Frequently Asked Questions about Digital Dissertations at the University of Texas at Austin for Faculty and Administrators

In fall 1996, the Graduate Faculty of the University of Texas at Austin approved legislation permitting doctoral students to submit their dissertations in electronic form. It also approved legislation requiring students to file an electronic version of their dissertation as of May 2001 (although students were not precluded from submitting paper copies of dissertations as well).

Although the 1996 Ad Hoc Committee recommending the legislation that was passed considered concerns regarding access and preservation of electronic dissertations, overall the Committee believed that the advantages of permitting digital-only dissertations and requiring digital copies of all dissertations outweighed the concerns. Among the advantages of submission in digital form that the committee listed were: ·

• Preparation of the dissertation may be easier and less costly.·
• Access to dissertations available through electronic forms would be easier, more rapid, and more economical. Moreover, dissertations directly available on the internet could be accessed through web search engines and such search engines, if they had access to interior portions of the dissertation, might pick up dissertations that would otherwise not be discovered through standard search methods that required someone to know of a database and then search it.
• Images, sound, and moving images may be incorporated into a digital dissertation, thus allowing for the communication of information that is otherwise more difficult to capture through prose only.
• More information (such as raw data files) may be incorporated in the dissertation through appendices or other formats; this information may be accessed more easily and economically.
• Digital dissertations require less space to store than paper dissertations, and libraries are moving toward the digital medium as the preferred medium of access and storage.
• Digital dissertations have portability advantages.

This approved legislation does have implications. The following set of questions and answers attempts to provide responses to the most common concerns of faculty and administrators.

1. Are students being required to stop producing dissertations in paper?

Answer: No. The April 1996 policy only opens up the option of permitting students who wish to do their dissertation fully (and only) digitally to do so. Students who wish to continue producing in paper may to do so with only one change in requirements-that they file their standard abstract and a statement where their dissertation is available on a University of Texas Dissertation web page (see below). We do have in the set of recommendations for Digital Dissertations that students must provide a digital copy of their dissertation for the UT archives after May 2001. This digital copy may be the URL where the dissertation exists, a CD-Rom, computer disks that are generated as part of the standard operation of word processing, or paper copies that are scanned to produce the digital record.

Answer: The April 1996 policy permits individual Graduate Studies Committees to approve for their programs submission of digital-only dissertations. In most cases, dissertations eventually submitted in digital form may be reviewed by committee members in either digital or paper medium; (the exceptions would be information in moving or audio form). We hope that the GSCs consider the opinions of their faculty members, and that faculty members abide by the general views of their GSCs. If a GSC has approved digital-only dissertations, an individual faculty member could still refuse to serve on a committee for whatever reason he/she believes is an adequate one. If a faculty member does not wish to participate in a digital-only dissertation, he/she could simply elect not to be on that student's committee. This does mean that the student should clearly indicate if he/she plans to do a digital-only dissertation at the time of putting the committee together or face the possibility that he/she may need to replace a committee member if that person will not participate in a digital-only dissertation.

Answer: No. The April 1996 policy only requires that they post on the UT web an informative abstract and an indication of where their dissertation (in paper or electronic form) is available. Students do have the option of making their dissertations available on the Internet, but that is not required.

Answer: Students will do this themselves by filling out a simple form directly on the UT web pages. ACITS and the General Libraries will be creating these forms and web pages, and will assist anyone having difficulty filling out the information. Nearly the same information that is currently requested will be required: the student's name, biographical information, an informative abstract, plus where the dissertation is published. (Students may also choose to send this information to Dissertation Abstracts to be included in that database if they wish.)

5. What are the students' options for publication?

Answer: They may make their dissertation available directly on the Internet through the UT server. Or they may send a paper or digital copy of the dissertation to an approved dissertation publisher (such as University Microfilms-UMI or Dissertation.com) or another commercial publisher; these firms then act as distributors to customers, charging a fee for access to the dissertation and returning royalties to the author. UMI is currently making abstracts available within their web site as well as the first twenty-four pages of a dissertation (although these abstracts and pages are not accessible to web search engines). Patrons may download the dissertation (as a whole) or purchase paper or microfilm as in the past. Information on UMI and Dissertation.com is available at their websites (see URLs below).

6. Since making a dissertation directly available on the Internet will be considered publication, will that harm students' ability to publish their work elsewhere?

Answer: It has always been the case that dissertations are published, usually through UMI. However, UMI publication has not harmed students' abilities to find other commercial publishers for their work, either in article or book form. It is the case that the direct access provided by Internet publication will alter the availability of work, and internet dissertation publishing (both directly through servers or through digital form from commercial venues) may alter the practice of revising dissertations and publishing them again. However, that situation is in transition no matter what the policies of UT are. Students will need to consider whether publication directly on the Internet may harm their ability to secure another publication outlet for the material, either in its original or a revised form. However, as indicated above, students are not required to publish directly on the Internet. Some students may believe that their dissertation in its original form will be more valuable to them if it is promptly and widely available through Internet publication, with little value in second publication form. Other students, however, will likely choose UMI (or a competitor), and attempt to secure another publisher for part or all of their work. Currently, students may request that their dissertation not be made available in any published form for up to one year. This policy would not change with the new procedures for either internet or traditionally published dissertations. Materials outlining these issues and the advantages of and problems with all forms of publication will be covered in guidelines from the Office of Graduate Studies. It will also be important for supervising faculty to advise their students about their options.

Answer: The University's legal counsel has checked the contracts for all approved publishers of dissertations to be sure that none of them require exclusive rights for publication. Students publishing through the UT server retain their copyright. Commercial publishers of dissertations recognize the common practice of revising a dissertation initially published by a venue such as UMI and publishing it "again."

8. Where will the dissertations be archived?

Answer: Students will deposit their completed dissertation to be archived by the General Libraries of UT and made available to UT patrons as has always been the practice. If they choose UMI as their publisher, UMI also indicates it will archive their dissertation.

Answer: Experts have been considering this process, and indicate that it is common practice to refresh data routinely. While we can never be sure that data will not be lost, the UT Libraries and dissertation publishers such as UMI have indicated their awareness of this concern and their commitment to use the standard approved practices to insure that this does not happen. In some ways, digital dissertations may prove at least as sure of longevity as paper ones since their wide distribution in electronic form may produce many more copies than may exist with the few paper ones normally produced. Students (and faculty) particularly concerned about this, however, may choose to continue to produce in paper or to use traditional publishing outlets.

Answer: Currently, the Office of Graduate Studies relies on the reputation of UMI to certify publication. That is, the student actually graduates before UMI receives the paper dissertation, converts it to microfilm, and "publishes" it. In the case of digital-only dissertations we may be able to receive confirmation from a publisher before the OGS completes the students' records for graduation. In any case, we would follow the same practices as we currently use.

Answer: The Graduate Assembly will need to approve including theses and reports. It can discuss when the appropriate time to do this should be-now or after the dissertation process is established and working.

More information about the digital dissertation project is available at: