WPI Student Projects: Submission Process: For Students

For individual projects, one student will submit their files and descriptive metadata.

For team projects, any student in the submission group may upload or edit that file/metadata on behalf of the team. One member of the team will submit the report to the advisor(s) for approval and grading, on behalf of the team. 

• First, be sure you are meeting the submission deadlines, published in the calendar of the Registrar’s Office.
  • Keep in mind that after you submit online your advisor will need to approve it, so try to submit at least a few days before the deadline. 
• Second, be sure you’ve registered your IQP or MQP before you begin your submission. Once you’ve done this, your project will be recognized by the eProjects system and you can submit your final project.
• Third, discuss any restrictions you want to place on your files with your team members and your advisor(s) (see details under Step 1, below)
• Fourth, gather up the files and information that you’ll need to submit your project (see details under Steps 2, 3, and 4, below).
• Finally, all students submitting projects, including all members of a project team, will complete an online project and advisor evaluation. The submission cannot be sent to the advisor(s) for approval and grading until all team members have submitted their evaluations. 
• After your IQP or MQP has been accepted by your advisor, you will receive a confirmation from the eProjects 2.0 submission system. The Registrar’s office will be notified simultaneously of the advisor’s approval.

For an overview of the student submission process in eProjects 2.0, see this article in the Hub.

Discuss future access restrictions with your team & advisor(s) for each file you plan to submit online (only the PDF of the report is required).

• Removing sensitive information: Sensitive information, such as names of interviewees, and other private information that your sponsor will not want you to make accessible worldwide, should NOT be included in the final project PDF submission.  Some students choose to separate appendixes and restrict portions of the eProject, others decide not to upload personal/private information at all.
   
• Exceptions to immediate global publication:  WPI has made a commitment to share student projects as openly as possible. There are rare circumstances that provide for temporary or permanent exceptions:
  • Sponsor-requested redaction (removal of confidential information): Check with your advisor to see if your sponsor has asked to review your project prior to publication, to redact any confidential information. This step allows the sponsor to protect their intellectual property. The sponsor must provide requested redactions within a limited period of time. If they do not respond to requests for redactions, your project will be published without redactions.
  • Restrict access to WPI:  Under some circumstances, you may want to restrict access temporarily to the WPI community.  Please discuss your reasons with your advisor.  For your primary report, this restriction can be for 1, 2, or 3 years. For any supplementary files, this restriction can be for 1, 2, or 3 years, or you may choose to restrict access for an indefinite period of time.
  • Withhold all access (embargo): Discuss with your advisor if you should embargo your publication to protect your right to patent or publish a discovery prior to publishing it through WPI's Digital WPI. For your primary report, the embargo restriction can be for 1, 2, or 3 years. For any supplementary files, this restriction can be for 1, 2, or 3 years, or you may choose to restrict access for an indefinite period of time.
     
• More information: Review the submission FAQ for more information about restriction options.  Be sure to come to a consensus with your advisor(s), who will approve restrictions, including the period of time of restrictions.

• Responsibility for copyright compliance: All your files must comply with WPI and US copyright laws.  When submitting your project you will be asked to agree to the following statement:  I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisor(s) and sponsor(s).
   
• WPI required statement on undergraduate works:  In 2007 WPI faculty agreed that the following statement should be included on the cover pages of IQPs and MQP's:  "This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement.  WPI routinely publishes these reports on the web without editorial or peer review."
   
• File formats: Your main report should be in the form of a single PDF file, with PDF/A (accessible) the preferred PDF format. Any supplementary files can be accepted, with preferred formats being those that don't require specialized or commercial software to access, that are commonly used in your field or discipline, and that aren't encrypted or compressed. Please note that each file must be less than 100 MB.  PDFs and Office documents should not be zipped/compressed.
  • Check WPI's resources for creating accessible files
  • Check the Library of Congress list of preferred file formats for long-term access and preservation
     
• Supplementary files: If you have supplementary files such as data files, photographs, presentation slides, reports, or other appendices, you will have the chance to add those in the submission process.  They will be listed at the end of the record for your main report, as in this example.  You will have the option to add a brief description (up to 200 characters) of your supplementary files, which may provide useful information to your readers. Examples: "Spreadsheet of results from community survey" or "Survey instrument used to assess project impacts" or "Code used to create interactive game to teach mathematics. Requires XYZ and knowledge of ABC to reuse."  Executable files and "files that need to be run" should be zipped/compressed
  .
• Copyright licensing: You may choose licensing terms (such as Creative Commons licenses) and/or file restrictions for each file, but your selection of file restrictions for your main report must be made in consultation and with approval of your advisor (see Step 1 for more information).

During the submission process you'll be asked for the following information.  Items with an * asterisk are required.

Project Title* - This is your full project title.  Please use title case.   Example:  The Unbearable Lightness of Being:  Understanding the Impacts on Sleep of Light Pollution in Large Cities

Project Transcript (Shor)t Title* - A short title that will appear on your transcript, limited to 60 characters including spaces.  This is the title that will be seen by graduate school admissions or potential employers to whom you may provide your future academic transcript.  Example: The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Light Pollution in Cities

Student author / creator name(s)* - All student members of the project team will be associated with your project submission. However, even though students might be working on the same project, they may not be finishing at the same time. The submitting team may need to delete the students who will be submitting later from the author list on the on-line title page. The whole group may still be listed in the PDF report's title page.

Project advisor name(s)* - All advisors should be associated with the project. If an advisor is not listed, choose their name from the drop-down menu of WPI faculty. 

