Guest Post — The Dissertation Publication Requirement: It’s Time for Reexamination
Guest author Rob Schlesinger encourages a rethink of the common requirement that graduate students publish their dissertations.
Summertime and Graduate Teaching (Still) Isn’t Easy
Upstream from the work of scholarly publishers, it’s the middle of the deceptively paced academic summer when scholars I know are often focused on conferences, research trips, and writing. Summer isn’t as frantic as the academic year, when every other […]
The Dissertation Mess: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities
The broad online availability of theses and dissertations creates difficult tensions between the individual rights of authors, the rights of educational institutions, and the responsibilities that both have to global scholarship and the collective good. How can we resolve those tensions?
Is Exposure Always a Good Thing?
A key element of open access is the notion that circulating information is de facto a positive good. Audiences benefit from access, and scholars benefit from exposure. But for the latter, at least, there is a case to be made for a […]
Whose Dissertation Is It, Anyway?
Another association of historians has recommended that students be allowed to impose limited embargoes on their dissertations. And so the question arises again: whose work is the dissertation, and who should control it?
Dissertation Embargoes and the Rights of Scholars: AHA Smacks the Hornet's Nest
A recent statement by the American Historical Association is generating heated debate about the rights and best interests of junior scholars, the market dynamics for scholarly monographs, and the competing needs of publishers, libraries, authors, and readers.