Prior to submitting a thesis to Bucknell Digital Commons, students must obtain final approval from their advisor(s), thesis committee member(s), and their department chair. Approval is indicated with signatures on the signature page of the thesis. After obtaining appropriate signatures, scan the signature page and then use Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader) to merge your signature page and the thesis document into a final submission-ready PDF.
Students may manually collect signatures, or they may collect digital signatures. There are a couple of options available for students who prefer to collect permission remotely.
- Email permission -- students may receive approval via email and they may indicate "email permission received YYYY-MM-DD" on the signature page. It is good practice -- though not required -- to save emails as PDFs and append these documents to the thesis or submit email pdfs as supplemental files.
- Adobe e-signature -- students may open their thesis in Adobe Acrobat, select Sign and Fill, and follow the steps to sign and share the PDF with appropriate parties.