DRAFT: Risks & Benefits of Electronic Dissertations
Part of the uniqueness of the academic world is the underlying principal that information should be transferred and knowledge gained should be made available to others. In this sense, access to information is considered a benefit, while there are also risks inherent to sharing your intellectual property.
This is a working draft, combosed by Jordan Lee and Brian Yandell.
Please send comments to yandell@stat.wisc.edu.
Return to ETD Page.
Some benefits of electronically submitting your thesis or dissertation:
- convey a richer message through the use of multimedia and improve the content.
- increase the availability of your research.
- lower the cost of submitting and handling, save space, time, and money.
- preserve it electronically.
- obtain skills in producing electronic documents.
Rather than make a paper copy, just give your committee and peers the web address (URL)
to your dissertation.
In the future, dissertations may include material that would not fit in a paper dissertation,
such as audio, video, virtual reality, applets, etc. They can link to established
data repository in the public domain which were used in your thesis.
Some risks of electronically submitting your thesis or dissertation:
- This is a new system, and issues to be resolved regarding formats.
Changes as standards are settled may affect submission and future access.
- Immediate access can give competitive colleagues an edge.
This can be overcome to some degree by delayed access.
- Intellectual property rights:
Electronic publishing might interfere with publication of chapters in some journals.
This varies from journal to journal and discipline to discipline,
and is in a great state of flux at this time.
We believe this will not be an issue for electronic dissertations in the long run,
but at present this is uncertain.
- Electronic publishing can interfere with publication of a whole thesis as a book.
Some publishing houses will not consider works that have appeared in any form on the web,
even if it might undergo substantial revision before book publication.
- Copyright issues about web-published material are not well understood.
- Plagiarism on the Internet is a growing concern.
Under widely accepted "fair use" principles, anyone can copy part of your dissertation
as long as it is for noncommercial purposes.
Ethically it is important to properly cite such work.
However, it is possible with cut-and-paste technology
to repackage large chunks of work as "new".
- convey a richer message through the use of multimedia and improve the content:
enhance graduate education;
more expressive;
in future possible to include color, hypertext links, data files, videos, audio, images, three-dimensional models, operable programs, virtual reality displays, animations, spreadsheets, databases, simulations ...;
supervisory committee might demand better quality for a thesis/dissertation that will be more readily available.
- increase the availability of your research:
reference list as a starting point to compile own resources;
empower universities to unlock their information resources;
international audience and sources;
your research is cited in others' publications;
Electronic theses and dissertations are easily searchable and indexed by keywords;
to help universities unlock more of their intellectual resources;
multilingual searching;
easier for potential sponsors to evaluate where to spend their monies, can link to the document in a proposal;
at the moment, access via interlibrary loan or UMI order, limited access via Dissertation Abstracts;
expensive, difficult, not utilized often in comparison to electronic; not as international;
stimulate education and research.
- lower the cost of submitting and handling, save space, time, and money:
paper documents can easily be produced from electronic documents, but not vice versa.
- preserve it electronically:
reference list as a starting point to compile own resources...
- obtain skills in producing electronic documents:
a future trend expect to continue and become more standard, new era of information handling and dissemination;
use digital libraries;
many journals require electronic submission;
useful if future teaching or researching;
prepare you to be a part of the world of research and publication.
- intellectual property rights:
depending on the system, might be harder to track who using material, potential copyright violations;
and right of first publication;
Transformative, permissions as related to copyrights;
On the plus side, electronic submission disseminates information without signing away copyrights;
can log all accesses?;
Publishing books related to their theses or dissertations on the plus side, electronic release of an early versions might lead to greater interest in the books (publishing and purchasing).
Books/articles related to theses or dissertations often significantly changed making it a derivative or translational work and not a copyright violation.
Talk to the publisher and understand their policies first, get an agreement in writing.
You sign an agreement with the publisher when you publish, so make certain you understand and accept the terms of the agreement. You can negotiate to retain certain rights (a "signed release"), but you must get it in writing, such as a letter permitting future publication in a dissertation. Reduced access might be part of the negotiation.
If previously published personal work wish to include in the thesis, can also cite that publication in your references - review definition of translational or derivative works in copyright law - you might still own the rights.
- plagiarism:
restrict access;
on the plus side, your research is cited in others' publications;
people give credit to you for your work.
- new system, issues to be resolved regarding formats, changes as standardize may affect submission and future access:
Libraries maintaining electronic dissertation/thesis would need to update the formats or archive the programs that run the older formats.
