Open Access Theses & Dissertations: Airing the Anxieties & Finding the Facts
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Writing a thesis or dissertation is hard, and now that most theses and dissertations are deposited and distributed electronically, graduating students face an additional complication: they must decide whether they want to make their dissertations immediately open access (OA), or, at universities that require OA, they must come to terms with the fact that their work will be OA. In this presentation, I survey and scrutinize the anxieties and myths surrounding OA theses and dissertations.
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Open Access Theses & Dissertations: Airing the Anxieties & Finding the Facts
- 1. Open Access Theses & Dissertations: Airing the Anxieties & Finding the Facts Jill Cirasella The Graduate Center, CUNY jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu Slides: tinyurl.com/AccessAnxieties
- 2. Open Access Is… 1. No barriers to access: free online availability 2. No barriers to use or re-use: everyone has right to copy, distribute, search, mine, make derivative works, etc.
- 3. Public Access Is… 1. No barriers to access: free online availability 2. No barriers to use or re-use: everyone has right to copy, distribute, search, mine, make derivative works, etc.
- 4. Is Public Access Enough? Many say NO. Access alone is not enough to allow full benefit. The rights are crucial too. For electronic thesis and dissertations (ETDs)? For a variety of reasons, public access is probably as “open” as most theses and dissertations will get. So… For this presentation, I’m really talking about public access. I use the term “open access” loosely.
- 5. Finishing Isn’t Easy “moment of peak anxiety” — Kathleen Fitzpatrick, MLA
- 6. Finishing Isn’t Easy Stressors in the home stretch: • meeting deadlines • editing, citing, formatting • deciding when it’s done • worrying whether it’s good enough • defending • job seeking • etc.
- 7. Finishing Isn’t Easy And now there’s another stressor! • At schools with OA option: deciding whether to go OA • At schools with mandatory OA but embargo option: deciding whether to embargo, and for how long • At schools with mandatory immediate OA: accepting the OA fate of thesis/dissertation
- 8. Access-Related Anxieties Finding a Book Publisher (mostly for humanities & some social sciences) • Belief: A dissertation-based book is required for tenure and scholarly reputation. (Is this true now? In some disciplines, yes. Must it be so? No, but disciplines, and systems of prestige, are slow to change.) • Fear: A thesis/dissertation’s online availability will adversely affect prospects for turning it into a book. • Fever Pitch: In 2013, American Historical Assoc. pushed for six-year embargoes, arguing that “an increasing number of university presses are reluctant to offer a publishing contract to newly minted PhDs whose dissertations have been freely available via online sources.”
- 9. Access-Related Anxieties Finding a Book Publisher (mostly for humanities & some social sciences) • Is Fear Founded? Some publishers hold a prejudice. Most don’t, as evidenced by public statements by editors (numerous), informal surveys (Berkery quoted in Cohen, 2013), and one formal study (Ramirez et al., 2013). • OA Signal Boost: Some publishers credit OA with bringing manuscripts to their attention. Harvard UP: “If you can’t find it, you can’t sign it.” • Effect on Book Sales? Not really, according to YBP (listserv message by Zeoli, 2013; personal communication with Zeoli, 2015).
- 10. Access-Related Anxieties Enabling & Falling Victim to Misdeeds • Fear of Plagiarism: Yes, OA works are easy to plagiarize. But it’s much easier to reveal that plagiarism! (And time stamp can serve as arbiter.) • Fear of Idea Theft: Ditto. • Fear of Copyright Violations: Fear that bad actors will steal and sell OA ETDs without author’s knowledge. Yes, some faux publishers repackage and sell works previously published with CC BY licenses. But most ETDs are traditionally copyrighted, so mostly not an issue. (Thesis-publishing scams are an issue, but not exclusive to OA ETDs.)
- 11. Access-Related Anxieties Urge to Hide Juvenilia • Fear that thesis/dissertation is underdeveloped, not ready for public. • Urge to hide it until finished, polished, perfected. • But scholarship is an ongoing, unfinished conversation (ACRL, 2015). And theses/dissertations are a well-defined, well-understood, and valued part of it. (As librarians, we know researchers seek them out!) • Most readers understand the role of theses/dissertations and don’t expect them to have a book-like level of polish or be something they’re not.
- 12. Access-Related Anxieties Avoiding the Bad Means Missing the Good Those who restrict access to their ETDs are hiding them not just from bad attention but also from good attention! If an ETD is not OA, it is much less likely to be read by those who might provide useful feedback, offer career-boosting opportunities, cite it in their publications, bolster the author’s scholarly confidence, or silently appreciate the work.
- 13. Access-Related Anxieties Want More Detail? For a whole lot more info, see: “Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual” by Jill Cirasella and Polly Thistlethwaite. To be published (and posted on CUNY Academic Works) in 2016. Or email me for our latest draft: jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu
- 14. What Do We Do? At Graduate Center, CUNY: • All dissertations, theses, and capstone projects: Mandatory OA in CUNY Academic Works, with option for initial embargo of up to two years. Embargo can be renewed, up to two years at a time. • All dissertations: Mandatory submission to ProQuest, with option for initial embargo of up to two years. Embargo can be extended at any point, for any length of time (including permanent). Read more: “Your Dissertation: Why Academic Works and ProQuest?” (Cirasella, 2016)
- 15. Why Both? CUNY Academic Works: • Provides no-cost access to everyone • Global access in turn benefits the authors (increased visibility/impact, download stats, opportunities for feedback, etc.) • Highly discoverable via Google, Google Scholar, etc. ProQuest: • Collects dissertations from many (but not all) universities into ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global database • Shares metadata with 30+ databases (MLA, PsycInfo, ERIC, etc.) • Preserves all submissions digitally and on microfilm
- 16. Dissertations As Contributions Dissertations must contain original research that contributes to the author’s field. If nobody can access a dissertation, it’s not actually a contribution to the field! Access is not a new requirement! For 100+ years, universities have required that dissertations be made available to the public. Technology makes the dissemination easier, but it’s not the root of the requirement!
- 17. A Closing Thought “Until recently, the academy that nurtured the production of dissertations seemed to lose interest in them before the ink on the authorizing signatures was dry, abandoning them as gray literature unworthy of the limelight. . . . As a result, the authors’ hard work languished in obscurity on a bookshelf or behind a paywall upon graduation. . . . How dissertations in this environment really served the discipline or the author is unclear.” — Denise Troll Covey Covey, D. T. (2013). Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 11(2), 543-557. http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/522 Read this article!
- 18. Thank you! Looking forward to Q & A! Jill Cirasella The Graduate Center, CUNY jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu Slides: tinyurl.com/AccessAnxieties