your document from the file menu. Finished.
Screenshot Acrobat X

With free PDF Software

Alternatively, you can install the free open-source software for Windows PDFCreator. With these suite of programs, you can create PDF documents that meet all eDiss requirements.

PDF from LaTeX documents

For information, please search on this page texdoc.
You can use Hyperref to create a hyperlinked table of contents.

Known Problems (mainly PDF on Mac OS)

Occasionally the problem might occur that although you created a hyperlinked table of contents, which works just fine when you open your file on your computer, the PDF might be rejected when trying to upload the file (Messge "TOC / Bookmarks: no"). In this case please create at least one bookmark in the document (e.g. for the table of contents). Then upload your new file to eDiss.

Scanning and editing images

You can edit scanned image files with an image editing application. The image editors typically bundled with a scanning application are usually sufficient for this purpose

During image processing, please perform the following steps in all cases:

  1. Crop the image exactly to remove unnecessary portions of the image or an accidentally scanned background.
  2. Reduce the actual size of the image, measured in pixels or inches/cm before you paste it into your document. This reduces the file size of the image and the final document. Please ensure that the proportions to the original are retained in order to avoid distortion.
  3. In the case of a photograph or graphics consisting of many different shades, save your image as a JPG file. On the other hand, choose the GIF format, if you have a graphic with only a few shades of color. Using these formats, you will achieve the optimal compression for your image. This is the only way to ensure that documents containing a lot of graphics can be viewed in a reasonable amount of time on the internet.
  4. Insert the processed images into the dissertation using your favorite word processor. In Microsoft Word, this is done via the menu item "Insert", then "Picture" and finally "From File ...".

Legal considerations in the reproduction of images

With online-publishing you should consider the same copyright rules as in a print publication.

To avoid unnecessary difficulties with publishers, who may be the rights holders for such pictures, you should get permissions for their reproduction.
This includes:

  • for the reprint of an image that serves only to illustrate a thesis, you have to obtain the reprint permission of the publisher. Obtaining this permit should be associated as far as possible with a so-called "Verschweigefrist" ("period of non-disclosure") of 3 to 4 weeks.
  • the reprint of images discussed in the text is covered by the "right of quotation".
For further information, please review the publication:
"Multimedia Law for University Practice" publishe by the Centrum für eCompetence (CeC) in Hochschulen, NRW.