Easier and less expensive to reproduce an electronic work for a backup archive (without a loss of quality) than to do so for traditional paper works.
Departments, committees, or advisors may still require a paper bound version to be kept somewhere.
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What are "copyrights"?
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Many countries have laws that protect the rights of an individual to own property. There are also international treaties and conventions protecting these rights. Intellectual work that has been put into a "fixed form" such as a written document is considered "property". The originating author/creator has legal protections for their right to control the copies made of their work. This is "copyright " law.
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What is copyright registration?
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Copyright registration is a legal process of submitting a copy of your work to the government, and filing your ownership for the public records. In the United States the cost is 20$. Registration is not a requirement for protection. Registration is necessary before filing an infringement suit.
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When does copyright law protection start?
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In the United States, copyright protection starts the moment the "work of authorship" is created "in fixed form". The law applies to both published and unpublished work, to registered and unregistered work. The protection is there for works that display the copyright notice or symbol and for those that do not.
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Registration can be made at any time during the "life" of the copyright. If it is made early, then statutory damages and attorney's fees are available to the copyright owner in case of an infringement. If registration is made just prior to an infringement lawsuit, only actual damages and profits can be recovered.
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How long does copyright protection last? Can you renew it?
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United States copyright protection laws have changed over the years. A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 50 years after the author's death. A congressional Act (H.R. 2589), which has passed the House and is awaiting Senate action as of Mar 26, 1998, would change this to 70 years after death. Copyrights no longer need to be "renewed".
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Who can own the copyright to your own work?
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In the United States, the author who first created the fixed form is automatically awarded the copyrights. If a person is hired to create a work, then this is considered a "work made for hire", and the employer is the author and copyright owner. Part or all of the copyright owner's rights may be transferred to someone else, if that transfer is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights.
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When can other people use your work without your permission?
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In the United States, your copyrights are limited by the doctrine of "fair use". For example, a student can photocopy portions of someone else's thesis or dissertation, for "personal use". A professor could copy a journal article and show it to their students in a classroom. There is also a "compulsory license" under which certain limited uses of copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory conditions.
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Where can I get more information about copyrights?
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Internet Site: http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/
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What is Dissertation Abstracts International?
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Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) is a database of bibliographic information and the abstract of many doctoral dissertations and master's theses. The information is available to researchers, and can be accessed here at the University of Wisconsin via the electronic library. DAI was one way to get the information about your thesis or dissertation out to the public prior to the possibility of electronically publishing your work. (DAI is maintained by University Microfilms International, UMI).
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Internet Site: http://www.umi.com/hp/Support/DServices/products/referenc.htm
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What is UMI?
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University Microfilms International (UMI) is a company in Ann Arbor, Michigan
that maintains a microform archive and cataloging of dissertations and theses.
The information is available to researchers, and copies can be purchased from UMI.
UMI was one way to get the information about your thesis or dissertation out
to the public prior to the possibility of electronically publishing your work.
(UMI also provides an electronic database service called Dissertation Abstracts.)
In the future, UMI plans to make available online electronic versions of all works
they receive.
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Internet Site: http://www.umi.com/
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What is Dissertation.com?
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Dissertation.com is maintained by amazon.com, the Internet book company.
It is one of a growing number of commercial sites that market dissertation
publication on the web. The viability, and persistence of such sites is unknown.
Note that dissertations.com
(with an "s") is a separate site maintained by
Academic Research Group, Inc.
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Internet Site: http://dissertation.com/
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What is Dissertations.com?
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- dissertations.com
(with an "s") is a commercial site maintained by
Academic Research Group, Inc. Their goal is to assist
people in research, writing or editing of dissertations.
- Internet Site: http://dissertations.com/
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What is NDLTD?
- Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
is "an initiative to improve graduate
education, increase sharing of knowledge,
help universities build their information
infrastructure, and extend the value of
digital libraries". They have a site which can be reached as
http://www.dissertations.org/
or
http://www.theses.org/
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Internet Sites: http://www.ndltd.org/
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What is diplomica.com?
- "Diplomica is the on-line service for marketing academic papers such as dissertations,
masters theses, and the like. We offer the author of such papers professional and
international marketing, and allow the customer to retrieve well-researched,
cutting-edge papers from the Internet quickly, and at a reasonable price."
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Internet Site: http://diplomica.org/
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What is www.theses.com?
- http://www.theses.com/ is an index
to theses of the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Internet Site: http://www.theses.com/