Some graduate students at Ohio State University at Columbus are resisting a new policy requiring them to submit their doctoral dissertations electronically for posting online. The students say they are worried that the works might not be published in print if they have already appeared on the Web.
Ohio State instituted the policy last fall. Archiving the dissertations online saves space in the library, officials say. They add that online dissertations are likely to be seen by more people than print versions are, which in turn would raise the profiles of both the university and the students.
Most important, says William A.T. Clark, associate dean of the Graduate School, the policy conforms to the mission of the university. “Our requirement is that a dissertation shall be a contribution to knowledge,” he says, “so there is an implication that it shall be available to the community at large.”
However, graduate students and administrators in the English and history departments -- where the stongest objections to the policy have been raised -- say posting the documents online could reduce the students’ chances of publishing the dissertations with journals or university presses.
If a dissertation is available on the Web, says Debra A. Moddelmog, a professor of English who directs graduate studies in English, “there is a question whether publishers will be equally inclined to publish it. It seems to be such an uncertain area that we are recommending our students not to put their dissertations online.”
The issue has also raised questions among students about how much control the university can assert over their work, she says. “Our concern is whether this is going to take control of the copyright out of the hands of the student and into the hands of the university. We feel like if we agree to let them do this, it will just lead to further slippage of the author’s rights to his or her works.”
One graduate student in history, who asked not to be named, also expressed the fear that the policy would increase the chances that someone might plagiarize a student’s online dissertation.
University Concessions
Ohio State has made some concessions. A student can request a delay of one to three years in the online posting of the dissertation, which allows more time to publish it. Officials are considering a five-year delay as well.
“The university has no interest in harming the careers of our students,” Mr. Clark says. Publishing the dissertations online will help foil plagiarists, he adds, because more people will have access to the dissertations and be able to recognize copied portions elsewhere.
But all dissertations at the university will go online sooner or later, he says. Ohio State has traditionally retained some intellectual-property rights to dissertations and students’ work in the sciences, he argues, because the research involved is often done with university grants and equipment.
Institutions have claimed intellectual-property rights to students’ work in the humanities less often, but Mr. Clark thinks that a case can be made for doing so. Graduate students are producing such work with the help of, and at the behest of, the university, he points out. Some of them are employed as teaching assistants or are supported by scholarships.
Ray K. Harris, a lawyer who handles copyright and patent cases for Fennemore Craig, one of the largest law firms in Arizona, has studied academic policies on intellectual property. A dissertation’s copyright can be transferred to a college in only two ways, he says: when the student enters into an agreement with the institution, or when the student is employed by the institution. “Absent one of those two things, the student would own the dissertation,” he says.
However, he says, the university still can require online publication for graduation.
“It’s a Catch-22,” Mr. Harris says. “The student can say, I’m not going to authorize you to publish it. By the same token, the university has the right to set the criteria for graduation. So the price for not publishing it could be not getting the degree.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 49, Issue 38, Page A33
