do you have to publish your dissertation

Adapting a Dissertation or Thesis Into a Journal Article

Dissertations or theses are typically required of graduate students. Undergraduate students completing advanced research projects may also write senior theses or similar types of papers. Once completed, the dissertation or thesis is often submitted (with modifications) as a manuscript for publication in a scholarly journal. Thus, the dissertation or thesis often provides the foundation for a new researcher’s body of published work.

Writers will first want to determine whether the work in their dissertation or thesis merits publication. If it does, we then provide guidance on how to adapt a dissertation or thesis for submission to a journal.

Adapting a dissertation or thesis into a journal article is covered in the seventh edition APA Style Publication Manual in Section 12.1

Deciding to submit a dissertation or thesis for publication

When deciding whether to publish the work in your dissertation or thesis, first consider whether the findings tell a compelling story or answer important questions. Whereas dissertations and theses may present existing knowledge in conjunction with new work, published research should make a novel contribution to the literature. For example, some of your original research questions might be suitable for publication, and others may have been sufficiently addressed in the literature already. Likewise, some of your results may warrant additional experiments or analyses that could help answer the research questions more fully, and you may want to conduct these analyses before seeking publication.

You may also want to consider such factors as whether the current sample size provides sufficient power to adequately inform the analyses and whether additional analyses might clarify ambiguous findings. Consultation with colleagues can help evaluate the potential of the manuscript for publication as well as the selection of an appropriate journal to which to submit it. For information on selecting and prioritizing a journal (and tips for avoiding predatory or deceptive journals), see Sections 12.2 to 12.4 of the Publication Manual .

Adapting a dissertation or thesis for publication

Once a decision is made to convert your dissertation or thesis into a manuscript for submission to a journal, you will want to focus attention on adapting it for publication. By attending to brevity and focus, writing style, relevant literature review and data analyses, and appropriate interpretation of the results or findings, you can enhance the fit of your manuscript for journal publication. Editors and reviewers readily recognize an article that has been hastily converted; careful attention when reformatting the dissertation or thesis is likely to increase the manuscript’s potential for serious consideration and eventual publication.

There are several steps writers seeking to prepare their dissertation or thesis for publication can take beforehand:

• Look at articles in the field and in relevant journals to see what structure and focus are appropriate for their work and how they are formatted.
• Request and consider the input of advisors, colleagues, or other coauthors who contributed to the research on which the dissertation or thesis is based.
• Review an article submitted to a journal alongside their advisor (with permission from the journal editor) or serve as a reviewer for a student competition to gain firsthand insight into how authors are evaluated when undergoing peer review.

The original research reported in a dissertation and thesis can then be reformatted for journal submission following one of two general strategies: the multiple-paper strategy or the conversion strategy.

Multiple-paper strategy

The quickest strategy for converting (or “flipping”) a dissertation or thesis into one or more publishable articles is to use a multiple-paper format when initially writing the dissertation or thesis. This involves structuring the dissertation or thesis used to fulfill the requirements for a degree as a series of shorter papers that are already formatted for journal submission (or close to it). These papers are usually each the length of a journal article, conceptually similar, and come from the same overarching project—but can stand alone as independent research reports. Consult your university’s editorial office to confirm that this is an approved format for your dissertation or thesis and to obtain the specific guidelines.

Conversion strategy

A second strategy is to reformat and convert a dissertation or thesis into a journal article after completing your dissertation or thesis defense to fit the scope and style of a journal article. This often requires adjustments to the following elements:

• Length: Brevity is an important consideration for a manuscript to be considered for journal publication, particularly in the introduction and Discussion sections. Making a dissertation or thesis publication-ready often involves reducing a document of over 100 pages to one third of its original length. Shorten the overall paper by eliminating text within sections and/or eliminating entire sections. If the work examined several research questions, you may consider separating distinct research questions into individual papers; narrow the focus to a specific topic for each paper.
• Abstract: The abstract may need to be condensed to meet the length requirements of the journal. Journal abstract requirements are usually more limited than college or university requirements. For instance, most APA journals limit the abstract length to 250 words.
• Introduction section: One of the major challenges in reformatting a dissertation or thesis is paring down its comprehensive literature review to a more succinct one suitable for the introduction of a journal article. Limit the introductory text to material relating to the immediate context of your research questions and hypotheses. Eliminate extraneous content or sections that do not directly contribute to readers’ knowledge or understanding of the specific research question(s) or topic(s) under investigation. End with a clear description of the questions, aims, or hypotheses that informed your research.
• Method section: Provide enough information to allow readers to understand how the data were collected and evaluated. Refer readers to previous works that informed the current study’s methods or to supplemental materials instead of providing full details of every step taken or the rationale behind them.
• Results section: Be selective in choosing analyses for inclusion in the Results section and report only the most relevant ones. Although an unbiased approach is important to avoid omitting study data, reporting every analysis that may have been run for the dissertation or thesis often is not feasible, appropriate, or useful in the limited space of a journal article. Instead, ensure that the results directly contribute to answering your original research questions or hypotheses and exclude more ancillary analyses (or include them as supplemental materials). Be clear in identifying your primary, secondary, and any exploratory analyses.
• Discussion section: Adjust the discussion according to the analyses and results you report. Check that your interpretation and application of the findings are appropriate and do not extrapolate beyond the data. A strong Discussion section notes area of consensus with and divergence from previous work, taking into account sample size and composition, effect size, limitations of measurement, and other specific considerations of the study.
• References: Include only the most pertinent references (i.e., theoretically important or recent), especially in the introduction and literature review, rather than providing an exhaustive list. Ensure that the works you cite contribute to readers’ knowledge of the specific topic and to understanding and contextualizing your research. Citation of reviews and meta-analyses can guide interested readers to the broader literature while providing an economical way of referencing prior studies.
• Tables and figures: Make sure that tables or figures are essential and do not reproduce content provided in the text.

Penn State University Libraries

Copyright and your thesis or dissertation.

• Using Others' Work
• Reusing Your Published Work
• Your Copyright
• Publishing Your Thesis or Dissertation
• Frequently Asked Questions and Resources

Preparing for Publication

Norms around publishing thesis or dissertation material vary from one field to another. For instance, in some science and engineering fields, it is common to publish individual chapters from the thesis or dissertation before it is submitted. In the humanities, it is common to develop a monograph from the dissertation after completing a doctoral degree.

Whether you publish before or after submitting your thesis or dissertation, it is important to plan ahead when signing publishing contracts or submitting your dissertation. Will the publishing contract you sign allow you to use the article in your thesis or dissertation later? How does depositing in the ETD repository impact this? Can you use material that you've coauthored in your dissertation or thesis? For questions about the norms in your field, talk with your advisors. With Graduate School policy questions, consult the Graduate School's Thesis and Dissertation Guide . With copyright questions, contact the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright .

From Dissertation to Book

Thinking about transforming your dissertation into your first book? Hardly any dissertations are published as books without significant work on the author's part to refocus the manuscript for an audience beyond the dissertation committee.

Here are a few resources to help you understand the process of reworking a dissertation for publication as a monograph:

• Dear First-Time Author: How to Turn Your Dissertation Into a Book, by Theresa MacPhail MacPhail shares advice from writing her own first book as well as advice from editors at university presses.

In reading some of the resources listed above, you might encounter discussions of how having your dissertation available online (for example, in Penn State's ETD repository ) could negatively impact a publisher's willingness to look at your manuscript. Some authors assert that you should not put your dissertation online if you hope to sign a publishing contract. However, please note there is very little evidence to support this view. In fact, research has shown that publishers will indeed consider manuscripts that are revised versions of openly-accessible dissertations:

• Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers, by Ramirez, et al.

Attribution

This guide is based in part on Copyright for Dissertations , a guide from the University of Michigan Library Copyright Office, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license .

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• Writing Tips

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your Thesis Published in a Journal

7-minute read

• 25th February 2023

Writing your thesis and getting it published are huge accomplishments. However, publishing your thesis in an academic journal is another journey for scholars. Beyond how much hard work, time, and research you invest, having your findings published in a scholarly journal is vital for your reputation as a scholar and also advances research findings within your field.

This guide will walk you through how to make sure your thesis is ready for publication in a journal. We’ll go over how to prepare for pre-publication, how to submit your research, and what to do after acceptance.

Pre-Publication Preparations

Understanding the publishing process.

Ideally, you have already considered what type of publication outlet you want your thesis research to appear in. If not, it’s best to do this so you can tailor your writing and overall presentation to fit that publication outlet’s expectations. When selecting an outlet for your research, consider the following:

●  How well will my research fit the journal?

●  Are the reputation and quality of this journal high?

●  Who is this journal’s readership/audience?

●  How long does it take the journal to respond to a submission?

●  What’s the journal’s rejection rate?

Once you finish writing, revising, editing, and proofreading your work (which can take months or years), expect the publication process to be an additional three months or so.

Revising Your Thesis

Your thesis will need to be thoroughly revised, reworked, reorganized, and edited before a journal will accept it. Journals have specific requirements for all submissions, so read everything on a journal’s submission requirements page before you submit. Make a checklist of all the requirements to be sure you don’t overlook anything. Failing to meet the submission requirements could result in your paper being rejected.

Areas for Improvement

No doubt, the biggest challenge academics face in this journey is reducing the word count of their thesis to meet journal publication requirements. Remember that the average thesis is between 60,000 and 80,000 words, not including footnotes, appendices, and references. On the other hand, the average academic journal article is 4,000 to 7,000 words. Reducing the number of words this much may seem impossible when you are staring at the year or more of research your thesis required, but remember, many have done this before, and many will do it again. You can do it too. Be patient with the process.

Additional areas of improvement include>

·   having to reorganize your thesis to meet the section requirements of the journal you submit to ( abstract, intro , methods, results, and discussion).

·   Possibly changing your reference system to match the journal requirements or reducing the number of references.

·   Reformatting tables and figures.

·   Going through an extensive editing process to make sure everything is in place and ready.

Identifying Potential Publishers

Many options exist for publishing your academic research in a journal. However, along with the many credible and legitimate publishers available online, just as many predatory publishers are out there looking to take advantage of academics. Be sure to always check unfamiliar publishers’ credentials before commencing the process. If in doubt, ask your mentor or peer whether they think the publisher is legitimate, or you can use Think. Check. Submit .

If you need help identifying which journals your research is best suited to, there are many tools to help. Here’s a short list:

○  Elsevier JournalFinder

○  EndNote Matcher

○  Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)

○  Publish & Flourish Open Access

·   The topics the journal publishes and whether your research will be a good fit.

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·   The journal’s audience (whom you want to read your research).

·   The types of articles the journal publishes (e.g., reviews, case studies).

·   Your personal requirements (e.g., whether you’re willing to wait a long time to see your research published).

Submitting Your Thesis

Now that you have thoroughly prepared, it’s time to submit your thesis for publication. This can also be a long process, depending on peer review feedback.

Preparing Your Submission

Many publishers require you to write and submit a cover letter along with your research. The cover letter is your sales pitch to the journal’s editor. In the letter, you should not only introduce your work but also emphasize why it’s new, important, and worth the journal’s time to publish. Be sure to check the journal’s website to see whether submission requires you to include specific information in your cover letter, such as a list of reviewers.

Whenever you submit your thesis for publication in a journal article, it should be in its “final form” – that is, completely ready for publication. Do not submit your thesis if it has not been thoroughly edited, formatted, and proofread. Specifically, check that you’ve met all the journal-specific requirements to avoid rejection.

Navigating the Peer Review Process

Once you submit your thesis to the journal, it will undergo the peer review process. This process may vary among journals, but in general, peer reviews all address the same points. Once submitted, your paper will go through the relevant editors and offices at the journal, then one or more scholars will peer-review it. They will submit their reviews to the journal, which will use the information in its final decision (to accept or reject your submission).

While many academics wait for an acceptance letter that says “no revisions necessary,” this verdict does not appear very often. Instead, the publisher will likely give you a list of necessary revisions based on peer review feedback (these revisions could be major, minor, or a combination of the two). The purpose of the feedback is to verify and strengthen your research. When you respond to the feedback, keep these tips in mind:

●  Always be respectful and polite in your responses, even if you disagree.

●  If you do disagree, be prepared to provide supporting evidence.

●  Respond to all the comments, questions, and feedback in a clear and organized manner.

●  Make sure you have sufficient time to make any changes (e.g., whether you will need to conduct additional experiments).

After Publication

Once the journal accepts your article officially, with no further revisions needed, take a moment to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. After all, having your work appear in a distinguished journal is not an easy feat. Once you’ve finished celebrating, it’s time to promote your work. Here’s how you can do that:

●  Connect with other experts online (like their posts, follow them, and comment on their work).

●  Email your academic mentors.

●  Share your article on social media so others in your field may see your work.

●  Add the article to your LinkedIn publications.

●  Respond to any comments with a “Thank you.”

Getting your thesis research published in a journal is a long process that goes from reworking your thesis to promoting your article online. Be sure you take your time in the pre-publication process so you don’t have to make lots of revisions. You can do this by thoroughly revising, editing, formatting, and proofreading your article.

During this process, make sure you and your co-authors (if any) are going over one another’s work and having outsiders read it to make sure no comma is out of place.

What are the benefits of getting your thesis published?

Having your thesis published builds your reputation as a scholar in your field. It also means you are contributing to the body of work in your field by promoting research and communication with other scholars.

How long does it typically take to get a thesis published?

Once you have finished writing, revising, editing, formatting, and proofreading your thesis – processes that can add up to months or years of work – publication can take around three months. The exact length of time will depend on the journal you submit your work to and the peer review feedback timeline.

How can I ensure the quality of my thesis when attempting to get it published?

If you want to make sure your thesis is of the highest quality, consider having professionals proofread it before submission (some journals even require submissions to be professionally proofread). Proofed has helped thousands of researchers proofread their theses. Check out our free trial today.

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Revising Your Dissertation for Publication

While a dissertation’s in-depth research and analysis can provide a strong foundation for a book, the dissertation itself is not a book and will not be published by an academic press without substantial revisions. Some acquisitions editors are interested first books, especially if they bring new perspectives and fresh ideas to a field, while others do not often publish first books. If you are considering submitting your dissertation for publication, we recommend that you contact editors at university presses that publish in your subject area for guidance on revising your work. Many editors prefer to be involved in the early stages of this process so they can advise you on how to structure the book and your arguments to create a publishable book. Editors generally require changes in the length, content, tone, and style of a dissertation in order to produce a book that will appeal to buyers in the academic market. Read more about submitting a proposal in our Scholarly Publishing Guide .

Below are selected resources to help you revise your dissertation for publication as a book or journal article(s).

Advice from publishers

• Harvard University Press
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Rowman & Littlefield
• Taylor & Francis
• University of North Carolina Press
• Yale University Press
• Publisher Policies on using content in both a thesis or dissertation and an article (from MIT Libraries)
• From Dissertation to Book by William Germano (Lauinger Library, 4th Floor, PN162 .G37 2013)
• Revising Your Dissertation, Updated Edition : Advice from Leading Editors (updated edition, 2008) edited by Beth Luey (online; GU NetID and password required)
• From Dissertation to Book , Duke University (February 27, 2018)
• From Dissertation to Book ( full transcript ), Harvard University (December 17, 2010)
• How To Turn Your Dissertation into a Book , Yale University (April 6, 2016)
• From Dissertation to Book by Leonard Cassuto (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30, 2011)
• From Dissertation to Published Book (lanugageandphilosophy.com report on an American Comparative Literature Association workshop)
• Give It a Rest by Laura Portwood-Stacer (Inside Higher Ed, August 6, 2019)
• The Stages of Revising a Dissertation into a Book by Amy Benson Brown (Journal of Scholarly Publishing, vol. 52 no. 2, 2021, p. 127-140) (GU NetID and password required)
• Turning Your Dissertation into a Book (University of Washington)
• Publishing your Dissertation (American Psychological Association)

• University of Michigan Library
• Research Guides

Copyright for Dissertations

• Publishing Your Dissertation
• Using Others' Content
• Copyright in Your Dissertation

Copyright Questions?

