Submission, ProQuest, and embargoes

What happens after the defense?

The thesis goes to the graduate school for a format review, and then to a repository. The two are separate gates and the second cannot happen until the first is cleared.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, publication of the doctoral dissertation is required, and it is done electronically through the ProQuest ETD Administrator, with the cost of processing and publishing the abstract paid by the student.¹ Master's theses at the same institution are not published through ProQuest unless the student asks for it.¹

Practice differs by institution and the deadlines are firm. What is common to all of them is that this is administrative work with dates attached, and it sits outside anything an editor does.

The date worth finding early is the format review deadline rather than the deposit deadline. The first is the one that leaves no room to fix anything, because a returned document has to be corrected and resubmitted before the second arrives.

What is ProQuest, and do I have to use it?

ProQuest publishes dissertations and operates the ETD Administrator system that most United States graduate schools submit through. Whether it is compulsory is set by the institution: Wisconsin requires it for doctoral dissertations.¹

Many universities also deposit into their own repository regardless of the ProQuest choice. UC Riverside states that its dissertations are published in eScholarship, the University of California's repository, whichever ProQuest option a student selects.²

That double deposit matters more than students expect, because it is the reason an embargo behaves the way it does. A document can be restricted in one place and freely available in another, under two policies that were never written to agree with each other.

The question to put to your graduate school is which repositories will hold the thesis, and under what terms. Nobody outside the institution can answer it.

Traditional or Open Access publishing?

The difference is what the reader pays and what the author pays. UC Riverside puts it plainly: traditional publishing is free, and open access currently costs $95.²

Under the traditional option ProQuest sells access, and the dissertation reaches readers through library subscriptions. Under open access it is freely readable, which suits an author who wants the work found and cited, and costs a fee at deposit.

The decision interacts with the institutional repository. Where the university deposits openly anyway, as UC Riverside does, paying a second time for openness at ProQuest buys less than it appears to.²

Fees change and the figure above is one university's statement of the current cost. The structure of the choice is the durable part: one option is paid for by readers, the other by the author.

Should I embargo my dissertation?

Only for a reason you can name, and ProQuest names four. The first is patentable rights in the work, or other issues where disclosure would harm the author's interests. The second is the ethical need to prevent disclosure of sensitive or classified information about persons, institutions, or technologies. The third is the interest of an academic or commercial press in publishing the dissertation as a book, and the fourth is content likely to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.³

The available periods are six months, one year, or two years.³ Duke University's graduate school requires all new dissertations to be open access through its own repository, either immediately or after an embargo, which is a common arrangement.⁴

An embargo has a cost as well as a use. Work that cannot be read cannot be cited, and a candidate on the job market is sometimes better served by a readable dissertation than by a protected one.

What does an embargo actually prevent?

Less than the word suggests, and ProQuest says so itself. Its guidance warns that Google Scholar and other search engines are likely to find a dissertation through other access points, particularly the library or the institutional repository at the graduate institution.³

The restriction applies to the copy ProQuest holds. It does not reach the catalog record, the abstract in many cases, or a separate open deposit made by the university under its own policy. An author who assumes an embargo means invisibility has assumed too much.

An author who needs genuine confidentiality is asking a different question, and the place to ask it is the graduate school. Restrictions of that kind are institutional decisions, usually with a named reason and a documented approval.

Will publishing my dissertation stop a journal or a press taking it?

Nobody can answer that in general, and the honest position is that it depends on the publisher. ProQuest treats it as a live enough concern to list among its reasons for an embargo. Two of the four name it: the interest of a press in publishing the work as a book, and content likely to go to a peer-reviewed journal.³

What that establishes is that the concern exists, not how any particular journal or press will treat it. Policies differ, some have changed in recent years, and the only reliable source is the publisher you intend to approach.

The question is worth asking before the deposit rather than after. A deposit is difficult to undo, the embargo decision is made once, and the publisher who could have answered in an email is usually reachable months in advance.

Should I register copyright on my dissertation?

Copyright already exists without it. The United States Copyright Office states that protection is automatic from the moment an original work is fixed in a tangible form of expression.⁵

What registration adds is enforcement. Registration, or a refusal of registration, is necessary before an infringement suit can be brought for a United States work.⁶ Statutory damages and attorney's fees also require the infringement to have begun after the effective date of registration.⁶ There is also a grace period of three months after publication during which full remedies can be recovered for an infringement begun in that period, if registration is made before it ends.⁶

ProQuest offers to register on the author's behalf and nothing requires an author to accept. UC Riverside tells students plainly that they do not have to file for copyright through ProQuest, and can do it themselves or not at all.²

Who owns my dissertation?

You do. Duke University's guidance for graduate researchers answers the question in three words: the copyright of a thesis or dissertation belongs to you as the author.⁴

Depositing does not transfer that. What a deposit grants is a license to distribute, which is why the choice between publishing options is a choice about distribution rather than about ownership.

Two things follow. You can publish the work again elsewhere, subject to what you agreed at deposit and to any publisher's own requirements, and you remain the person responsible for the permissions inside it. We are editors and not attorneys, and a decision with this many permanent consequences deserves a conversation with your graduate school before the week of the defense. Every document a client sends us is treated in confidence, including embargoed work.