Project sponsor name(s)* - Enter the full name of the sponsor; if no sponsor, choose "No Sponsor." If you're uncertain what form of the sponsor's name to use, you can search for the sponsor's name in DIgital WPI for example of how their name has been referenced.

Project Center:* Choose the appropriate WPI Project Center from the drop-down list.  For projects not completed at a Project Center, choose "No Project Center".  

Abstract of your project* - Copy the abstract text from your project PDF and paste it in the appropriate field. There is no character limit.

Transcript abstract of your project* - This is limited to 800 characters. You can use your full project abstract if it fits, or edit or truncate it to fit the 800 characters (roughly 120 words) limit. 

WPI areas of application and impact (from drop-down lists)* – required for IQP, optional for MQP. Assigning one or more themes to your project will help others find WPI projects associated with broad themes or areas of impact.  These WPI areas will replace the IQP Divisions in 2021.

IQP Divisions* - required only for IQPs; these are categories that have been used to organize IQPs by broad area of application.  They will be required through the 20-21 academic year, and will be replaced in 2021 with WPI themes (above).

Keywords - these are optional. Your project will be full-text searchable. You can add keywords to help people discover your work.  You can provide up to six keywords that you think will be helpful to others. There is also a list of keywords associated with WPI themes that may help you choose terms that others have used to describe specific aspects of a WPI theme. 

Copyright licensing terms:  You own the copyrights (either individually, or collectively, as a team) in your project. The default copyright license assigned to your work is "all rights reserved." This means others have to contact you for permission to reuse your work.  There are new licensing options you may want to assign to your works, including Creative Commons licenses, that encourage and support sharing with attribution or with other restrictions (such as not changing your work, or not using it for commercial purposes). Both your main report and each supplementary file can be assigned its own licensing terms from choices in a drop-down menu; or you can provide a link to other licensing terms such as GNU GPL.

Embargo period (if appropriate): See Step 1 for more information. Embargo period options are 1, 2, or 3 years.

Redaction (if appropriate): If your project is subject to sponsor-requested redaction, it will be embargoed for up to 6 months (preferred redaction embargo is 90 days). Once your advisor has received the redacted file and approved it, the redacted project will replace the original project in the public archive (your original submission will be retained for administrative purposes only).

Here is an overview of the process of submission: 

For individual projects, one student will submit their files and descriptive metadata.

The student or team submits a PDF through the system and the advisor must approve the final report. The advisor assigns grades and forwards them to the Registrar's Office.

1. For team projects, any student in the submission group may upload or edit that file/metadata on behalf of the team. One member of the team will submit the report to the advisor(s) for approval and grading, on behalf of the team. 
2. In the submission process, there is a form asking you to fill in descriptive information about your project. This page contains the title, the abstract, lists the sponsors, if any, and lists the advisors.
3. Please be as careful entering this information as you are with your report, so that typographic errors do not appear on your transcript or in your web display. Please do not enter titles in all capital letters. It is ok to capitalize each word (or better, use Title Case).
4. After this descriptive information is complete, the PDF itself can be attached along with any supplemental files.
5. You are also asked to agree to the statement that permits WPI to publish your project online.  This means you retain the copyright to your work, but agree that WPI may share it and archive it. The statement reads:
   
   "I hereby grant to WPI or its agents the right to archive and to make available my e-project in whole or in part in the University Libraries in all forms of media, now or hereafter known.  I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights.  I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this e-project."
    
6. Each student on a project team is required to complete an evaluation of their project and advisor(s) before the project can be approved and graded.

All individual students submitting projects, and all students on a team must submit their own simple project evaluation. The submitting students will provide their evaluation in the process of submitting the project. Evaluations are required before advisor(s) can accept and grade projects. 

• This requirement ensures that WPI faculty hear from the students about their project experience so they can make future improvements in the process.  Students are invited to evaluate both their project experience and their advisors.
• Student evaluations do not have the student's names or IDs in them, and they are not available for statistical analysis until after grading, allowing students to know that their grades cannot be affected by what they say.
• The survey can be left blank if a student is concerned about privacy or has no opinion.

All student assessments since the 2019/2020 academic year are being collected and will be made available by the Office of Institutional Research to students and faculty as aggregated anonymous results. 

To view student assessments through the academic year 2018/2019, see:

• IQP: https://web.wpi.edu/E-project-db/E-project-submit/evaluations
• MQP: https://web.wpi.edu/E-project-db/E-project-submit/mqp-evaluations

When all this information is complete including evaluations, one student will submit the project to the advisor(s).

Once a project is submitted into the system, the advisor receives an email message notifying them that the project is ready to be approved. The advisor then logs in and examines the report and descriptive info. If it is satisfactory, the advisor can approve the work with a click. If it is not satisfactory, or if changes and edits are needed, the advisor can decline the submission, and an email goes back to the project group describing the changes needed. The students can then make changes altering the descriptive information and/or replacing the PDF, and re-submit to the advisor(s) for approval again.

No grades are assigned, and the project is not available for view, until the project has been accepted and graded by the advisor, and transmitted to and reviewed by the Registrar's Office.

Once your project appears in Digital WPI, you can link to it or refer people to it from anywhere in the world.  Even if your project is under embargo, basic information about your project (title, author(s), advisor(s), abstract, etc.) will be available to the world, demonstrating your completion of this WPI requirement.

If you have embargoed your project (or files) you and your advisor will receive a notice 3 months, 1 month, and 2 weeks before the embargo expires.  If you wish to request an extension of the embargo period, your advisor can make that request for you by contacting wpi-projects@wpi.edu.

If you have any questions about your project in Digital WPI, you may contact us at digitalwpi@wpi.edu.