Philips University — Academic Repository | Ακαδημαϊκό Αποθετήριο
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Help & Documentation

Everything you need to know about using the Philips University Thesis Repository — from first sign-in to the hourly Elsevier sync. Jump to a section using the sidebar on the left.

Getting Started

What is the ThesisHub?

ThesisHub is the official academic repository of Philips University Cyprus. It holds master's theses and doctoral dissertations produced by the University's students, following the Greek national repository standard. Every record carries bilingual (English / Greek) metadata and a downloadable PDF of the thesis itself, subject to the access rights the author selected.

Who uses it?

Students

Submit their completed or in-progress thesis through a guided bilingual wizard.

Librarians

Review pending submissions, adjust metadata, approve or send back for revision, and export data.

Administrators

Manage users and roles, pre-authorise librarians, and schedule the SCOPUS keyword sync.

The public side of the repository is accessible to anyone — no account needed. Only submission, review and administration require signing in with a university account.

Languages supported

Metadata is captured in both English and Greek, with an optional third language. The submission wizard has a three-way flag toggle EN / EL / Both in the top-left corner, letting students show only the fields for one language if they wish. Final exports (CSV, Excel, DOCX) always use the Greek labels mandated by the national standard, with English appended after a slash for bilingual readability.

Student Guide

Signing in

Go to Submit Thesis in the top menu. You'll be prompted to sign in with your Microsoft (Azure AD) or Google account. Use your university email— the system uses that to tie the submission to your student record.

First time here?

If you get an access-denied error, you may not have a student profile yet. Ask your department admin to add you, or email library@philipsuni.ac.cy.

The submission wizard

The form walks you through 10 steps, grouped into four phases. You can jump back to any step you've already completed using the sidebar. Required fields are marked with a red asterisk and validated before you move forward.

1
Student Identification
Identification
2
Document Type & Rights
Document
3
Titles (3 languages)
Document
4
People & ORCIDs
Document
5
Institution & Dates
Document
6
Abstracts (3 languages)
Content
7
Subjects & Keywords
Content
8
Identifiers & Extras
Content
9
PDF Upload
Finalize
10
Review & Submit
Finalize

Each field has a icon next to its label — click it for a detailed explanation in a modal window. The ORCID field has a particularly rich help modal with step-by-step registration instructions.

ORCID iD — what and why

An ORCID iD is a free, unique 16-digit identifier for researchers — think of it as a DOI for people. It distinguishes you from other researchers with the same name and stays with you for your whole career across institutions and publishers.

When is an ORCID required?

  • Master's thesis (completed): required.
  • Doctoral dissertation (PhD): recommended but not required — you may submit without one.
  • Any thesis in progress: optional; you can add it later when you resubmit.

How to create one (5 minutes)

  1. Go to orcid.org/register
  2. Enter your name and your university email
  3. Pick a password (≥ 8 chars, including a number and a symbol)
  4. Verify your email via the link ORCID sends you
  5. Copy the iD displayed at the top of your profile (format: 0000-0000-0000-0000) and paste it into the wizard

One person = one ORCID

If you already got an ORCID during a previous degree, reuse that one. Don't create a second.

Saving progress

The wizard has a Save Progress button in the top-right. It saves to two places: first to your account (so it survives logout and device changes), and second to this browser's local storage (so it works even if you lose your connection). The next time you open the form, your draft is restored automatically — including the step you were on and your language-toggle preference. Progress also auto-saves quietly whenever you navigate between steps.

Preparing your PDF

Upload your thesis as a PDF (max 50 MB per file). If your thesis exists in both English and Greek, upload both; otherwise upload the single-language version and select its language in the upload step.

PDF checklist

  • Text-searchable — if scanned, run OCR first
  • Not password-protected
  • Includes the signed title page
  • Fonts embedded so it renders correctly on other systems

Submission statuses

Submitted

Awaiting review by the library.

Sent Back

The librarian asked for revisions. You'll see the comment at the top of your submission page.

Approved

The metadata is accepted and queued for publication.

Published

Visible on the public repository.

You'll get an email notification at the Student Email you provided (step 1) whenever the status changes.

Librarian Guide

Getting the librarian role

Librarian access is granted in one of two ways:

  • An admin has pre-authorised your email address. In that case your account is promoted to librarian the first time you sign in.
  • An admin promotes your existing account via the Admin → User Management tab.

Once you have the role, you'll see the Admin Panel link in the top menu.

Approving a submission

Go to Admin → Pending Queue. Click a row to expand the full metadata and PDF preview. When everything looks good:

  1. Review the metadata — correct any typos or formatting issues inline.
  2. Adjust the SCOPUS keywords if needed (the student may have chosen too broadly).
  3. Click Approve. The student is notified by email immediately.

Sending back for revision

If the submission needs changes, click Send Back, enter a comment explaining what needs to be fixed, and submit. The student sees your comment as soon as they sign back in — they can then edit and re-submit.

Editing keywords after approval

Even after a thesis is approved, you can still edit its SCOPUS keywords from the Reports & Export tab. Expand a row, click Edit keywords, toggle your selections, and hit Save. The change is reflected in future exports immediately.

Exporting data

Four export formats are available from Admin → Reports & Export:

CSV

Flat records with national-standard Greek column labels; UTF-8 BOM so Excel renders Greek correctly.

Excel (.xlsx)

Styled workbook with one row per thesis, bilingual Greek/English headers.

Word ZIP

One .docx per thesis — title page plus a metadata table with Greek labels.

PDFs ZIP

Each thesis's original PDF(s) plus a per-folder metadata.txt and top-level MANIFEST.

The green Export All & Mark button runs all four formats at once and flags the targeted records as exported so they're easy to filter out next time.

Admin Guide

Managing users and roles

Open Admin → User Management. You'll see every registered user with a role dropdown (student / librarian / admin). Changes are applied immediately via a SECURITY DEFINER RPC, so you don't need direct database access.

Can't demote yourself

For safety, the role dropdown is disabled for your own account. If you truly need to change your own role, ask another admin, or run a direct SQL UPDATE.

Pre-authorising librarians

To give someone librarian access before they sign up, open the Pre-authorized emails sub-tab, add their email, pick the provider (Any / Google / Azure AD), and the target role. Two Postgres triggers handle the rest: when they sign in, apply_preauthorized_roleelevates them on profile insert, and claim_preauthorized_librarianhandles the case where they're already registered.

SCOPUS keyword sync

The wizard's keyword picker is populated from the SCOPUS ASJC subject categories. These live in the elsevier_keywordstable and are refreshed every hour by a cron job. You can also trigger a manual sync: open Admin → Elsevier Keywords and click Sync from Elsevier API.

Scheduling the Elsevier cron

The sync endpoint is GET /api/cron/sync-elsevier-keywords. It requires a X-Cron-Secret header matching your CRON_SECRET environment variable. See README_SYNC.md in the repository root for the full setup including Vercel Cron, server-side crontab, and Supabase pg_cron options.

0 * * * * curl -sS -X POST -H "X-Cron-Secret: $CRON_SECRET" https://your-domain/api/cron/sync-elsevier-keywords

Frequently Asked Questions