The University of Michigan Library Copyright Office provides help with copyright questions for University of Michigan faculty, staff and students. Please email us with questions or visit our website for more information.

Legal Advice

The information presented here is intended for informational purposes and should not be construed as legal advice. If you have specific legal questions pertaining to the University of Michigan, please contact the Office of the General Counsel .

If you require legal advice in your personal capacity, the lawyer referral services operated by the Washtenaw County Bar Association and the State Bar of Michigan may be helpful to you.

Preparing for Publication

Norms around publishing dissertation material vary from one field to another. For instance, in some scientific fields, it is common to publish individual chapters from the dissertation before it is submitted. In the humanities, it is common to develop a monograph from the dissertation after completing the graduate degree.

Whether you publish before or after submitting your dissertation, it is important to plan ahead when signing publishing contracts or submitting your dissertation. Will the publishing contract you sign allow you to use the article in your dissertation later? How does depositing your dissertation in Deep Blue impact this? Can you use material that you've coauthored in your dissertation or thesis? For questions about the norms in your field, talk with your advisors. With copyright questions, contact the library copyright office.

If you are about to sign a publishing agreement, consider using the U-M Author's Addenda , which may help you negotiate and keep the rights you need in your work.

From Dissertation to Book

Thinking about transforming your dissertation into your first book? Hardly any dissertations are published as books without significant work on the author's part to refocus the manuscript for an audience beyond the dissertation committee.

Here are a few resources to help you understand the process of reworking a dissertation for publication as a monograph:

• Dear First-Time Author: How to Turn Your Dissertation Into a Book, by Theresa MacPhail MacPhail shares advice from writing her own first book as well as advice from editors at university presses.

In reading some of the resources listed above, you might encounter discussions of how having your dissertation available online (for example, in  Deep Blue ) could negatively impact a publisher's willingness to look at your manuscript. Some authors assert that you should not put your dissertation online if you hope to sign a publishing contract. However, please note there is very little evidence to support this view. In fact, research has shown that publishers will indeed consider manuscripts that are revised versions of openly-accessible dissertations.

• Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers, by Ramirez, et al.

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A Guide to Publishing a Dissertation

The moment your dissertation is accepted by your university’s graduate college is one of sweet relief. You’ve reached the end of a very long road, and the work is done. Or is it? For many academics, the siren song of pursuing publication strikes not long after the ink is dry on their diploma. The idea of seeing your name in a prestigious academic journal or emblazoned on the spine of a book is indeed tempting. However, submitting to academic journals or becoming a published author can be a lengthy journey of its own.

While publishing your dissertation may seem like the natural next step in your scholarly journey, there is a lot of work that needs to be done before you’ll see your research in a journal or your book on a shelf at your local library or bookstore. Completing your dissertation is the first step to becoming a published author, and there is plenty that you need to know before pursuing publication.

These are a few frequently asked questions about publishing a dissertation:  

• Can a dissertation be published?
• What do I have to do to publish my dissertation? 
• Who publishes dissertations?
• Why publish a dissertation?

Can a Dissertation Be Published?

Yes. Of course, this is merely the short answer. Since we’re talking about academia, a simple “yes” does not tell the whole story. While there is sometimes an assumption that dissertations get published by the university that granted the author their Ph.D., this is incorrect. Though the final revised and edited copy of a dissertation is bound and can sometimes even be found for sale on sites like Amazon, it is not truly published. 

However, the fact that your dissertation has not been published does not mean that you are automatically free to pursue publication. Upon submitting your dissertation to your university, you likely signed some paperwork related to your dissertation as a piece of intellectual property. You might not be free to pursue a publishing contract or publish on your own right away. You’ll want to read the fine print, in the event there is a required waiting period for publishing. 

Publishing Your Dissertation in Academic Journals

Dissertation research can be published in two ways; it can either be expanded into a book or pieced out into multiple academic articles. There are benefits to both approaches. While getting a book published often carries more prestige, academic journal articles allow for (relatively) quicker publication, while the research is fresh. Breaking your dissertation down into multiple articles also offers more opportunities for publication. 

To pursue article publication, first decide how to deconstruct your manuscript to separate your research into multiple articles. This will involve some revision and structural changes, but the natural “breaks” in your dissertation should already be clearly defined by chapters. The introduction, literature review, and the methodology/results sections can all be transformed into individual articles and submitted to separate journals for publication. 

When searching for journals to submit each article to, make a list based on your literature review and reference page. You may want to rank the journals by impact factor or another method, but make sure to submit your articles to top-tier or higher-tier journals first. If they are declined or heavy revision is suggested, you have a lineup of less-competitive journals ready to go. 

When I was a newly-minted professor in my first job post-dissertation, I chose to go the journal route and got my dissertation research published as multiple articles. While it does take some work to reconfigure each article into a piece of writing that can exist on its own, I’m glad that I did it this way. I was new to the peer review process and I learned a lot about submitting to academic journals. It was also a good way to add much-needed lines to my CV for my yearly performance evaluations. 

Preparing a Book Manuscript 

A dissertation is a very long document . It feels like a book, but in reality, your dissertation is not yet a book. Your dissertation is part of a book, and the work ahead of you is to complete your manuscript. You will need to add additional context, and probably flesh out the next steps of your research outlined in the discussion section of your dissertation into fully-realized chapters. What was formerly your dissertation will then be sold as an academic monograph. 

It is also important to note that the qualities that make a dissertation successful are unlikely to directly correlate to marketability. Your dissertation may offer a vital contribution to the body of knowledge in your field, but will it sell? Is it timely? Does it have a hook that will make it stand out in a competitive market? These are all questions to take into consideration when preparing an academic manuscript for a broad audience. 

Finding Publishers for Your Book

There are a few routes that can be taken when searching for a place to publish a dissertation as a book. The most common is academic publishing. (The other two are commercial and independent, both of which are difficult unless you have a built-in audience or a large social media following.) Every year, academic presses around the country receive proposals and offer book contracts to authors. Many of these presses are affiliated with universities, and their proposal requirements and contract terms are similar. 

Many manuscripts that began as dissertations land at university presses. If you are interested in pursuing a contract with a university press, go to their website and familiarize yourself with titles they have published recently. See if they are open to unsolicited submissions and look at their proposal requirements. If it seems like a good fit, consider putting together a proposal and submitting it. 

There are quite a few academic publishers and university presses, so you’ll need to do your homework to find the right one for your research. As an academic, one of my favorite parts of any conference is the book fair. I love perusing all the new titles from academic publishers and university presses, and it’s a great way to become familiar with many of them at once. 

Another benefit to these book fairs is that tables are often helmed by acquisitions editors. In my experience, talking to an editor for a press that I’m interested in is a great use of downtime at a conference. If you decide to do this, have an elevator pitch of your manuscript memorized and ready to go. If the editor likes it and invites you to submit, your proposal will go to the top of the inbox. 

Why Publish a Dissertation?  

There are a couple reasons to think about publishing your dissertation. If you are starting your career as an academic, particularly on the tenure track, publishing is an essential part of fulfilling your scholarship requirement. “Publish or perish” remains a very real aphorism in academia, and the more quality publications you add to your CV, the better. 

