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Penn State Harrisburg Capital College Honors Program

This guide is for Penn State Harrisburg students completing the Capital College Honors Program and includes information on how to upload your honors undergraduate thesis into ScholarSphere.

Preparation Checklist

  1. Finish your thesis. Please be sure that your thesis is in its final, finished, and faculty-approved state before submitting it for ScholarSphere deposit.
  2. Be sure to remove ANY/ALL sensitive information from the version of your thesis you will submit for ScholarSphere deposit. Do not include the signature page. Sensitive information for the purposes of ScholarSphere includes: Social Security Numbers (SSNs), credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Driver's License numbers, state ID numbers, passport numbers, biometric data (including fingerprints, retina/facial images, and human DNA profile), birth dates, or protected health information. Works containing specific locations of endangered plants and animals or protected archaeological sites are also considered sensitive. Review the ScholarSphere definition of sensitive information here.
  3. Make a PDF of your paper. You can use "Save As" or "Export As" within your word processing software and select a PDF file option or use Adobe Acrobat Pro to create PDF files. Adobe products are freely available to Penn State students. Save your file as LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME. Example: WASHINGTON_GEORGE
  4. Review the ScholarSphere Depositor's Agreement.
  5. Review the ScholarSphere Content Policy.
  6. Ensure your agreement with the Depositor's Agreement and your compliance with the Content Policy. 
  7. Develop your abstract. The abstract is a short summary, usually less than 250 words, that describes the main point of your project and findings.
  8. Determine your keywords. These are individual words or short phrases used to describe your project that will make it easier for other researchers to find. You may want to review databases or journals related to your subject area to help determine appropriate keywords, or review the keywords used by the authors to describe articles used in your literature review. It may also be beneficial to consult with a librarian or your faculty advisor on appropriate keywords. Contact information for our subject-specialist librarians is available in the left panel of this page.
  9. Select your license. You will select one from of several license options which dictate how others may use the work you deposit. These range from All Rights Reserved (most restrictive) to CC0/Public Domain (least restrictive). You can learn more about different types of Creative Commons Licenses here. 
  10. Select your visibility. You can allow public visibility (anyone on the internet can search for and read your work) or Penn State only (users must have a current Penn State access ID to search for and view your work). 
  11. Submit your thesis. Keep a record of the choices you've made while going through the checklist to smooth the submission process.