Comments on: No Deposit, No Diploma: How Graduate Schools and Libraries Restrict Access to Dissertations and Theses

By: Sandy Thatcher

Sandy Thatcher — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:18:08 +0000

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the NDLTD, which is an international consortium of libraries that make dissertations available OA. I was on the committee at Penn State that set up the ETD program in 1998, and I wrote the sections on the website concerning publishing and copyright (and related sections in the FAQ), which are mostly still accurate: http://www.etd.psu.edu/. The main value of an embargo period is for students who have strong reasons to protect against full disclosure as a condition for obtaining a patent; that is a very small minority, of course. However, the discussion above does not seem to reflect awareness of library policies against purchasing books based on dissertations, which do indeed give more reason for students hoping to publish a book based on the dissertation to embargo its OA release. I deal with this in my article “Dissertations into Books?” accessible here: http://www.psupress.org/news/SandyThatchersWritings.html

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By: ETD Deposit and Embargo Options: Reflections from a Student « Tx ETD Association

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:09:58 +0000

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By: Rob Melton

Rob Melton — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:15:11 +0000

Following up on #9: Yes, for example, the Modern Language Association International Bibliography uses the PQDT as the source for its dissertations. That is, the citations in MLAIB for dissertations are actually to Dissertation Abstracts or PQDT rather than to the dissertation itself.
PQDT is also a valuable source for graduate students to discover whether an idea they have in mind for a dissertation has already been published. Easier to do in one place, using a consistent keyword search, than to try to search in Google or in multiple IR’s.

By: Laura Bowering Mullen

Laura Bowering Mullen — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:34:41 +0000

Phil, I think the title of this post could allow readers to believe that all universities may be following the practices of Cornell when it comes to making dissertations and theses publicly available. Our situation at Rutgers appears entirely different. At my institution, the default is immediate open access for ETDs, with a choice of optional short embargoes that authors may select. Most choose open access. Out of more than 200 authors submitting in May 2010, only 2 chose a special option of a long term embargo of 5 years. This might be a chosen option for someone in a fine arts program where issues of livelihood may be at stake. Our May graduates are seeing their ETDs already in the institutional repository at this point, and all will be available on the web by the end of September. There is no longer a print copy made available in the library, and students are not advised to pay the option for open access with ProQuest. Their work is already immediate open access and this is the option that they are choosing.
However, as a long time academic librarian, I do see value in the indexing of dissertations and theses by ProQuest. Many library users search Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) when seeking dissertations on a subject, and I believe that the index is the basis for inclusion of some dissertations in major disciplinary subject indexes.
I mentioned dissertations as an important category of open access resources in my book “Open Access and its Practical Impact on the Work of Academic Librarians: Collection Development, Public Services and the Library and Information Science Literature(Chandos). The book is a basic treatment of the issues for the academic librarian. Certainly, dissertations represent unique institution-specific resources and would be high priority for any institutional repository.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:35:24 +0000

Road trip! Cornell has a real opportunity here. Pair Phil's dissertation with an exhibit on their other famous alumnus and they could become the Graceland of the Finger Lakes Region.

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:53:23 +0000

Unfortunately it is the policy at my institution to send theses to ProQuest-UMI and for students to pay the fee. I asked whether I could forgo this process and was told that it was not an option.

Ultimately, I decided to pay the fee to have my dissertation indexed by ProQuest but without an embargo. Strangely, this costs a lot less than making it “Open Access.” I imagine that ProQuest is banking on selling a few copies through the traditional route and thus is charging the student more for the profits they are unable to realize later on.

By: Laura Smart

Laura Smart — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:44:36 +0000

It’s important to be clear that you don’t need to pay ProQuest for your thesis to be Open Access. If you deposit it in your institutional repository with no embargo then it is openly accessible to the world.

ProQuest’s Dissertation Abstracts database is closed to anybody without a subscription or institutional access. When you pay them for Open Access, all it means is that whomever is using that database will be able to link to the full-text copy of your thesis which resides on their servers.

We advise our students not to pay the $160. We have our deposit defaults set to release the work immediately, however.

ProQuest should seriously look at the business model of Dissertation Abstracts since it is becoming obsolete. In fact, some universities are canceling their subscriptions to the database and some are no longer having their graduates send their dissertations to UMI. What’s the point if it’s made searchable and available on the web?

By: Michael Clarke

Michael Clarke — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:23:58 +0000

It seems like someone at Cornell has confused “published” with “accessible.” If Cornell prints your thesis on acid free paper with a nice gold-embossed cover and sticks it on the library shelf, it has been published. So the question of prior publication is moot. Whether it is publicly accessible electronically or embargoed is irrelevant. If a journal has a policy against prior publication, they certainly don’t distinguish between print or online publication.

In the humanities is common for post-docs to apply for fellowships with the explicit purpose of converting their (published) dissertations into (readable) books that are subsequently published by university presses. University presses don’t seem to think of dissertations as “prior publication.”

All that being said, I like the idea of having to travel to Ithaca to read your thesis. It could perhaps be set up in a special room with some Pims and a display case with your signature eye wear.

By: Hillary

Hillary — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:35:29 +0000

Sorry your institution is so limited in its conception of open access to dissertations. The institution where I work mandated an ETD (electronic theses and dissertations) program a couple of years ago, and no longer accepts print copies as a result. ETDs are deposited by the student in Proquest, and they are then made available in our IR as soon as we can get them in there. Students are able to request a maximum embargo period of 2 years, but there is no exception to the policy that they will eventually be accessible in Proquest and open-access in the IR. The majority do not request any embargo.