From: Sean Andrews <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:12:59 -0500 I agree that education on these matters is valuable - and would be interested to hear from publishers if having a digital version of the dissertation somehow affects the market for the book. But otherwise, this seems to be a non-issue, at least in terms of the legal concerns. If this person doesn't want his dissertation sold through third party retailers, he can write ProQuest and they will remove it. http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/tpd_retailers.shtml If it is on Barnes and Noble illegally, he can contact them with a DMCA takedown notice: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/include/terms_of_use.asp Of course, if a digital edition exists in the ProQuest database, then it might be easier to redistribute it illegally (I found my 2009 dissertation through some illegal seller a few months ago - can't find the link now.) But this has nothing to do the legal code: just the software code. And the only other option is to (attempt to) prevent it from being digitally distributed at all. Since there are likely some legitimate publishers out there - and certainly many researchers - who read through dissertations to find possible books (maybe even more now that they publish fewer books and want to be discerning) it seems counterproductive to act like we live in a print only world. As many authors of works supposedly available only in print, who can likely find scanned pdfs of their work relatively easily online, this is head in the sand behavior. Piracy may be a problem, but if demand exists, there is little you can do to absolutely prevent the illicit distribution of your dissertation - except perhaps convince a major UP to print it, based on the obvious interest shown in the rough cut: then you'll have their legal department's muscle. Or might. I'd also point out that, for me, even though I was interested in digital distribution anyway (my dissertation being about IPR), the economics of the digital deposit for ProQuest were pretty compelling. If I had gone the "traditional" route, I would have to supply both my library AND ProQuest with a copy of the dissertation (all 450+ pages) on that fancy cotton paper. I don't remember the exact price, but I think it would have been an extra $100 or so to file in the "traditional" option. As it was, I sent ProQuest a CD-rom with the file. Now they have an FTP site set up to upload it directly. This makes the most sense anyway as their website says the only thing they do with the print copy is scan it in order to upload it. On the flip side, I have read through several very interesting dissertations complements of the ProQuest arrangement. Most of these will likely not end up as books - or at least they haven't in the last 4-5 years. For instance, though he has a PhD in economics from University of Illinois, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has never published a book on his theories or perspectives on economics. But you can find a deposit of his dissertation on the topic in the UMI database. Likewise, and more topically, Sharon Farb has an excellent First Monday piece on library stewardship and the licensing of electronic resources. http://www.firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1364/1283 It is based on a much longer dissertation writeup of her surveys of librarians. Since she's not published the latter in a book form, the best way to see the more extensive study is via the ProQuest/UMI database. I suppose there might be IR versions, and they might even have it on a website somewhere, but this particular database is a good, general discovery window (and one that, as far as I can tell, is only accessible via an institutional subscription.) The alternative is that these aren't even filed with UMI, which would make it impossible to have the post-publication peer review that is central to scholarly communication. I have encountered several such cases - especially among older scholars in my field who claim that it is too embarrassing to have their dissertation available for all to read - even through the old, onerous process Dr. O'Donnell discusses. I have my own opinions on this matter, I'll leave it for others to decide whether this is a legitimate claim - or if it should make them immune from the evolving scholarly conversation in which they claim to otherwise participate. It's a brave new world, but this particular issue seems the least of our worries. Sean Andrews On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 10:20 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:10:26 -0700 > > A Cautionary Tale" > > http://chronicle.com/article/Dissertation-for-Sale-A/132401/ > > This article from CHE reports a recent Ph.D.'s startled experience of finding that because he checked a box without thinking on the form with which he deposited his dissertation with ProQuest, his > dissertation was now available for sale for $32 on the Nook reader. > He objects, I think rightly, and I hope he can reverse the > box-checking. > > But what has changed is interesting. It was always possible to obtain some or all of most dissertations by writing away to Ann Arbor. But the process was cumbersome. Intellectual access to the existence of a dissertation came through the indices to the bound volumes of *Dissertation Abstracts*; ordering the product was done by hand and surface post; and the product was at best a grainy print from a microfilm of a typescript. Few bothered. > > Now it is a matter of femtoseconds for the metadata about the > dissertation to be searched by robots; a few more femtoseconds to > create the availability in a given format; and the product available > is searchable, handsome, and easily gotten. It's all gotten easier. > > And of course the original notion of a dissertation was that it was a > published work of scholarship; the deposit of dissertation was > technically "publication" (microfilm at Ann Arbor replaced the old > practice of the privately printed dissertation paid for by the > candidate), but I dare say few if any dissertation-submitters today > think of the deposit as publication in any meaningful sense. What to do? At a minimum, candidates could use better information about their options and the consequences of their options. > > Jim O'Donnell > Georgetown University