From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 21:52:20 -0500

The shift, of course, came when dissertations were made available in
electronic form, either via subscription (ProQuest) or through open
access (NDLTD). Nobody in publishing worried about any competition
from sales of those horrible-looking blue cover UMI print copies. But
the free availability of ETDs made editors concerned that library
sales might be affected--and when library sales were already at
historic lows, that concern made sense.

If first books are not based on dissertations, then the whole P&T
process has to change. It is simply unrealistic to expect a junior
professor to do research for and write a whole new book given the
demands of teaching new courses and everything else a young professor
is burdened with doing, let alone turning out two books in six years.

There is also the potential loss from not having dissertations revised
and published. Would any of the books that have become classics after
their authors revised their dissertations ever have had the impact
they did if simply left to stand as unrevised dissertations in the
ProQuest database or as posted in IRs? They would not have entered the
mainstream of scholarship as they did, would not have been subjected
to peer review, been reviewed in professional journals after
publication, been considered for major book prizes, etc.

So I think this is a much more complicated issue than Jim's somewhat
cavalier dismissal of the problem suggests it is.

Sandy Thatcher


From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 20:27:48 -0400

Rick's institution's position should be recognized as a direct
reversal of the protocol that obtained from the origins of the modern
doctoral dissertation until very recently indeed.  The dissertation
was intrinsically a publication and its defense a public act:  the
public-ness was an important part of the institution and the defense a
formal coming-out party for the new scholar.  When dissertations began
to be Ann Arborized rather than published (I take the phrase from a
deceased friend who claimed to be the first, in about 1960, doctoral
candidate at his American university to Ann Arborize rather than pay
to have the dissertation printed -- he was an Irish priest with no
money to pay for it), then the eventual transformation of the
dissertation into a book from a university press became more common.

If we reverted to publishing in purely electronic form all
dissertations and acknowledging them as publications, what would
become of the first book crisis?

All that said, I don't know when I first heard of active, much less
acknowledged and condoned, resistance to publication, but I want to
say it is no more than 20 years ago:  I'd be glad to hear real data on
that point.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown


On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 6:45 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 12:55:22 +0000
>
> At my institution we require deposit of theses and dissertations, but we
> allow authors to put an embargo on public access if they wish. To deny
> them that option would seem to me like a pretty fundamental breach of
> academic freedom.
>
> ---
> Rick Anderson
> Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
> Marriott Library, University of Utah
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On 9/30/14, 5:30 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>From: Laura Czerniewicz <[log in to unmask]>
>>Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:08:37 +0000
>>
>>Thanks for a very useful list which I enjoy following. I now need to
>>get a sense from others. Our university Council recently passed an
>>open access mandate which inter alia requires theses and dissertations
>>for be deposited before graduation. Two of the faculties have
>>requested that the metadata be put up but there be a two year embargo
>>to allow time for publishing. What are the pros and cons of doing this
>>in others©– experiences? What reasons might one give in argument either

>>way?
>>
>>Thanks in advance
>>
>>Laura
>>
>> ________________________________
>>UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN