Frequently Asked Questions

See the Formatting Guidelines page for details on how to format your thesis/dissertation.

The ProQuest Support Center website explains how to create a PDF with embedded fonts in their guide, Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission (Including Supplemental Files). Encrypted files are not acceptable. (To view this document, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free download.)

If you do not own Adobe Acrobat, you have several options. You can:

• Visit any of the UCIT computer labs or the Langsam Library Student Technology Resources Center.
• Make an appointment with the Graduate College IT Helpdesk by calling 513-556-1496.
• Download the trial version of Adobe Acrobat Professional from Adobe's website. It provides all the necessary features but expires after 7 days.
  
• Use the Adobe Online PDF Maker. This service allows free conversions for the first few times with registration, and unlimited conversions for a fee per month.

University of Cincinnati is currently an active subscriber to RefWorks. You can create an account using the instructions provided below. In order to create and access your RefWorks account, go to https://refworks.proquest.com/signup/email/. You will then enter your university email address, and click Check. Follow the onscreen prompts to create your account. Make sure to access refworks.proquest.com directly and not through a proxy and turn off any ad or popup blockers that might be installed in the browser.

For more information about using RefWorks go to https://knowledge.ExLibrisgroup.com/RefWorks

Your thesis/dissertation will be published for free on the internet through OhioLINK, the Ohio Library Information Network, and PROQUEST/UMI, the University of Michigan Index. You will submit your thesis/dissertation through the Graduation Checklist, and it will then appear on OhioLINK a few weeks to 2 months after the ETD deadline. 

ProQuest maintains a microform archive of approximately 1.5 million dissertations, as well as an online service called Dissertation Abstracts. Most dissertations written in the US are submitted to ProQuest for archiving, and all work received since 1996 is available online. ProQuest also functions as an on-demand book publisher that eliminates the editorial process and provides copyright advice.

Your ETD will be indexed by Google and other search engines for download on the internet. It will also be available in the University of Cincinnati library catalog.

An ORCID is a free, unique researcher identifier that allows authors to mark all of their work with a persistent digital signature. For more information on ORCID please see, "Make Your Research Mark with ORCID"

The world of scholarship depends on people making their research available to others. When this is done electronically, more people receive access at a lower cost, and more knowledge transfer occurs. This stimulates education and research. Your research is also more likely to be cited in other publications, which adds to your prestige and aids your future advancement.

Before theses and dissertations were available electronically, not many were read. Electronic access multiplies the number of times works are read by a factor of ten or more. Due to the fact you spent a great deal of time on your research, you should be encouraged that others are reading your work. Your research may guide others, and your results may save others the time of redoing your study.

An embargo is a delay in making a work publicly available. Your title and abstract will be available to the public, but the full text of your pdf document will be hidden for a period of time. You can embargo for up to two years at a time for a total of five years. At that time, your pdf will be released to the internet.

You might choose to embargo because of a patent application or a pending publication in a journal. You should talk with your advisor about whether to embargo. You should also speak with any publisher of your thesis/dissertation work regarding the rules and restrictions of publication when a text is already publicly available. You can request to embargo your document within the ETD submission process in the checklist. Your chair will need to approve the embargo request when you submit your ETD through the checklist.

On OhioLINK, there are three types of copyright to choose from: 

OhioLINK Permissions

Your thesis or dissertation will be available under the Fair Use terms of copyright law. In addition, you may choose to allow additional use of your paper via a Creative Commons license. 

• Copyright, all rights reserved. My ETD may be used only under the terms of Fair Use. This may be required by third-party publishers you work with to publish your paper commercially. 

• Copyright, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commerical purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author. [This is the Creative Commons "Atrribution – Noncommercial – No Derivative Works" license.]

• Copyright, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may be modified only if the modified version is distributed with these same permissions. All use must give me credit as the original author. [This is the Creative Commons "Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike" license.]

Learn more about Fair Use of copyrights  and about Creative Commons licenses. Consult your advisor about which copyright is best for you.

You can opt to purchase a copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office. This is a government-backed copyright and requires an additional charge. 

Consult your advisor about which copyright is best for you.

The Graduate College recommends that you purchase bound copies of your ETD from ProQuest. ProQuest will provide a custom link for author price. Email: disspub@proquest.com  or call ProQuest at +18005210600 (8am-6pm EST)-Monday -Friday. You may also order bound copies from GradWorks Online, Art Guild Binders, Inc. or Heckman Bindery.

When you have your research published in a conference, book, or journal, you usually sign some type of agreement with the publisher. You should read the agreement carefully before signing, making sure you understand AND AGREE with the terms and conditions. If you don't, you may want to change the agreement in connection with discussion/negotiation with the publisher, and possibly with advice of legal or other counsel. The agreement should be explicit about what future rights of use you retain. If you want to include the materials in a dissertation or to reuse the materials for teaching or a book chapter, it is important to document this in the agreement.

As the author you are entitled to discuss your plans with the publisher. We encourage you to obtain an agreement that allows you to include your research in a freely available electronic thesis or dissertation. During negotiations you may also want to discuss matters of timing and revision. You have the right to negotiate with a publisher to reduce access to your ETD for a limited amount of time, if they request this as a condition on publishing your article. However, most publishers consider a thesis or dissertation to be quite different from a journal article. Typically an article is much shorter than the chapter or full work and has been revised as a result of the editorial process and peer review. Sometimes, it might also have several authors. Because of these reasons many publishers have no concerns regarding fully accessible ETDs.

First, you can simply cite the publication in your references. Second, if the publication is online, you can link to it with permission of your publisher. Third, if your publisher gives you a signed release, you can include the publication in your thesis or dissertation as stated in the release. If your publisher restricts access in the release, possibly to your university, you may want to create two versions of your thesis or dissertation--one with and one without the chapter (e.g., published article) in question. You should discuss your options with your committee and publisher before submission.

You can avoid this issue if your thesis or dissertation talks about your research in a very different way from the published article. Because articles are typically short, your thesis or dissertation may be the only place where the details, data, tables and other aspects of your research are available.

Since publishers vary widely in their policies, you should share with your publisher that your work is available on OhioLINK. You may want to embargo your work for a year or two until your publication comes out. For embargo information, see question "What is an embargo? Should I request an embargo?".

In general, it appears to be the case that electronic release of early versions of a book leads to greater sales of such books. Indeed, having an electronic work made available on the Internet, and showing a publisher a large number of electronic accesses to that work, may help you land a book contract.

Usually, books that relate to theses or dissertations turn out to be significantly changed as part of the editorial process. This makes it likely that those interested in your work will buy your book when it comes out, even if they have reviewed your ETD.

However, since publishers vary widely in their policies, it is wise to share this information and other documents about the ETD initiative with publishers to which you are likely to submit your work. We are open to discussions with publishers regarding policies or helping in the publicity process.