HOME

Frequently Asked Questions about ETDs

Won't dissertation directors and committees have to be carefully trained to produce ETDs?

The committee need not learn anything new for ordinary "flat" (i.e., not hyper-text nor including animations, etc.) theses. It can still read and comment on hard copy all the way through the defense. It will be incumbent upon the student to have the thesis converted and then submitted on line; existing labs such as those at Academic Computing, the Center for Literary Computing in A&S, and other presently existing facilities can help the student do that fairly easily. (The process is typically like feeding the final copy through a printer and filling in some online forms.) The beauty of this -- and the Virginia Tech experience bears it out -- is that there really isn't much of a learning curve for the student who wants to do a traditional thesis, and there need be none for the director and committee (although as time goes on, faculty will find themselves publishing in electronic journals more frequently, and so become conversant with the process themselves.)Marshall will have to provide some information on word processing techniques, just to be sure that students don't use courier fonts and the space-bar to manage all formatting problems (or similar typewriter techniques). For ordinary flat theses, the expected standards are pretty much the same as always, minus the concern about the rag content of the paper and with a shift to single-spaced text. For theses which exploit the abilities of the computer to do things one cannot do on paper, there are as yet no real thesis standards anywhere (although there are format standards for the components, e.g. mpegs for movie clips; jpegs for image compression, etc.) A student proposing such a thesis must have a committee whose members are interested in guiding the cyber-dimensions of the project, so some committees and directors might -- in the case of particular dissertations -- need to know something of the range of techniques for putting texts online. That will not affect most of us, however.

Why must I submit electronically?

By preparing an ETD and submitting it electronically you learn about electronic document preparation and about digital libraries. These skills will help prepare you for your future role in the Information Age, whether you teach, research, or use the research results of others. Furthermore, you may be able to better convey the message of your thesis or dissertation in an electronic as opposed to a paper document. Thus, you can easily have color diagrams, color images, hypertext links, and even include audio, video, animations, spreadsheets, databases, simulations, virtual reality worlds, etc. in your appendices. By submitting electronically you also allow your university to fulfill more economically its responsibilities of recording and archiving your thesis or dissertation. This is a key responsibility of the university, that is easier and less costly (in this time of tight budgets) to fulfill when the work flow involves electronic documents. Note that electronic submission is totally separate from electronic access. So, please realize that regardless of what is arranged in terms of access to your work, electronic submission is required, unless special circumstances arise and are accepted by the Graduate Office

How will people be able to access my ETD?

If you allow your ETD to be freely available worldwide, which we recommend (see below for reasons, and for discussion of other options), we will work to make your ETD as easily available as possible. First, we will allow access over the WWW, so people can link to our collection for browsing, and even link directly to your ETD (with a special type of URL that is not subject to change). Second, in the record for your ETD that will be in the Marshall Library catalog, we will have link information, so those searching that catalog can link directly to the ETD. Third, we will provide one or more search "engines" so that people can search the Marshall ETD collection using "full-text" searching. Fourth, we will have a mechanism so that your ETD can be found by any seeking to search the NDLTD (i.e., the full distributed collection of ETDs made available by institutions that are part of the initiative). Fifth, we will work with 3rd party organizations, such as UMI and OCLC (a not-for-profit in Dublin, Ohio that provides library cataloging and other services to libraries), to encourage them to provide access as well as archiving services.

Why should I make my ETD freely available?

The world of scholarship depends on people making their research available to others. When that is done electronically, more people can get access at lower cost, and more knowledge transfer occurs. This can stimulate education and research. It also can ensure that many people give credit to you for your work, and that your research is cited in others' publications, which adds to your prestige and can help your future advancement. We can log all accesses and provide a report to you of the count, to pass on to your supervisors, if you request this. Before theses and dissertations were available electronically, not many were read. Electronic access multiplies the number of times works are read by a factor of ten or more. Since you spent a great deal of time on your research, it should encourage you to know that others are reading that work. Your literature review may guide others, and your results may save others the time of redoing your study. With electronic theses and dissertations, students and universities can more easily share knowledge, with much lower costs. We believe that about 200,000 theses or dissertations are completed each year. It would greatly aid graduate education if as many as possible of these were made freely available. Since we aim to maximize access, we will not charge and so will not have any royalties to share.

What are the options regarding electronic access?