Publishing a dissertation as an academic monograph is also a great way to start making a name for yourself as a scholar. Being an expert in your field has limited utility unless you are writing, publishing, and presenting at conferences consistently. Publishing is a great way to establish your expertise, and having a book to promote can also help you secure lectures at universities and keynote invitations. If you have the time and the inclination, publishing your dissertation can pay dividends (not literally–academic monographs tend to earn their authors very little). 

While publishing your dissertation requires a good bit of transformation into a more substantial academic monograph, authoring a book can open a lot of professional doors. Though there are also other projects that will undoubtedly demand your attention–conference presentations, critical articles, new research–publishing your dissertation will give you an opportunity to finally close the book (pun intended) on your graduate research and set your sights on new horizons. 

Related posts:

Courtney Watson, Ph.D.

Courtney Watson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English at Radford University Carilion, in Roanoke, Virginia. Her areas of expertise include undergraduate and graduate curriculum development for writing courses in the health sciences and American literature with a focus on literary travel, tourism, and heritage economies. Her writing and academic scholarship has been widely published in places that include  Studies in American Culture ,  Dialogue , and  The Virginia Quarterly Review . Her research on the integration of humanities into STEM education will be published by Routledge in an upcoming collection. Dr. Watson has also been nominated by the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Rising Star Award, and she is a past winner of the National Society of Arts & Letters Regional Short Story Prize, as well as institutional awards for scholarly research and excellence in teaching. Throughout her career in higher education, Dr. Watson has served in faculty governance and administration as a frequent committee chair and program chair. As a higher education consultant, she has served as a subject matter expert, an evaluator, and a contributor to white papers exploring program development, enrollment research, and educational mergers and acquisitions.

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Princeton University Library

Phd dissertation and master's thesis submission guidelines.

The Princeton University Archives at the Mudd Manuscript Library is the repository for Ph.D. dissertations and Master’s theses. The Princeton University Archives partners with ProQuest to publish and distribute Princeton University dissertations beyond the campus community.

Below you will find instructions on the submission process and the formatting requirements for your Ph.D. dissertation or Master's thesis. If you have questions about this process, please use our Ask Us form  or visit the Mudd Manuscript Library during our open hours.

Ph.D Dissertation Submission Process

The first step is for the student to prepare their dissertation according to the Dissertation Formatting Requirements . Near the time of the final public oral examination (FPO) (shortly before or immediately after) the student must complete the online submission of their dissertation via the ProQuest UMI ETD Administrator website . Students are required to upload a PDF of their dissertation, choose publishing options, enter subject categories and keywords, and make payment to ProQuest (if fees apply). This step will take roughly 20-25 minutes.

 After the FPO the student should log on to TigerHub  and complete the checkout process. When this step is complete, Mudd Library will be notified for processing. This step will occur M-F during business hours. The Mudd Library staff member will review, apply the embargo (when applicable), and approve the dissertation submission in ProQuest. You will receive an email notification of the approval from ProQuest when it has been approved or needs revisions. 

The vast majority of students will not be required to submit a bound copy of their dissertation to the library. Only students who have removed content from the PDF to avoid copyright infringement are required to submit a bound copy to the library. This unredacted, bound version of the dissertation must be formatted according to the Dissertation Formatting Requirements , and delivered by hand, mail, or delivery service to the Mudd Manuscript Library by the degree date deadline in order to be placed on the degree list. Address the bound copy to: Attn: Dissertations, Mudd Manuscript Library, 65 Olden Street, Princeton, NJ 08540.

ProQuest Publishing Options

When you submit your dissertation to the ProQuest ETD Administrator site, you will be given two options: Traditional Publishing or Open Access Publishing Plus. ProQuest compares the two options in their  Open Access Overview document . Full details will be presented in the ProQuest ETD Administrator site.

Traditional Publishing

No fee  is paid to ProQuest; your dissertation will be available in full text to subscribing institutions only through the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global ; If you have an embargo, your dissertation will be unavailable for viewing or purchase through the subscription database during the embargo period.

Open Access Publishing Plus

$95 fee to ProQuest; your dissertation will be available in full text through the Internet to anyone via the ProQuest Database ; if you have an embargo, your dissertation will be unavailable for viewing through the open access database during the embargo period.

Optional Service: Copyright Registration

$75 fee to ProQuest; ProQuest offers the optional service of registering your copyright on your behalf. The dissertation author owns the copyright to their dissertation regardless of copyright registration. Registering your copyright makes a public record of your copyright claim and may entitle you to additional compensation should your copyright be infringed upon. For a full discussion of your dissertation and copyright, see ProQuest’s Copyright and Your Dissertation .

If you have questions regarding the ProQuest publishing options, contact their Author and School Relations team at 1-800-521-0600 ext. 77020 or via email at [email protected] .

Princeton’s Institutional Repository, DataSpace

Each Princeton University dissertation is deposited in Princeton’s Institutional Repository, DataSpace . Dissertations will be freely available on the Internet except during an embargo period. If your dissertation is embargoed, the PDF will be completely restricted during the embargo period. The bound copy, however, will be available for viewing in the Mudd Manuscript Library reading room during the embargo. 

According to the Graduate School’s embargo policy , students can request up to a two-year embargo on their dissertation, with the potential for renewal by petition. If approved, the embargo would apply to the dissertation in ProQuest, as well as in Princeton’s digital repository, DataSpace . Students in the sciences and engineering seeking patents or pursuing journal articles may be approved for a shorter embargo period. Students must apply for the embargo during the Advanced Degree Application process . More information can be found on the Graduate School's Ph.D. Publication, Access and Embargoing webpage .

Those who have been approved for the embargo can choose "Traditional Publishing" or "Open Access Plus" publishing when they complete their online submission to ProQuest. Mudd Manuscript Library staff will apply the embargo in the ProQuest ETD system at the time of submission of materials to the Library. In the case of Open Access Plus, the dissertation would become freely available on the ProQuest open access site when the embargo expires. The embargo in ProQuest will also apply to the embargo in Princeton’s digital repository, DataSpace

Those who wish to request a renewal of an existing embargo must email Assistant Dean Geoffrey Hill and provide the reason for the extension. An embargo renewal must be requested in writing at least one month before the original embargo has expired, but may not be requested more than three months prior to the embargo expiration date. Embargoes cannot be reinstituted after having expired. Embargoes are set to expire two years from the date on which the Ph.D. was awarded (degrees are awarded five times per year at Board of Trustee meetings); this date will coincide with the degree date (month and year) on the title page of your dissertation. Please note: You, the student, are responsible for keeping track of the embargo period--notifications will not be sent.

• To find the exact date of an embargo expiration, individuals can find their dissertation in DataSpace , and view the box at the bottom of the record, which will indicate the embargo expiration date.
• The Graduate School will inform the Mudd Library of all renewals and Mudd Library staff will institute the extensions in ProQuest and DataSpace .   
• Princeton University Archives'  Dissertation Formatting Requirements  (PDF download) document provides detailed information on how to prepare the dissertation PDF and bound volume (if you are required to submit a bound volume). Please take special note of how to format the title page (a title page example is downloadable from the upper-right-hand side of this webpage). The title page must list your adviser’s name.  
• ProQuest's Preparing Your Manuscript guide offers additional information on formatting the PDF. Where there are discrepancies with the Princeton University Archives Dissertation Formatting Requirements document, the Princeton University Archives requirements should be followed. Special consideration should be paid to embedding fonts in the PDF.
• ProQuest ETD Administrator Resources and Guidelines  web page offers several guides to assist you in preparing your PDF, choosing publishing options, learning about copyright considerations, and more. 
• ProQuest's Support and Training Department can assist with issues related to creating and uploading PDFs and any questions regarding technical issues with the online submission site.

