Access and visibility options

Access options (electronic theses and dissertations only)

Effective as of August, 2019. See the complete policy Submission of Electronic Theses and Dissertations.

  • Public Access: Full electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) content that is publicly available online through the University Library.
  • Limited Access: Metadata, including the ETD author, title, and abstract, will be publicly available through the University Library, but the full content of the ETD will be restricted to UVA users who possess valid network access, as well as any member of the public accessing the UVA network on Grounds. Limited Access may only be requested for periods of less than five years, after which ETDs transition to Public Access.
  • Embargo: Metadata, including the ETD author, title, and abstract, will be publicly available through the University Library, but the content of the ETD will not be visible to any user at the University or otherwise. Upon consultation with their thesis or dissertation committee and approval from their dean’s office, students may also choose to place an embargo on an ETD deposited in Libra. Initial embargo periods may be requested for periods of up to five years, and may be extended at the discretion of the dean’s office of the student’s school.

If you are a graduate student depositing your thesis or dissertation, you are required to discuss access options with your advisor or committee prior to submitting to Libra.

For Limited Access, the Library provides access to authorized, UVA-affiliated users as well as members of the public accessing the UVA network on Grounds. We cannot guarantee, however, that such users will abide by our policy and refrain from further sharing. We take reasonable steps to secure our network and prevent abuse, but if you require a guarantee that your work will not circulate beyond campus, you may need to discuss with your thesis or dissertation committee advisor whether an embargo on visibility (including in the UVA community) is appropriate.

Considerations for access

There are several reasons why you might opt to delay Public Access:

  • To protect your ability to publish your work (though research suggests publication prospects may not be substantially affected by the presence of a thesis or dissertation online - See [1] & [2])
  • To satisfy requirements for review of grant-sponsored research
  • To protect data being utilized by a team of researchers of which you are a part
  • To protect your ability to apply for a patent based on your research.

On the other hand, several considerations may weigh against Limited Access or Embargo and toward immediate Public Access:

  • Releasing one's dissertation online increases the visibility of an early career scholar
  • Visibility can lead to substantial opportunities for an early career scholar, including publishing prospects
  • Many scholars believe there is inherent value in openly sharing scholarly work.

These issues are explored in much greater depth in a helpful series of essays at Dissertation Reviews. The Library can help authors work through questions about embargoes in light of publisher policies or author contracts, however, authors considering embargoes should be sure to consult with their advisors or committees, as well.

If you are considering publishing in an Elsevier journal, please note that Elsevier does not count publication of an academic thesis as prior publication. You can find further information on their policy regarding prior publications on their clarification page.

For other publishers’, previously published polices, see the Publisher Policy Checker from MIT Library.

Please contact us at  libra@virginia.edu for questions about embargoes.

References

[1] Cirasella, J., & Thistlethwaite, P. (2017). Open access and the graduate author: A dissertation anxiety manual. In K. L. Smith & K. A. Dickson (Eds.), Open access and the future of scholarly communication: Implementation (pp. 203-224). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Available from https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/286.

[2] Truschke, Audrey. (2015). To Embargo Your Dissertation, or Not? Retrieved from http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/11995. Final article in a three-part series on dissertation dissemination and publishing.

Further reading

Truschke, Audrey. (2015). Dissertation Embargoes and Publishing Fears. Retrieved from http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/11842.

Rupp-Serrano, K. & Waller, J., (2018). Dissertation-to-Book Publication Patterns Among a Sample of R1 Institutions. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 6(1), p.eP2187. http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2187.

Ramírez, M., McMillan, G., Dalton, J., Hanlon, A., Smith, H., & Kern, C. (2014). Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences? College & Research Libraries, 75(6), 808-821. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.75.6.808.

Ramirez, M., Dalton, J., McMillan, G., Read, M., & Seamans, N. (2013). Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers. College & Research Libraries, 74(4), 368-380. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl-356.

Libra Contents