One of the University Archives’ important roles is to preserve and provide access to Princeton University Ph.D. dissertations and Master’s theses. Recently the Mudd Manuscript Library has taken steps to both modernize and streamline the process that Ph.D. candidates carry out to submit their dissertations, while at the same time improving access to these works.
Partnering with ProQuest
Since 1950, the University has partnered with ProQuest (formerly UMI) to publish and disseminate the work of Princeton’s Ph.D. students to the wider academic community. After decades of mailing bound manuscripts to ProQuest for microfilming and/or scanning, and more recently, mailing CDs with PDFs of dissertations, Princeton Ph.D. candidates will now upload their own PDFs to Princeton’s ETD Administrator site (www.etdadmin.com/princeton). Candidates will choose publishing options, decide if they want ProQuest to register their copyright, and pay any relevant fees on the site as well.
Reduced Cost for Students
The new online submission system allows candidates to realize significant savings in publishing fees—Traditional publishing is free and Open Access publishing is $95—in both cases, a savings of $25 over the previous process. The optional copyright registration fee remains $55, and a dissertation maintenance fee of $15 is due at the Mudd Manuscript Library at the time of submission.
In addition, with the new procedure, candidates are required to submit only one bound copy of their dissertation to the library (instead of two), which cuts their binding fees in half, a savings of $40 or more.
Enhanced Access to Dissertations
Depending on the publishing option that candidates choose, dissertations will be made available either through ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses subscription database (available to the University community at http://search.proquest.com/pqdtft/advanced?accountid=13314) or through ProQuest’s open access database PQDT Open (http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/), which offers full text versions of dissertations to anyone with Internet access.
Another step forward in providing access to dissertations is their availability on Princeton’s digital repository, DataSpace http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/. Starting with dissertations submitted for the November 2011 degree award, an electronic copy of each Princeton University dissertation will be placed in DataSpace. This will be a full text, universally accessible version of the dissertation.
More Information
Full details of the new dissertation submission procedures are available on our website at: http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/thesis/index.shtml . If you have questions about the dissertation submission process, please contact the Mudd Manuscript Library at 609-258-6345 or mudd@princeton.edu.