Whether a student pays fees to ProQuest in the ETD Administrator Site depends on the publishing option they choose, and if they opt to register their copyright (if a student selects Traditional Publishing, and does not register their copyright, no charges are incurred). Fees are to be submitted via the UMI ETD Administrator Site. Publishing and copyright registration fees are payable by Visa, MasterCard, or American Express and a small service tax may be added to the total. The options listed below will be fully explained in the ETD Administrator site. 

• Traditional without copyright registration: $0 to ProQuest (online)
• Traditional with copyright registration: $75 to ProQuest (online) 
• Open Access without copyright registration: $95 to ProQuest (online)
• Open Access ($95) with copyright registration ($55): $150 to ProQuest (online)

Degrees are granted five times per year at Board of Trustee meetings. Deadlines for materials to be submitted to the Mudd Manuscript Library are set by the Office of the Graduate School . The title page of your dissertation must state the month and year of the board meeting at which you will be granted your degree, for example “April 2023.”

Academic Year 2024-2025

• Friday, August 30, 2024, degree date "September 2024"
• Thursday, October 31, 2024, degree date "November 2024"
• Tuesday, December 31, 2024, degree date "January 2025"
• Friday, February 28, 2025, degree date "March 2025"
• Thursday, May 8, 2025, degree date "May 2025"

Please note: If a student is granted an extension for submission of their materials after a deadline has passed, the Mudd Manuscript Library must have written confirmation of the extension from the Office of the Graduate School in the form of an email to [email protected] .  

One non-circulating , bound copy of each dissertation produced until and including the January 2022 degree list is held in the collection of the University Archives. For dissertations submitted prior to September 2011, a circulating , bound copy of each dissertation may also be available. Information about these dissertations can be found in Princeton University Library's catalog .

Electronic Copy (PDF) in ProQuest 

ProQuest Dissertation Publishing distributes Princeton University dissertations. Members of the Princeton University community can access most dissertations through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses subscription database, which is made available through the Princeton University Library. For students that choose "Open Access Plus publishing," their dissertations are available freely on the internet via  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses . Dissertations are available for purchase through ProQuest Dissertation Express . Once the dissertation has been accepted by the Mudd Library it will be released to ProQuest following the Board of Trustee meeting on which your degree is conferred. Bound copies ordered from ProQuest will be printed following release.  Please note, dissertations under embargo are not available in full text through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses subscription database or for sale via ProQuest Dissertation Express during the embargo period.

Electronic Copy (PDF) in Princeton's Institutional Repository, DataSpace  

Beginning in the fall of 2011, dissertations will be available through the internet in full-text via Princeton's digital repository, DataSpace . (Embargoed dissertations become available to the world once the embargo expires.)

Interlibrary Loan 

Dissertations that have bound copies and are not under embargo are available through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to libraries in the United States and Canada, either through hard copy or PDF. If PDFs are available, they can be sent internationally. 

Master's Thesis Submission Process

Students who are enrolled in a thesis-based Master’s degree program must upload a PDF of their thesis to Princeton's ETD Administrator site (ProQuest) just prior to completing the final paperwork for the Graduate School. These programs currently include:

• The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (M.S.E.)
• The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (M.S.E.)
• The Department of Computer Science (M.S.E.)
• The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (M.S.E.)
• The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (M.S.E.)
• The Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering (M.S.E.)
• The Department of Near Eastern Studies (M.A.)

The PDF should be formatted according to our  Dissertation Formatting Requirements  (PDF download). The Mudd Library will review and approve the submission upon notification from the Graduate School that your final paperwork is ready for this step. Bound copies are no longer required or accepted for Master's theses. 

Students who are not in a thesis-based Master's degree program do not need to make a submission to the library upon graduation. If you have questions, please complete the form on the Ask Special Collections page.

• Dissertation Formatting Requirements

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Copyright and publishing your dissertation: step 1: consider whether you need permission.

• Understand Copyright Basics
• Step 1: Consider Whether You Need Permission
• Step 2: Seek Permission If Needed
• Step 3: Address Non-Copyright Law & Policy Concerns
• Step 4: Address Publication Issues
• Additional Resources and Support

Step 1: Do you need permission?

⇒ Getting started when you're using work created by other people

• If you're using materials created by other people in your dissertation (e.g. you're including paragraphs of a novel, using someone else's photographs or drawings), you need to consider whether you need permission from the copyright owner of those materials to include them in your own work. 
• Step 1 of the Workflow gets you started with considering whether you need permission. If you can answer "YES" to any Step 1 question, you do not need to seek permission for including the third party's work in your dissertation, and can skip to Step 3.

⇒ Has a License Already Been Granted?

The first question to ask is: Has copyright holder already granted a license for you to include their work. Sometimes authors have already provided permission through grants such as  Creative Commons licenses . The license, itself, will identify the terms of what uses can be made without needing to get the author's permission first. 

If a copyright holder has not already applied a Creative Commons license, he or she may be willing (often for a fee) to grant publication permission under specific terms and conditions. Step 2 addresses how to ask for that permission.

⇒ Is the Work in the Public Domain?

Public domain works are open for use with no permission needed. Just because material is  online , however, does not mean it's in the "public domain." Public domain instead refers to works for which copyright protections have  expired , or works that  were  ineligible  for protection.

Copyright Expiration for U.S.-Published Works

How can you figure out whether copyright has expired? The UC has provided helpful general rules of thumb in its  Public Domain  guide. For more detailed inquiries, we recommend using Cornell's chart,  Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States ,  in combination with  the  Stanford Copyright Renewal Database . In brief:

Published prior to 1923:  Work is in the public domain.

Published 1923-1977:  I f the work was published without a © notice, it is in the public domain. If it was published with a © notice, but no registration renewal was ever filed, it is in the public domain.

Published 1978-present:   Work likely not yet in the public domain. (Remember, copyright is usually life of the author + 70 years).   

Works that Were Never Eligible

Ideas and facts

U.S. government works (although foreign government and state government works may indeed be protected, as may works funded but not produced by the federal government)

Scientific principles, theorems, formulae, and natural laws

Scientific and other research methodologies, statistical techniques, and educational processes

Laws, regulations, judicial opinions, and legislative reports

Words, names, numbers, symbols, signs, rules of grammar and diction, and punctuation

• Note, however, that while copyright law does not protect facts, an author's original compilation, arrangement, or selection of facts may be protected. In other words, factual compilations may be protected even where the facts, themselves, are not. And, while words or short phrases aren't subject to copyright, they may be protected by trademark.

⇒ Is Publishing the Content Fair Use?

What fair use is.

• Fair  use allows people to exercise the otherwise-exclusive rights of the copyright holder without having to seek the copyright holder's permission.
• But, fair use applies only under certain conditions (described below), and when use is for purposes such as teaching, research, scholarship, reporting, criticism, or parody.

Why it Exists

• Congress created rights like fair use for users in order to encourage creative and scholarly debate and knowledge.  Research and scholarship in the form of a dissertation seems like a shoo-in for fair use—after all, you're engaging in scholarship. But, the mere fact that you are using the material for scholarship does not inherently make use "fair." 

Fair Use is Based on a Four-Factor Test

• Your evaluation of fair use should apply the four-factor test set forth in  Section 107  of the Copyright Act. Those four factors, along with tips, are included below.
• ​You must consider each work you're seeking to publish on a case-by-case basis. This means that if, in one chapter of your dissertation, you are using two diagrams created by an author, and in another chapter, you are excerpting from a different book, you must analyze each diagram and the excerpt separately under the fair use factors.
• Assessing the four factors is never a legal certainty. To some extent, you will always be making a good-faith determination based on what we know of how the four factors have been applied in other cases.
• When considering these factors, keep in mind that the fair use exception is  purposefully broad and flexible  to  promote academic freedom, expression, education, and debate.
• The following questions that courts often ask when they evaluate the four factors can also help your own assessment:

⇒  Are you planning on using the work in a different way, or for a different purpose, than the original creator?  In other words, in copyright terms, is your use “t ransformative ”?

