While we are on the subject of Open Access, I thought it important to let all those ABDs in our audience know that ProQuest has launched UMI Open Access Publishing, whereby you can have your thesis published via open access – for an additional $95 fee. The fee is unfortunate, but I’m glad to know that this is now an option.
7 thoughts on “Open Access Your Diss”
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I guess this would make sense for anthropologists leaving academia after earning the PhD, but it makes no sense for anyone staying within the academy. If I’d dumped my dissertation as an open access document and not published it at a 3rd tier press, I’d have had difficulty finding a good publisher for my second, non-dissertation related, book and would not have likely made tenure.
Use caution when considering making your dissertation an open access document.
The two (creating an open access license for your thesis and publishing a book) aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Few books are simply the dissertation in book form, and the many years that can span the gap between finishing one and getting the other one out could mean that you are hurting yourself by not having your work out there in the meantime.
this is great news.
open access != dumping your dissertation
and your dissertation != your book
open access means that more people will be able to read and find your dissertation in the 2-7 years between when you graduate and when that book comes out, if it does. Too many people are sitting on dissertations that people want to read, either because they are self-conscious about the work or because they are trying to find time to revise it into a book. In the former case, get over it; in the latter the book is not going to be any better if no one can read it, discuss it, get excited about it, teach it, etc.
If you are serious about being an academic, then sitting on your dissertation for years seems to be exactly the wrong thing to do.
All you PhDs start saving that 95$ now, or asking your dept to subsidize it, and start thinking of ways to direct attention to your work, which will now be, at the very least officially, easily and reliably available, even if it isn’t yet rubber-stamped by a press. It can only serve you well in the revision process. It might even attract a few editors trolling for interesting work…
Yes, most authors rework their dissertations before publishing them as books, but if they are already published in some form, most presses have little interest in this.
Having worked as an assistant to acquisitions editors at two academic press I’d add that it is standard practice to ask all authors if their work is already available online or in some other “published” format. When authors replied that they had done things like posted their dissertations on the web, interest usually dropped to zero unless there were extraordinary other facts (e.g., in one case, the dissertation was on Afghanistan just as the US was invading post-9/11).
Sorry to rain on your parade, but you need to work out these harsh realities before you screw yourself building the false utopia of open source.
Um…. EVERY dissertation is already posted to the web on UMI. The only difference is how people access it. Ever used ProQuest Digital Dissertations?
And it is \”Open Access\” not \”Open Source.\”
How long ago were you working in publishing? I suspect a lot has changed. Many publishers have found that having material available online actually improves sales! Did you ever try printing out a 350 page dissertation? Most people would be more than happy to get the book out of the library (the main purchasers of academic books) or buy it in paperback rather than trying to print it out themselves.
The evidence shows that there’s little to fear in making a dissertation open access. See Gail McMillan, Do ETDs Deter Publishers? Does Web availability count as prior publication?, College and Research Libraries News, v. 62, no. 6 (June 2001):
For more on the case for open access to dissertations, see my article from July 2006.
yes but you must subscribe to UMI to use this service — it isn\’t free. Right? My guess is they looked at their figures, realized the average diss made about US$100 in orders, and then decided to do the thing that was right (morally and fiscally speaking)