Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center Frequently Asked Questions
Last updated: 9/16/2004
What is the OhioLINK ETD Center?
The ETD Center is a free, online database of Ohio’s masters and doctoral theses and dissertations from participating OhioLINK member schools. It contains the abstract for all included theses and dissertations. The full-text is also available if it was submitted.
Why was the OhioLINK ETD Center created?
Retrieving a copy of a dissertation takes time and there is often a retrieval fee. The ETD Center eliminates the delay between searching and retrieving, giving researchers immediate access to the most current research occurring on Ohio’s campuses.
The ETD Center also provides more flexible publishing options. In addition to the standard PDF document format for text and diagrams, students can include music, video, and image files, increasing the strength and quality of many published theses and dissertations. Plus, electronic archiving in the statewide site eliminates the need for multiple physical storage facilities on each campus.
When was the ETD Center created?
In 1999, the Ohio graduate deans’ group, the Regents Advisory Committee on Graduate Study (RACGS), asked OhioLINK to create a single, commonly shared ETD site to represent the work of Ohio’s scholars. The ETD Center launched in 2001, as a joint project of OhioLINK and the Regents Advisory Committee on Graduate Study.
Who can use the ETD Center?
The ETD Center is freely accessible worldwide to anyone interested in searching, viewing, and downloading the theses and dissertations published in Ohio. Using a standard Web browser, users can search the database using basic keyword searching. Authors, university affiliation, and abstracts are all indexed.
What does it cost to join the ETD Center?
There is no fee to “join” the ETD Center. As a current OhioLINK affiliated library, your institution can elect to have theses and dissertations submitted to the ETD Center.
How does my institution join?
Ohio’s colleges and universities are invited to join and have their graduate students submit their theses and dissertations electronically. To join the institutions already using the ETD Center, your graduate school/program needs to contact OhioLINK. Each school is required to submit a list of degrees and degree programs and an email address used for notification when a paper is submitted. The site accepts theses and dissertations from Masters and Ph.D. programs and from undergraduate honors thesis programs.
How do I develop the program on my campus?
The graduate school/program or honors thesis program at each participating institution develops a set of procedures to handle training, submitting, cataloging, and archiving each submitted thesis or dissertation. For more information, see the examples of guidelines online at http://www.etd.uc.edu/, or http://www.gradsch.ohio-state.edu/Category.aspx?Category=7&itemid=11#Dissertations%20and%20Theses.
Can pre-existing, approved papers be submitted?
Institutions are free to submit and approve for use any papers for which they have the rights to do so and care to take the time to complete the submittal process and supply the PDF file.
Who can submit papers to the ETD Center?
Only students from institutions that are current ETD Center participants may submit their theses and dissertations. To find out if your institution is a participant, please contact your thesis office.
When should I submit my thesis or dissertation?
The OhioLINK ETD Center is a repository for complete, final theses and dissertations. Students should only submit their papers when their advisors have approved them or when instructed to do so by their thesis office. Once a paper is submitted to the ETD Center, the student’s grad school may publish, edit, or reject the submission. Once published, it may not be possible to make any changes to the thesis or dissertation, or to any other information supplied.
What are the guidelines for creating an electronic thesis or dissertation?
Each institution sets its own requirements for electronic theses and dissertations. Please contact your thesis office for guidelines.
How do I submit my thesis or dissertation?
Each institution may have a set of defined requirements for print submission, but the common process is to use the OhioLINK ETD form to submit a thesis or dissertation. Once the document has been submitted, your institution will be notified via e-mail. Upon approval, the document’s bibliographic information, abstract, and full-text (if desired) are included for public use. With your institution’s approval, you can select to have a set moratorium on the full-text document. Permanently restricting access only to your institution is prohibited.
How is the ETD approved?
Your paper will reside in a secure location on the ETD site where it may only be accessed by your institution. While there, the institution can modify or correct any of the submitted fields. Corrections can be made to names, dates, degrees, etc. The institution designates online when a paper is approved, and the ETD system immediately moves the paper into the publicly accessible site or holds it until the embargo date.
What formats can be submitted to the ETD Center?
We accept multiple formats and multiple files per paper. For example, a PDF file could be submitted with a data file. The list of acceptable formats is an institutional decision. As an overall rule, OhioLINK recommends file formats that are platform-independent, vendor-independent, non-proprietary, stable, widely supported.
Preferred formats include:
OhioLINK discourages the use of HTML unless authors take considerable care in ensuring that their markup conforms to published standards and that their use of links and inline images can stand alone in the ETD Center (i.e. no absolute links and no relative links to higher directories).
For reasons of long-term accessibility and preservation, OhioLINK will not accept documents in proprietary word processing formats such as Microsoft Word or Excel.
What about submission of the ETD to Proquest/UMI?
This can be controlled by the student and institution during the submission and approval processes. Papers designated for submission to Proquest/UMI will be electronically forwarded to Proquest/UMI through the ETD site at the time of approval by the graduate school.
You are responsible for knowing if your school or program requires you to send your paper to Proquest/UMI, requires you not to do so, or allows you to decide for yourself.
What am I agreeing to when I submit my ETD? What is your publication agreement?
Our publication agreement may be found here. Please take a moment to read and understand it before submitting your ETD. The publication agreement outlines what OhioLINK and your school may do with the copy of the ETD published in the ETD Center.
When will my ETD be published?
Ordinarily, your ETD will be published when your thesis office confirms the information in your submission and approves it for publication. Upon publication, your ETD will be freely available via the Internet from the OhioLINK ETD Center.
Some schools or departments allow you to request a publication delay until a specific date. This delay can give you time to discuss future publication options, pursue patent applications, or address other proprietary interests before the full text of the ETD is freely available from OhioLINK. Check with your program’s office to determine their policies on publication delays.
Can I publish a book based on my ETD?
Some students prepare books based on, or related to, their theses and dissertations. If you think you might do this, you should check with publishers in your field to determine their policies about books based on Internet-accessible ETDs. If recommended by a publisher and allowed by your program, you may wish to request a publication delay while the publisher considers your book project.
Publishing an ETD on the Internet often leads to greater sales of books based on it. Indeed, having an electronic work available on the Internet, and showing a publisher a large number of electronic accesses to that work, may help you land a book contract.
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.
What should I know about copyright and my ETD?
Copyright is a form of legal protection for original works of authorship, including works published online. Copyright applies to a work as soon as it is created in a tangible form, such as being saved to an electronic file. Your ETD is automatically protected by copyright, although you may choose the additional protection of registering your copyright. For further copyright information, please see the U.S. Copyright Office Frequent Asked Questions.
Copyright also protects any other authors’ works included in your ETD. Please consult with your program office about when and how to document your permission to use such materials.
What should I know about signing agreements with publishers?
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. During these negotiations you may want to discuss matters of timing and revision. You have the right to negotiate with a publisher to delay online publication of your ETD for a limited amount of time, if they request this as a condition on publishing your article, and if your thesis office allows this. 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.
My thesis or dissertation has been published in the ETD Center. Can I make changes to it?
Material in the ETD Center is considered to be a record of completed work, and in most cases may not be edited after publication. In rare cases, exceptions may be made to correct substantial problems in an ETD that affect its content. Published ETDs are generally not corrected for misspellings or typographical errors. Please send all requests for corrections to your thesis office, not to OhioLINK.
My thesis or dissertation has been published in the ETD Center. Can I have it temporarily or permanently removed?
Material in the ETD Center is considered a permanent part of a research collection, under publication terms agreed to during the submission process. OhioLINK does not remove a published ETD unless there are critical problems with its content or with the degree for which it was written. Such problems include, but are not limited to, plagiarism, incorrect or misrepresented research results, failure to complete the degree, or revocation of the degree.