⇒  Are you using an amount of that work that is narrowly-tailored to your new purpose?

The Four Fair Use Factors

The purpose and character of the use, including whether the intended use is commercial vs. for nonprofit educational purposes.  Tip:  Uses in nonprofit educational institutions are more likely to be fair use than works used for commercial purposes. This may work in your favor for publishing the dissertation, but not necessarily a subsequent commercially-published monograph based on your dissertation. See the  FAQs  page for more detail.

The nature of the copyrighted work.   Tip:  Republishing factual work is more likely to be fair use than incorporating a creative, artistic work such as a musical composition.

The amount and significance of the portion used in relation to the entire work .  Tip:  Using smaller portions of a work is more likely to be fair use than larger portions, or portions that represent the "heart" of the underlying work

The amount and significance of the portion used in relation to the entire work .  Tip:  Uses which have no or little market impact on the copyright holder's ability to sell or license the original work are more likely to be fair. If the copyright holder offers licenses for uses similar to yours, use of the work without that license could harm the market for the license--weighing against fair use.

Document Your Fair Use Analysis With a Checklist

• Keeping records of your fair use analysis can be very helpful to show a court if your use is ever later challenged.
• One great way to keep a record--and to help you with the analysis to begin with--is to fill out a checklist based on the four fair use factors.

Jump to Workflow Steps

Step 1:  Do you need permission?

Step 2:  Seek permission if needed.

Step 3:  Address non-copyright concerns.

Step 4:  Address publication issues.

• << Previous: Apply the Workflow
• Next: Step 2: Seek Permission If Needed >>
• Last Updated: May 23, 2022 1:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/copyright-dissertation

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Degree In Sight

Publishing your dissertation

The process may seem daunting, but publishing your dissertation is doable if you follow some simple steps.

By Beth Azar

Although finishing your dissertation may be the final hurdle to completing your doctorate, getting it published may be an important step toward your career as a psychologist.

Indeed, academic psychologists are not the only ones expected to publish-research is increasingly a part of clinical positions, says University of Rochester Medical Center associate professor Robert Pollard Jr., PhD. And your dissertation may be the most logical place to start. Even if it's a small finding in a big field, your dissertation is probably a quality piece of work because it's been closely supervised by knowledgeable faculty, he notes. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy to winnow a traditional dissertation-averaging upward of 200 pages-to the lean 40 pages or less required by most journals.

Editing your dissertation means more than cutting out enough words to fit a journal's page-count.

"I can remember when I first thought about publishing my own dissertation," says Gary VandenBos, PhD, APA's publisher. "I was terrified. But the bottom line is, it's just work….It is not an overwhelming and impossible thing if you break it down into component pieces."

This process can be helped along if students think about publishing before they even start writing their dissertation, says Steven Yantis, PhD, director of graduate studies in Johns Hopkins University's department of psychological and brain sciences.

"I believe that the ultimate goal of publishing should be kept in mind so that the transformation from a dissertation format to a publishable piece is not a huge rewrite but a modest revision," he says.

And it's OK to pitch the idea of a short, pithy dissertation to your committee, says University of Victoria psychologist Steve Lindsay, PhD, editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General .

"The dissertation is a symbol of competence to work as an independent scholar," he says, "so its form should be that used by independent scholars."

If even after going through the process of preparing your dissertation for publication, it's not accepted, consider it part of the learning process, says University of Tennessee psychologist Gordon Burghardt, PhD, editor of Comparative Psychology .

"I often have manuscripts rejected," he says. "It's a learning experience. The important thing is not to lose heart and to listen to what the editors and reviewers are telling you, so you can get it right the next time."

Of course, even if you write your dissertation with publication in mind, you will still need to make major revisions to trim content and appeal to a broader audience than your doctoral committee.

Pollard provides a step-by-step guide for preparing a dissertation for publication in The Internet Journal of Mental Health (Vol. 2, No. 2). The first thing students need to realize, he says, is that editing your dissertation means more than cutting out enough words to fit a journal's page-count.

"The entire organization and thrust of the manuscript must be reconceptualized," he says.

VandenBos agrees. "The U.S. model trains the candidate in exactly the type of writing that journals do not want," he says. "Dissertation committees take a very inclusive approach, asking students to explain everything. In contrast, scholarly articles are very exclusive, excluding everything that isn't germane to the core topic."

Some institutions are turning away from this traditional model, allowing students to write several publishable articles that they then tie together with an overarching introduction and discussion, says VandenBos. Even then, many students have a considerable amount of work to do to transform their dissertation into a journal article, notes Pollard, who suggests taking a multipronged approach:

Select a journal. Many journals have their own style and submission requirements, so picking a journal and writing to its requirements from the get-go will save time, Pollard advises.

Through suggestions of mentors and peers, develop a list of potential journals, including some that may be outside your field but related in some way to your research. Pare your list down based on recommendations from your dissertation committee, says VandenBos.

Be realistic, but optimistic when choosing what level of journal to submit to, he says. "I usually recommend that, to start, students shoot about a half-notch higher than they or their committee members think their paper warrants," says VandenBos. "You have to be a little arrogant and pumped up."

Prune and prioritize content. Create a list of bullet points of your major facts and findings and select the most important ones by asking yourself: Does the reader really need to know this? Does the reader already know this? Is this so important that the reader needs to be reminded of it?

Selecting core findings was the hardest part for Simon Fraser University psychologist Deborah Connolly, PhD, who wrote a 200-plus-page "monster" for her dissertation at the University of Victoria.

"With all the analyses and all the detail, the simple take-home message was hard for even me to find," she says. "Today I would say to a student, you have to figure out the five most important points. If you want, you can order them all from most to least important, but start by just focusing on the top five."

If you can't find just five, you may want to break your dissertation into several different articles, says Burghardt. If there's a small finding that's particularly timely, students could even pull out the essential data and methods and write up an extremely concise research brief for some publication as prestigious as Science or Nature, he says.

Use simple, direct language. Even after editing, dissertations revised for publication tend to be too long, with wordy, passive sentences, and lots of formatting errors, including flip-flopping between "I" and "we" and mistakes with references, say journal editors. Those kinds of mistakes aren't going to win you any fans, says Burghardt. Connolly learned this firsthand. Editors of Child Development rejected her revised dissertation because it read too much like a cut down dissertation, she says. "It was too dense, too complicated and too difficult to follow."

Taking reviewer comments to heart, Connolly revised her writing style keeping things simple and focusing on only the most critical findings. Editors at Applied Cognitive Psychology accepted the rewritten article with almost no revisions.

Beth Azar is a writer in Portland, Ore.

The dissertation, start to finish

This article is the sixth in a six-part gradPSYCH guide to starting, researching, writing and publishing your dissertation.

Letters to the Editor

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="do you have to publish your dissertation"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Fair use, copyright, patent, and publishing options.

• Is information that you plan to include from others considered “fair use” and are you acknowledging these sources correctly?
• Embargo of online copies
• Creative Commons license
• Has a patent application been filed (or will one be) on the basis of your thesis or dissertation research?
• Register for copyright?
• Supplementary materials
• Make your work discoverable on search engines?
• Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

1. Is information that you plan to include from others considered “fair use” and are you acknowledging these sources correctly?

You are responsible for acknowledging any facts, ideas, or materials of others that you include in your work. You must follow the guidelines for acknowledging the work of others in the “Code of Academic Integrity and Acknowledging the Work of Others” (published in the Policy Notebook for the Cornell Community ) .

If you use any copyrighted material in the dissertation or thesis, it is your responsibility to give full credit to the author and publisher of work quoted. The acknowledgment should be placed in a footnote at the bottom of the first page of the paper or chapter. Additionally, you must determine whether use of the material can be classified as a “fair use” by performing an analysis of your use of each copyrighted item. The Cornell Copyright Information Center’s Fair Use Checklist ) is a helpful tool for performing this analysis. (See also, Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities , published by ProQuest, or The Chicago Manual of Style , published by the University of Chicago Press.)

