Written by Louise Harrington, Assistant Repository Manager<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my first\never post<\/a> for this blog, I briefly touched on concerns that students and\nsupervisors have regarding the online availability of the thesis, and whether\nthat would impact negatively on their chances of securing a publishing deal. It\nis a common fear that if your research thesis is publicly available on an\ninternet platform such as an institutional repository then publishers won\u2019t\ntouch it with a bargepole and is one that motivates many requests for\nembargoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, a quick survey of some of the most prominent\nmonograph publishers shows that this is not actually the case. Uploading your\nthesis to an institutional repository doesn\u2019t constitute prior publication and\ndoes not automatically exclude it from being published in book form. Many\npublishers recognise that a book based on a thesis would undergo extensive\nrevision, so the original thesis being available is not an issue. Cambridge\nUniversity Press<\/a>, for example states \u2018A monograph based on a thesis would\nonly be considered for publication after extensive revision. Therefore, an\nembargo on the original thesis is not generally an essential requirement.\u2019 Palgrave\nMacmillan<\/a> and Edinburgh,\nLiverpool and Manchester University Presses<\/a> similarly accepts proposals\nbased on dissertations, even when they have been made available in online\nrepositories, as to be considered ready for publication, those dissertations\nmust have been significantly revised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is always advisable to contact each publisher directly to\ndiscuss electronic thesis availability and embargo length. Many publishers,\nsuch as Routledge, have no blanket policy but will look at each case on an\nindividual basis. The Office\nof Scholarly Communication<\/a> at Cambridge University and Sheffield\nUniversity Library<\/a> have useful pages on open access, publisher policies and\nPhD theses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you still have concerns about your work being made\navailable on an institutional repository, you have the option to select a Creative Commons<\/a> licence which clarifies\nthe uses that others may make of your work. There are six core licences of\nvarying degrees of permission. The most commonly applied licence for a thesis\nis the Creative Commons-Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works<\/strong>\nlicence, but you can choose another if you prefer. Two useful resources on\nchoosing a license are available at https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/choose\/<\/a>\nand http:\/\/creativecommons.org.au\/content\/licensing-flowchart.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In a wider context, there are many benefits to making your research thesis fully and freely available. By making your work available in full immediately, it Increases the visibility and exposure of your work, and can help you build your research profile. This can lead to higher citation counts, increased potential for international and interdisciplinary collaboration and funding and attention from publishers. Studies indicate that your research is more likely to be read and cited if it is available OA; Springer Nature, in their recent white paper The OA effect: How does open access affect the usage of scholarly books?<\/a> , note that \u2018Our open access books and chapters on average receive seven times more downloads, 50% more citations, and ten times more online mentions compared to non-open access books\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hosting your thesis on a repository such as ORCA enables it to have a stable URL that you can use to promote and share your work and allows you to track citations and usage statistics, and allows long term preservation of your work \u2013 no matter how many times you move jobs or location, you will be able to find your PhD thesis! It also ensures you comply with the OA requirements of research funding bodies, and means you are better protected against any plagiarism of your research as internet-based software can be used to detect similarities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written by Louise Harrington, Assistant Repository Manager In my first ever post for this blog, I briefly touched on concerns that students and supervisors have regarding the online availability of […]","protected":false},"author":1507,"featured_media":675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,5,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-openaccessweek","category-monographs","category-publishing","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/552\/2019\/10\/thesis-blog.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openaccess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}