By preparing an ETD and submitting it electronically you learn about electronic document preparation and about digital libraries. These skills will help prepare you for your future role in the Information Age, whether you teach, research, or use the research results of others.

Furthermore, you may be able to better convey the message of your thesis or dissertation in an electronic as opposed to a paper document. Thus, you can easily have color diagrams, color images, hypertext links, and even include audio, video, animations, spreadsheets, databases, simulations, virtual reality worlds, etc. in your appendices.

By submitting electronically you also allow your university to fulfill more economically its responsibilities of recording and archiving your thesis or dissertation. This is a key responsibility of the university, that is easier and less costly (in this time of tight budgets) to fulfill when the work flow involves electronic documents.

Note that electronic submission is totally separate from electronic access. So, please realize that regardless of what is arranged in terms of access to your work, electronic submission is required, unless special circumstances arise and are accepted by the Office of Academic Affairs.

The University only requires electronic submission (though your committee and/or department may still want a paper version). It commits to electronic archiving of works received, making sure that these will be accessible in the future, regardless of changes in media and standards. This is a firm guarantee so you need not worry. Furthermore, paper documents can easily be produced from electronic documents, but not vice versa.

By not accepting paper, the University reduces handling and library costs, saves you money, and makes it possible for access to increase.

If you allow your ETD to be freely available worldwide, which we recommend (see below for reasons, and for discussion of other options), we will work to make your ETD as easily available as possible. First, we allow access over the WWW, so people can link to our collection for browsing, and even link directly to your ETD (with a special type of URL that is not subject to change). Second, in the record for your ETD will appear in the WVU Libraries MountainLynx Catalog, we will have link information, so those searching that catalog can link directly to the ETD. Third, we provide one or more search "engines" so that people can search the WVU ETD collection using "full-text" searching. Fourth, we have a mechanism so that your ETD can be found by any seeking to search the NDLTD (i.e., the full distributed collection of ETDs made available by institutions that are part of the initiative). Fifth, we work with 3rd party organizations, such as ProQuest and OCLC (a not-for-profit in Dublin, Ohio that provides library cataloging and other services to libraries), to encourage them to provide access as well as archiving services.

The world of scholarship depends on people making their research available to others. When that is done electronically, more people can get access at lower cost, and more knowledge transfer occurs. This can stimulate education and research. It also can ensure that many people give credit to you for your work, and that your research is cited in others' publications, which adds to your prestige and can help your future advancement. We can log all accesses and provide a report to you of the count, to pass on to your supervisors, if you request this.

Before theses and dissertations were available electronically, not many were read. Electronic access multiplies the number of times works are read by a factor of ten or more. Since you spent a great deal of time on your research, it should encourage you to know that others are reading that work. Your literature review may guide others, and your results may save others the time of redoing your study.

With electronic theses and dissertations, students and universities can more easily share knowledge, with much lower costs. It is estimated that about 200,000 theses or dissertations are completed each year. It would greatly aid graduate education if as many as possible of these were made freely available.

Since we aim to maximize access, which seems especially appropriate for a land grant university, we will not charge and so will not have any royalties to share.

• WVU gives you three levels of electronic distribution; graduate students submitting their ETD may choose the level which fits their situation. The WVU ETD Signature Form, that must be signed by you and your committee when you turn in the your final work, indicates your choice. For more information, see the WVU ETD Policy document available in pdf at: www.wvu.edu/~thesis/ETDpolicysummary.pdf
  
  1. World Wide Distribution The first option, recommended by the University and ETD Task Force, is to make the information freely available worldwide. It should be noted that this option may be viewed by some book or journal publishers as publishing the work. They may see a conflict with this level of distribution of the thesis or dissertation.
  
  2. WVU Only Distribution The second option is to make the ETD freely available only to computers at WVU campuses and as requested through our University Libraries' Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Department. West Virginia University Libraries' ILL Department will provide access via electronic or paper distribution of WVU Only ETDs. This option addresses situations such as when a book or article is planned, and the book or journal publisher is concerned that prior publishing through a digital library will negatively impact on sales. WVU only distribution will continue from year to year without special notification for a period of five years after the submission date, after which time it will revert to 'World Wide Distribution'.
  
  3. Restricted Access The third option is to embargo the thesis or dissertation. The university will determine, with guidance from the student and advisor, whether the embargo is for patent (or similar) purposes, and will so designate the ETD as "embargoed for patent/proprietary purposes." Otherwise, the ETD will be designated as "embargoed by personal request."

You should consider these options carefully. Feel free to ask WVU Intellectual Property or Legal Counsel for advice, and to discuss this with your advisor. If you intend to work with a publisher regarding journal or book publications, be sure you understand their policies and any agreements you would sign.

We are happy to explain these options further, beyond what appears below, and are actively working to document publishers' views regarding ETDs. Please note that you can help us prepare guidance for other students by completing the questionnaire we provide about reasons for your option selection, and about student practices and plans regarding publications related to theses or dissertations.

