A PhD thesis is the result of many years of hard work, and the author generally hopes it will be the start of a successful academic career. But quite often, it is only read by the authors themselves and their supervisors. Who should be allowed to access it, and how? Our colleague Catherine Brendow discusses the main reasons why PhD students are generally reluctant to make their thesis accessible.
Does open access reduce the chances of publishing your thesis as a book?
Many graduate students fear that if their thesis is open-access (OA), academic publishers will probably not be interested in publishing it as a book. If it is available free, why would anyone buy it?
The main flaw in this reasoning is that publishing a thesis as a book usually requires rewriting it completely: a book, even published by an academic press, is totally different from a PhD thesis, as it is targeted for a different audience. It is not the same document, and scholars often prefer reading and citing the published work rather than the original dissertation.
Moreover, sharing your thesis publicly makes your work more visible, including for potential publishers. The consultation statistics may also help them gauge the interest of readers for the subject.
What about the risks of plagiarism?
The academic world is highly competitive, and many PhD students fear being plagiarized. However, sharing works under an open license such as CC BY or CC BY-NC-SA does not mean you are at more risk of plagiarism.
Under Swiss law and in most of the world, the copyright rests with the author, without any requirement for registration. You have the right to make your work available in the manner and at the time you choose. The mere fact that the thesis is easily accessible is actually a good way to prevent sloppy plagiarism, which can now be detected by anti-plagiarism software. The date the thesis file was made available online is an acceptable proof of anteriority.
The case of “smart” plagiarism is more complex: unscrupulous scholars can steal ideas or arguments and blend them into a unified whole where the original elements will be more difficult to distinguish. But even in this case, a scholar in the field (who sometimes happens to be the author of the thesis) would be able to recognize the stolen material. Once again, the time stamp on the file would prove the anteriority of your deposit.
Besides, your doctoral research will seldom be completely undisclosed, since the whole point is to make it visible by presenting your findings at symposia and conferences, or through publications. You should consider this an opportunity to place your work on the map rather than a risk!
The situation at the Graduate Institute and elsewhere
The Graduate Institute library keeps one printed copy of each PhD thesis in its reading room. It can be borrowed, including by overseas patrons through the interlibrary loan. We also keep a record with an attached pdf file in the institutional repository.
The current default status for theses is “restricted access”. This means that the work is only accessible to the Geneva Graduate Institute community through their IT login. Alumni do not get access, which ironically often includes the author themselves if they left the Institute. In addition, authors can request a 3-year embargo. In that case, the digital version of the thesis will only be accessible to the administrators of the repository – despite the printed version being available through interlibrary loan!
While open access is not the default option at this time, it does not mean nothing will ever change. Our academic community is currently revising its standards to align them further with universities around the world that have made open the default for theses. You don’t have to wait for a policy change, though – just ask us and we will make your work available!
At other universities, the proportion of theses in public access is much higher. 66,6% of the University of Geneva’s PhD theses are publicly accessible. Of course, numbers vary across disciplines, but 56% of the PhD theses at the Geneva School of Social Sciences and 32 % of the PhD theses in law are accessible publicly, putting the mere 3% of Geneva Graduate Institute theses to shame.
Get out in the open!
Of course, some theses may include sensitive or personal data which could not be anonymized and make it impossible to publish the thesis in open access. But if this is not the case, remember:
“Those who choose to restrict access to their dissertations are hiding them not just from bad attention but also from good attention. If a dissertation is not OA, then it is much less likely to be read by those who might provide useful feedback, offer career-boosting opportunities, cite it in their publications, bolster the author’s scholarly confidence, or silently appreciate the work.” (Cirasella, Jill, and Polly Thistlethwaite. “Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual.” In Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication, edited by Kevin L. Smith and Katherine A. Dickson. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, p. 213.)
And by the way: this quote is taken from a resource I was only able to read because it was open access. Think about it.
Check our open access libguide for more information on open-access, and let us know what you think!
Illustration: Open Access logo, CC BY-SA Mike A. Morrison (WikiCommons)
Geneva Graduate Institute Library Blog 
