May I replace a chapter of my thesis with the publisher’s version of a peer-reviewed article...

May I replace a chapter of my thesis with the publisher’s version of a peer-reviewed article, once the entire thesis has been approved and submitted to the library?

No, that is not permitted.

The thesis is a final publication. It may therefore differ from an article to be published separately.

This difference is normal, as most theses consist of a combination of published articles, submitted articles and articles still in preparation. During the editing process of a journal article, the article will change compared to the chapter previously written in the thesis.

Including a publisher’s version of the article in the thesis may therefore mean that you alter the approved content of your thesis. This is not desirable. In almost all cases, we therefore do not include the published article in the thesis on the research repository.

Sometimes an (open access) journal requires that a permanent embargo be placed on the accepted version of the article, and that only the published version be made available in the archive. This means that an embargo will be placed on the entire thesis.

In such a situation, adding the published version of the thesis, or including the article’s DOI, is an option.