Thesis policy sparks uproar
Brian Stewart - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: Metro
Master's students in the UI Graduate College have become concerned about the fate of their theses, after a new policy seemingly requires students to sign over publication rights to their works in order to graduate.
The clause, part of a form graduate students must sign when submitting their theses, says the UI Libraries intends to make their work "freely available over the Internet at no cost to the end-user" and available "via search engines such as Google."
Officials declined to say when the open-access policy was expanded to include theses and whether the change came from the Graduate College or the UI Libraries.
Kembrew McLeod, a UI associate professor of communication studies, said the policy presents two main concerns.
"A lot of M.F.A. students don't see their theses as a final project - it's a work in progress, and sometimes writing they might not be as proud of," he said.
The second concern is that students may have issues with future publication; most scholarly journal editors won't accept work that is readily available online.
Graduate student Colleen Kinder, in her third year of the Nonfiction Writing Program, said she plans to revise the language on her form before signing it.
"The whole point of us coming to Iowa is to have an incubator period in which to experiment, to use feedback to test our approaches - publication is something we absolutely aspire to, but most of us aren't quite ready to commit to that," she said.
John Keller, the dean of the Graduate College, said UI Libraries officials have said in previous meetings they intend to scan all future theses for "electronic archiving."
But University Librarian Nancy Baker said the library does not currently have plans to scan the theses. She declined to comment further.
"There's been miscommunication about this, and we need to be clarifying it," Keller said.
Students with pending patents, publishing contracts, or approved circumstances may be granted a two-year embargo on the release of their work.
The clause, part of a form graduate students must sign when submitting their theses, says the UI Libraries intends to make their work "freely available over the Internet at no cost to the end-user" and available "via search engines such as Google."
Officials declined to say when the open-access policy was expanded to include theses and whether the change came from the Graduate College or the UI Libraries.
Kembrew McLeod, a UI associate professor of communication studies, said the policy presents two main concerns.
"A lot of M.F.A. students don't see their theses as a final project - it's a work in progress, and sometimes writing they might not be as proud of," he said.
The second concern is that students may have issues with future publication; most scholarly journal editors won't accept work that is readily available online.
Graduate student Colleen Kinder, in her third year of the Nonfiction Writing Program, said she plans to revise the language on her form before signing it.
"The whole point of us coming to Iowa is to have an incubator period in which to experiment, to use feedback to test our approaches - publication is something we absolutely aspire to, but most of us aren't quite ready to commit to that," she said.
John Keller, the dean of the Graduate College, said UI Libraries officials have said in previous meetings they intend to scan all future theses for "electronic archiving."
But University Librarian Nancy Baker said the library does not currently have plans to scan the theses. She declined to comment further.
"There's been miscommunication about this, and we need to be clarifying it," Keller said.
Students with pending patents, publishing contracts, or approved circumstances may be granted a two-year embargo on the release of their work.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
cseeley
ceseeley
posted 3/17/08 @ 7:18 AM CST
Is this to help prevent plagiarism, to help students think more globally, a global invasion of privacy, or all three?
Stevan Harnad
posted 3/17/08 @ 11:29 PM CST
See "Academic publishing in the online era: What Will Be For-Fee And What Will Be For-Free?" by Harnad, S., Varian, H. & Parks, R. (2000) Culture Machine 2 http://cogprints. (Continued…)
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