We realize that some students, especially in the humanities, prepare books related to their theses or dissertations. In those cases we strongly recommend that you approach likely presses, and ask for advice regarding what level of access to allow to your work.

Usually, books that relate to theses or dissertations turn out to be significantly changed as part of the editorial process. This makes it likely that those interested in your work will buy your book when it comes out, even if they have reviewed your ETD.

In some cases it appears that electronic release of early versions of a book leads to greater sales of such books. Indeed, having an electronic work made available on the Internet, and telling a publisher that there have been a large number of electronic accesses to that work, may help you land a book contract.

However, since publishers vary widely in their policies, it may be wise to share this letter and other documents about the ETD initiative with publishers to which you are likely to submit your work. For example, if they consider the market of your work to be very small, they may not want to publish it if it has been made accessible worldwide.

We are open to discussions with publishers regarding policies or helping in the publicity process (in case they do publish your work). For example, we could create a bibliography or database of ETDs and list all related articles, books, or other publications for each.

Part B of the form provides proxy provisions so that these individuals can increase access allowed to your ETD on your behalf.  We recommend 1 year as the most suitable choice.

For various reasons, the situation that exists when you first prepare your ETD may be altered with the passage of time. For example, if a book has been published, and gone out of print, and the publisher has no plans for further printing, you may change status from a restriction to campus, to allow worldwide access.

Similarly, if one part of your ETD was held back from worldwide access because it relates closely to a journal article, and that journal article has appeared in print, the journal publisher is likely to be willing to allow you to release your ETD with the missing part included. That is, if the publisher wanted right of first publication, once widespread distribution of the journal has taken place, that publisher may give you written permission to broaden access to your ETD.

ProQuest (UMI) is a corporation in Ann Arbor, Michigan that maintains a microform archive of about 1.5 million dissertations, as well as an online service called Dissertation Abstracts. Most dissertations written in the U.S. are submitted to ProQuest for archiving on microfilm, from which microform or paper copies can be produced. They function as an on-demand book publisher that eliminates the editorial process. One of the services they offer is to help you regarding copyright and working with publishers. They accept electronic submissions as well as paper submissions. The latter are scanned in and OCR'd, but in most cases current technology does not yield as good a result as would come from an electronic submission. They have made available online electronic versions of all works they received since 1996.  ProQuest has a representative on the Steering Committee and on the Technical Advisory Committee for the NDLTD.  More information can be found at www.umi.com. The NDLTD project focuses on graduate education and raising the level of knowledge transfer. Since students may wish to read a thesis or dissertation that was prepared many years before, it is imperative that the NDLTD arrange for archiving of ETDs, so they can be accessed even when media and technology change.  ProQuest as well as OCLC are interested in providing such archival services.

When you have your research published in a conference, book, or journal, you usually sign some type of agreement with the publisher. You should read that agreement carefully before signing, making sure you understand AND AGREE with the terms and conditions. If you don't, you may want to change the agreement in connection with discussion/negotiation with the publisher, and possibly with advice of legal or other counsel. The agreement should be explicit about what future rights of use you retain. If you want to include the materials in a dissertation or to reuse the materials for teaching or a book chapter, say so.

As the author you are entitled to discuss your plans with the publisher. We encourage you to obtain an agreement that allows you to include your research in a freely available electronic thesis or dissertation.

During these negotiations you may want to discuss matters of timing and revision. You have the right to negotiate with a publisher to reduce access to your ETD to your university only for a limited amount of time, if they request this as a condition on publishing your article. However, most publishers consider a thesis or dissertation to be quite different from a journal article. Typically the article is much shorter than the chapter or full work, has been revised as a result of the editorial process and peer review, and sometimes has several authors, resulting in many publishers having no concern regarding fully accessible ETDs.

If you have published an article or articles before you turn in your thesis or dissertation, and you wish credit for that for your graduate requirements, you have a number of options. These should be discussed with your committee, and possibly with your publisher. First, you can simply cite that publication in your references. Second, if the publisher has the publication online, you can link or point to it (with permission of the publisher, who usually has protection so that paying customers or subscribers are the only ones allowed access). Third, if the publisher gives you a signed release, you can include the publication in your thesis or dissertation as allowed in that release. If the publisher restricts access in that release, say to your university, you may want to have 2 versions of your thesis or dissertation--one with and one without the chapter (e.g., published article) in question.

This matter may be avoided if your thesis or dissertation talks about your research in a very different way from the published article. That often makes sense, since articles are typically short, and your thesis or dissertation may be the only place where all the details, data, tables, and other aspects of your research are made available.

Remember that preparing a thesis or dissertation is part of your graduate experience, one aim of which is to prepare you to be a part of the world of research and publication. While this letter may help make the philosophy of the ETD Initiative clearer, the ultimate success of the initiative depends on you. We hope you will treat this a part of your educational experience, and will take steps when you deal with publishers to help other students gain the widest possible access to your research.

WVU ETD FAQ Introductory Brochure (pdf)

WVU ETD Program Highlights Brochure (pdf)

Last Modified 18 November 2005
John.Hagen@mail.wvu.edu