Ohio University is working to have more thesis and dissertation information online, looking to require graduate students to submit part of their papers electronically sometime next academic year.
Currently, graduate students can submit theses or dissertations as an electronic file or in printed form...
However, for those who submit theses or dissertations in printed form, it might become a requirement to upload the abstract of their papers to university’s server sometime in the 2007-08 academic year, said Angela McCutcheon, OU’s electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) program director....
OU’s Russ College of Engineering and Technology and the Center for International Studies already are requiring that entire theses and dissertations be submitted electronically with no paper submission option....
Drew McDaniel, interim director of the Center for International Studies said the center wanted to make its students’ theses and dissertations accessible to people worldwide....
The number of graduate students who choose the electronic option has grown rapidly, at an average of 80 percent per year, according to research McCutcheon conducted. In the 2005-06 academic year, 70 percent of graduate students filed their papers electronically....
McCutcheon said more graduate students are choosing the electronic option because it eliminates paper and printing costs and makes the document viewable worldwide. “It allows other people in the world and in the scholarly community to view the research of Ohio University,” she said.
Julia Zimmerman, dean of libraries at OU, said that while paper theses and dissertations will be looked at 1.5 times in their life on average, ETDs sometimes are viewed hundreds of times.
Comment. Mandating electronic submission of abstracts is the tiniest possible step in the right direction and it looks like even this step is not assured. But kudos to OU's Russ College of Engineering and Technology for mandating electronic submission of the whole text. As I argued in a July 2006 article, for theses and dissertations, achieving mandatory electronic submission is the hardest part of achieving OA:
In principle, universities could require electronic submission of the dissertation without requiring deposit in the institutional repository. They could also require deposit in the repository without requiring OA. But in practice, most universities don't draw these distinctions. Most universities that encourage or require electronic submission also encourage or require OA. What's remarkable is that for theses and dissertations, OA is not the hard step. The hard step is encouraging or requiring electronic submission. For dissertations that are born digital and submitted in digital form, OA is pretty much the default. I needn't tell you that this is not at all the case with journal literature.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/07/2007 04:52:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