If your use of material is not considered a “fair use,” you must obtain written permission from the copyright owner. Two copies of each permission letter must be submitted with the dissertation or thesis. ProQuest has specific requirements for the content of the permission letter. For these guidelines, consult the ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Agreement form (published by ProQuest).

If you have already published or had accepted for publication part of your own dissertation or thesis material in a journal, depending on the terms of your publication agreement, it may be necessary to write to that journal and obtain written authorization to use the material in your dissertation.

2. Embargo of online copies

The value of your dissertation extends well beyond your graduation requirements. It’s important that you make an informed decision about providing online access, via ProQuest and eCommons, to your work. This decision can expand the visibility and impact of your work, but it can also shape the options available to you for publishing subsequent works based on your dissertation.

ProQuest’s ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) database indexes almost all dissertations published in the U.S. and provides subscription access online to the full text of more recent dissertations. ProQuest also sells print copies of dissertations, paying royalties to authors, when they exceed a minimum threshold. Authors retain copyright in the works they submit to ProQuest.

eCommons is a service of the Cornell University Library that provides long-term, online access to Cornell-related content of enduring value. Electronic theses and dissertations deposited in eCommons, unless subject to embargo, are freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. When submitting to eCommons, you retain copyright in your work. Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses submitted to ProQuest are automatically submitted to eCommons, subject to the same embargo you select for ProQuest.

Electronic copies of dissertations in PQDT or eCommons may be made accessible immediately upon submission or after an embargo period of six months, one year, or two years. You may wish to consider an embargo period which helps address publishers’ interests in being the first to publish scholarly books or articles, while also ensuring that scholarship is accessible to the general public within a reasonable period of time. Your decision should be made in consultation with your special committee.

3. Creative Commons license

Creative Commons licenses provide authors with a straightforward and standardized means of prospectively granting certain permissions to potential users of the author’s material. Authors may request proper attribution, permit copying and the creation of derivative works, request that others share derivative works under the same terms, and allow or disallow commercial uses. Authors may even choose to place their works directly into the public domain. You will have the option of selecting a Creative Commons license when you upload your dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, and your choice will automatically be applied to the copy of your work in eCommons.

4. Has a patent application been filed (or will one be) on the basis of your thesis or dissertation research?

Cornell University Policy 1.5 governs inventions and related property rights. Inventions made by faculty, staff, and students must be disclosed to the Center for Technology Licensing at Cornell University (CTL). Theses and dissertations describing patentable research should be withheld from publication, in order to avoid premature public disclosure.

Use the delayed release (embargo) option if a patent application is or will be in process, noting the reason for the delay as “patent pending.” If you have any questions, please contact Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing at 607-254-4698 or [email protected] .

5. Register for copyright?

Copyright law involves many complex issues that are relevant to you as a graduate student, both in protecting your own work and in referencing the work of others. Discussion of copyright in this publication is not meant to substitute for the legal advice of qualified attorneys. A more detailed discussion of copyright law can be found in the publication from ProQuest entitled Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities by Kenneth D. Crews.

Copyright protection automatically exists from the time the work is created in fixed form and the copyright immediately becomes the property of the author. Registration with the United States Copyright Office is not required to secure copyright; rather it is a legal formality to place on public record the basic facts of a particular copyright. Although not a condition of copyright protection itself, registering the copyright is ordinarily necessary before any infringement suits can be filed in court.

To register a copyright for your dissertation or thesis, register online or download printable forms . You may also request forms by mail from the Information Section, U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559, or contact them by telephone at 202-707-3000.

Doctoral candidates: You may authorize ProQuest to file, on your behalf, an application for copyright registration. This option will be presented to you as part of the submission process.

6. Supplementary materials

If supplementary materials (audio, video, datasets, etc., up to 2GB per file) are part of your thesis or dissertation, you may submit them as supplementary files during the online submission process. For help selecting long-lived file formats, note ProQuest’s guidance in their document, “Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission (Including Supplemental Files).” File formats for which ProQuest does not guarantee migration may still have a high likelihood of preservation in Cornell’s digital repository; please see the eCommons help page for further guidance.

Do not embed media files in the PDF version of your thesis or dissertation, as this can significantly increase the size of the file and make it difficult to download and access. Include a description of each supplementary file in the abstract of your thesis or dissertation. You may include an additional supplementary file containing more detailed information about the supplementary materials as a “readme” file or other form of documentation; this is particularly advisable for data sets or code. The Research Data Management Service Group ( [email protected] ) offers assistance in preparing and documenting data sets for online distribution.

7. Make your work discoverable on search engines?

ProQuest offers authors the option of making their graduate work discoverable through major search engines including Yahoo, Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books. If you chose the Search Engine option on their dissertation “paper” publishing agreement or within ProQuest’s PROQUEST ETD Administrator (electronic submission service), you can expect to have your work appear in the major search engines.

If you change your mind and do not want your work to be made available through search engines, you can contact customer service at [email protected] or 800-521-0600 ext. 77020. In addition, if you did not initially adopt this option but now want your works made available through this service, contact the customer service group to change your selection.

Please note that search engines index content in eCommons, regardless of the choice you make for ProQuest.

8. Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

When creating a PDF version of your thesis or dissertation it is important to keep in mind that readers may use assistive technology such as screen readers to access your document.  Follow best practices to ensure that your thesis or dissertation is accessible to everyone.  These resources may be helpful:

• Cornell CIT’s guidance for creating accessible PDFs
• Checking accessibility using Acrobat Pro
• Embedding alternative text for images in Word
• Save a Word doc as an accessible PDF

How to turn your dissertation into journal articles

How-to-turn-your-dissertation-into-journal-articles.

Eva Lantsoght, Assistant Professor, Universidad San Francisco de Quito

August 06, 2015

Depending on your institution's guidelines, you will either finish your PhD by having a number of papers accepted for publication, or by writing a "big book"-style thesis.

This post is entirely aimed at those of us who spend months on end delivering a thesis of several hundreds of pages. We might be overly proud of having our baby finally sent out into the world, but then it will dawn upon us: the majority of researchers would prefer to read a 10-page paper about a more specific part of this research than plow through our 400 pages of labor. The only one who would ever want to read through it all and spend an entire week making sense of your thesis is a fellow PhD student….

And thus, for most of us "big book"-thesis-writing-and-publishing folks, we'll need to revisit all our material again after publication of the thesis, and turn it into a number of journal papers.

If you are lucky enough to get into a post-doc position that is fully research-oriented, you have all the time (or at least, you might think you have) to write your papers. If you venture out into the industry, you'll have to do it in your evenings and weekends.

Regardless of the time constraints , it's still extremely valuable to take the step of turning your dissertation into journal papers. Two years past my thesis defense, I'm reaching the end of this process (with a number of papers published, a number in review and a few more to write). Below are some of my observations on the process.

1. Plan for it

After you graduate, life is going to take over. You might be changing jobs, moving to a different place/city/country , and these papers might start to slip to the back of your mind. Take some time while your dissertation is still freshly printed, and ask yourself the following questions:

• Which chapters or subchapters would serve as a good journal paper?
• Which journal should I submit my work to?
• How much time do I think I need for writing this paper?

Then, start planning paper by paper . I’m keeping an overview in a Google docs spreadsheet with the papers, the journals I want to submit to, and the tentative self-imposed deadlines. My goal is to produce six new drafts per year, but some months are entirely filled with dealing with reviewers’ comments, delivering research reports with new work, or teaching duties. I typically give my co-authors (maximum) a month to send their feedback. The feedback is usually limited, so I might need just a morning to make a few changes, and then submit. I plan to start writing the next paper (or replying to reviewers’ comments and reworking the manuscript) whenever the draft of the previous one is done, so that I create a constant stream of writing, revising, sending to co-authors and submitting.

