Modernization of Dissertation Submission Procedures

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One of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ impor­tant roles is to pre­serve and pro­vide access to Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Ph.D. dis­ser­ta­tions and Master’s the­ses. Recently the Mudd Man­u­script Library has taken steps to both mod­ern­ize and stream­line the process that Ph.D. can­di­dates carry out to sub­mit their dis­ser­ta­tions, while at the same time improv­ing access to these works.

Part­ner­ing with ProQuest

Since 1950, the Uni­ver­sity has part­nered with Pro­Quest (for­merly UMI) to pub­lish and dis­sem­i­nate the work of Princeton’s Ph.D. stu­dents to the wider aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity. After decades of mail­ing bound man­u­scripts to Pro­Quest for micro­film­ing and/or scan­ning, and more recently, mail­ing CDs with PDFs of dis­ser­ta­tions, Prince­ton Ph.D. can­di­dates will now upload their own PDFs to Princeton’s ETD Admin­is­tra­tor site (www.etdadmin.com/princeton). Can­di­dates will choose pub­lish­ing options, decide if they want Pro­Quest to reg­is­ter their copy­right, and pay any rel­e­vant fees on the site as well.

Reduced Cost for Students

The new online sub­mis­sion sys­tem allows can­di­dates to real­ize sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings in pub­lish­ing fees—Traditional pub­lish­ing is free and Open Access pub­lish­ing is $95—in both cases, a sav­ings of $25 over the pre­vi­ous process. The optional copy­right reg­is­tra­tion fee remains $55, and a dis­ser­ta­tion main­te­nance fee of $15 is due at the Mudd Man­u­script Library at the time of submission.

In addi­tion, with the new pro­ce­dure, can­di­dates are required to sub­mit only one bound copy of their dis­ser­ta­tion to the library (instead of two), which cuts their bind­ing fees in half, a sav­ings of $40 or more.

Enhanced Access to Dissertations

Depend­ing on the pub­lish­ing option that can­di­dates choose, dis­ser­ta­tions will be made avail­able either through ProQuest’s Dis­ser­ta­tions and The­ses sub­scrip­tion data­base (avail­able to the Uni­ver­sity com­mu­nity at http://search.proquest.com/pqdtft/advanced?accountid=13314) or through ProQuest’s open access data­base PQDT Open (http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/), which offers full text ver­sions of dis­ser­ta­tions to any­one with Inter­net access.

Another step for­ward in pro­vid­ing access to dis­ser­ta­tions is their avail­abil­ity on Princeton’s dig­i­tal repos­i­tory, Data­Space http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/. Start­ing with dis­ser­ta­tions sub­mit­ted for the Novem­ber 2011 degree award, an elec­tronic copy of each Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity dis­ser­ta­tion will be placed in Data­Space. This will be a full text, uni­ver­sally acces­si­ble ver­sion of the dissertation.

More Infor­ma­tion

Full details of the new dis­ser­ta­tion sub­mis­sion pro­ce­dures are avail­able on our web­site at: http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/thesis/index.shtml . If you have ques­tions about the dis­ser­ta­tion sub­mis­sion process, please con­tact the Mudd Man­u­script Library at 609–258-6345 or .