2. Enlist some good co-authors

Now that you have -hopefully- worked well with your thesis committee members, and implemented their advice to deliver the final draft of your dissertation, is there any part of your research that particularly benefited from their input? If you are planning to write a paper on this topic, consider inviting this committee member to be a co-author.

Writing with authors other than your supervisor will improve your writing, and is typically well-received in most fields. Publishing with different authors shows that you can work across research groups and universities and that you are ready to reach out into the world.

3. Remember that not all papers are born equal

Some papers will roll out from your dissertation in just a few writing sessions . For other papers you'll be sweating and sighing as you try to force a piece of research into a stand-alone narrative. Don't get mad at yourself or your work - just accept this fact as it is. And if the frustration becomes too much, head to the gym, grab some chocolate or do whatever typically relieves your stress.

Have you published several papers from the work in your dissertation? How did you organize this, and what advice would you like to share with me?

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Submitting your dissertation.

The process of having your dissertation reviewed and approved.

This expert advice comes from  Sonja Foss and William Waters - authors of   Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation

In the context of this piece, submission refers to the process of having your dissertation reviewed and approved. The submission process entails several other steps necessary to clear you for graduation at your institution. The exact elements of a submission and clearance process may vary from institution to institution. However, there are some pretty standard components of the process across institutions. These may include the following:

• Verification that you have submitted an oral exam report. This document is an evaluation of your oral defense.
• Verification that your dissertation has been approved and accepted by your dissertation chair and committee. You may be required to provide a signed approval page.
• Certification that all degree requirements have been met and student has been approved for degree conferral.
• Completion of the Survey of Earned Doctorates. A survey of all doctoral students eligible for graduation conducted by the National Science Foundation.
• Completion of the school's on-line exit survey. Some schools use the survey as a satisfaction index and last effort to collect information about their students' overall learning experience at the institution.
• A review of the dissertation manuscript. This would usually entail a staff member from the Graduate School, and sometimes from the library, scrutinizing your manuscript to be certain that it complies all of the institution's specified formatting requirements. Guidelines to these formatting requirements should be consulted before you start the first chapter of your manuscript. It should be consulted periodically to be sure that as the writing progresses your manuscript remains consistent with formatting requirements. Check to see if tables, charts, images, footnotes, margins, and page numbers are all consistent with guidelines. Formatting guidelines can usually be found in the Graduate School and Library online resource pages. Campus writing centers can also guide you to these formatting materials.
• Release of the manuscript for publication. Over 90% of dissertations produced by graduates of research institutions are published. For many institutions, the submission process culminates with the submission of the manuscript and/or abstract and index to the historical and now global database. Scholars from around the world in 3000 research libraries are able to access the work. The manuscript becomes part of the institution's scholarly profile and record. 

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Academic Publishing

How to Get Your Dissertation Published in the UK

Congratulations on completing your dissertation! It is a great achievement, and now it is time to share your research with the rest of the world by publishing it. Publishing your dissertation in the UK can be a significant step in your academic career.  

It can also be a daunting task if you are not familiar with the process. In this article, we will guide you through the 8 steps and at the end of it, you will master how to get your dissertation published in the UK.

Choose a Publisher When Publishing Dissertation

The first step in publishing your dissertation is to choose a publisher. You can consider publishing with an academic publisher or a university press. Make sure to choose a reputable publisher with experience in your field of study.

Lambert Academic Publishing is a reputable publisher that specializes in publishing dissertations and scholarly books. We offer a wide range of services to help you publish your dissertation, including marketing. All you need is to check the steps on  how to publish with us . 

Check the Publisher’s Submission Guidelines

 Once you have chosen a publisher, check their submission guidelines carefully. This will help you understand what the publisher is looking for and how to format your manuscript accordingly. Some publishers have specific formatting requirements, so make sure you follow them closely.

Prepare your Manuscript

Before submitting your manuscript, you need to prepare it for publication. This involves proofreading and editing your work, making sure that it adheres to the submission guidelines, and creating an abstract and a table of contents. You may also need to format your references and citations in a specific style.

 Submit your Manuscript

Once your manuscript is ready, you can submit it to the publisher. Most publishers have an online submission system , so make sure you follow the instructions carefully. You may also need to submit a cover letter and a CV.

 Wait for the Peer-Review Process

After you submit your manuscript, it will go through a peer-review process. This is where experts in your field of study review your work and provide feedback. The review process can take several weeks to several months, depending on the publisher.

Revise Your Manuscript

If your manuscript is accepted for publication, you will need to revise it based on the feedback you received during the peer-review process. 

This may involve:

•  rewriting certain sections;
•  adding more data or references;
•  making other necessary changes.

Publish now!

Sign a Publishing Contract

Once your manuscript is revised and accepted, you will need to sign a publishing contract with the publisher. This contract will outline the terms of your agreement, including the publication timeline, royalties, and copyright.

Publish Your Dissertation

Finally, your dissertation will be published! Depending on the publisher, your dissertation may be published as a book , an e-book, or an article in a journal. Make sure to celebrate this accomplishment and share your work with your colleagues and peers.

In conclusion, publishing your dissertation in the UK can be a rewarding and challenging experience. Make sure to choose a reputable publisher, follow the submission guidelines closely, and prepare your manuscript carefully. 

Remember that the peer-review process can take time, so be patient and be prepared to make revisions. With perseverance and hard work, you can successfully publish your dissertation and contribute to your field of study.  

What are the Benefits of Publishing Your Dissertation in the UK?

The Significance of Publishing Your Dissertation

You’ve invested countless hours into your dissertation, and completing it is a remarkable achievement. However, what’s next? Have you ever considered publishing your dissertation in the UK? In this article, we’ll explore the numerous benefits of taking this step.

 Enhancing Your Academic Visibility

Publishing your dissertation is more than just a formality, it’s a significant accomplishment. It demonstrates that you’ve conducted original research and contributed new knowledge to your field. Sharing your findings allows you to take pride in your hard work and benefit others who can learn from your research.

Establishing Expertise and Reputation

Publishing your dissertation can significantly boost your visibility in the academic community. It helps you establish yourself as an authority in your field, a valuable asset when applying for academic positions or research grants. Moreover, publishing increases the likelihood of being cited in future research, further elevating your academic reputation.

Unlocking New Research Opportunities

Another compelling advantage of publishing your dissertation is the potential for new research opportunities. Sharing your work enables you to connect with fellow researchers who may be interested in collaborating with you or expanding upon your findings. 

This can lead to exciting research projects and opportunities for further knowledge and expertise development.

Honing Crucial Skills

Publishing your dissertation is a learning journey that hones essential skills. It involves receiving feedback and revising your work accordingly. This iterative process enhances your writing skills and your ability to articulate ideas effectively. Furthermore, it continues to develop your critical thinking skills, which are vital in navigating the publishing process.

 Achieving Academic Closure

Lastly, publishing your dissertation offers a sense of closure to your academic journey. After years of dedicated effort, seeing your research in print and knowing it contributes to your field can be incredibly rewarding.

In conclusion, publishing your dissertation in the UK offers a host of valuable benefits, including increased visibility, research opportunities, skill development, and a sense of accomplishment. Most importantly, it enables you to share your hard-earned research with the broader academic community. 

Don’t hesitate to consider taking the next step and sharing your valuable research with the world.

Exploring Publishing Opportunities with Lambert Academic Publishing

Are you a researcher or author wondering how to publish your undergraduate dissertation or master’s dissertation ? Lambert Academic Publishing is your solution! Our streamlined, cost-effective publishing process allows you to share your research with a global audience.

With no publishing contract required and comprehensive editing and formatting services included, publishing your thesis with us has never been easier. Plus, our extensive worldwide distribution network ensures that your work reaches a broader audience. 

Don’t let your research go unnoticed.

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