Doctoral Students' Guide to McKillop Library: Dissertation Deposit

You will submit a digital copy of your dissertation to ProQuest UMI/ETD. Please refer to your department's dissertation handbook (links below), resources from ProQuest (links at the bottom of this page), and your department's recommended style manual for more detailed guidelines.

International Relations Ph.D. Handbook

Humanities Ph.D. Handbook

Graduate Nursing (DNP) Handbook

Behavior Analysis Ph.D. Handbook

The dissertation deposit process usually starts after your defense. Usually, the process goes like this:

1. Dissertation defense.
2. Student makes any corrections requested by committee.
3. Office of Graduate Studies emails signature page to library director, who manages dissertation deposit for the library.
4. Student creates Proquest Electronic Dissertation and Theses (ETD) account (this step can be completed before defense, but upload of dissertation should be final copy with corrections if applicable). 
5. Student considers steps in item #3 below.
6. Student embeds fonts in Word (see below)
7. Student either converts to PDF and saves file in PDFA 1-b format themselves (see below), or sends the file to the library director to do so. 
8. Student completes steps in Proquest, and uploads final copy of dissertation.
9. Library director confirms that all checks are complete, approves, sends to Proquest for publishing, and notifies registrar and Office of Graduate Studies that final step is complete. 

You must submit your dissertation to ProQuest by May 1 for May graduates, August 1 for August graduates, and December 1 for December graduates. 

Please note that if you include images, media, or other material that is created by someone other than you and is not in the public domain, you will need to upload copyright permissions documentation along with your dissertation. These are included in an appendix at the end of your dissertation. 

Before you submit you will also need to embed your fonts in Word and convert your dissertation document to an archival format, PDF/A-1b. This process ensures your document will be accessible across operating systems and software through time. If you do not have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro, then the Librarian will need to complete these steps for you. If you have access to the software and would like to convert your document on your own, the instructions are as follows:

1. In Word:

Embedding Fonts

• In Microsoft Word, go to File > Options.
• In the Options box, select the Save option in the left-hand menu.
• At the bottom of the right-hand menu, under “Preserve fidelity when sharing this document,” there are two options. Check “embed fonts in this document.” Make sure the two options below this checkbox are not checked.
• Save the document.

Save As PDF

• Go to File > Save As.
• From the Save As type drop-down menu, select PDF.

2. In Adobe Acrobat Professional:

• If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Professional, email the library director, who can convert your PDF for you.
• Open the PDF you just created with embedded fonts.
• Under tools > Print Production, Select Preflight.
  • If you don’t have the Print Production tool menu on the right-hand side, select the Customize drop-down menu above it, click Create New Tool Set, and create a tool set which includes the Print Production tool menu.
• Expand the PDF/A Compliance menu.
• Select Convert to PDF/A-1b.
• Click Analyze and Fix.
• Save the document.

 3. Submitting to ProQuest

• Once you have a PDF in archival format with embedded fonts, you will submit your dissertation through the ProQuest UMI Electronic Theses and Dissertations website, where you will create an account, and complete the guided submission process.
• The ProQuest UMI ETD submission process includes the following decision points.
  • Setting an embargo (for doctoral candidates who plan to publish their work through publishers-- please see Proquest's guide to decision making on embargos.)
  • Search engine optimization (recommended)
  • Setting metadata – what keywords or search terms will allow future researchers to find your work?
  • Traditional vs. Open Access publishing – Select Traditional Publishing. Students can publish Open Access for free via the Salve Regina University institutional repository, Digital Commons: https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/phd_dissertations/. ProQuest charges $95 for its service, which it offers for students whose institutions do not have repositories. Publishing in Digital Commons is allowed under ProQuest’s Traditional Publishing agreement.
  • Registering for U. S. Copyright - This is not required, as you will own copyright of your dissertation regardless. The decision to register is up to you (see more in copyright section below).
  • Ordering personal copies (students do not need to order copies for the library or archives)
  • Uploading the dissertation and any supplemental files. The upload limit is 1000 MB; most dissertations are under 10 MB. ProQuest supports to inclusion of digital files, such as datasets or multimedia. These files will need to be described in your abstract.
  • Uploading copyright permissions documents. See more in the copyright section below.

This webinar from Proquest provides more information about the submission process: 

•  ETD Administrator -- Student Submission Webinar: This webinar will walk through the step-by-step process a student will go through as they submit their dissertation or thesis.  It will identify resources and guidelines, ordered steps for submission, publication and copyright options, payment, and completion of submission. Duration: 21 minutes

Deciding whether to publish open access or traditional publishing

Library Director Dawn Emsellem discusses considerations in the decision of whether to publish open access  or traditional publishing, and whether to pay for Proquest open access publishing or to deposit the full text of your dissertation in Salve Regina University's scholarly repository, Digital Commons. 

Considerations include:

• Whether you are already in talks with a book publisher to publish your dissertation, or plan to be
• Whether it's imporant to you to make the full text of your dissertation as widely available as possible (this can eventually increase citation counts as scholars are able to access your work).  

Link to Digital Commons submission form: https://library.salve.edu/digitalcommons_submissions.html

Other information about dissertation submission

• Your completed signature page will not be included in the copy of your dissertation that is published to Proquest. It will be retained by the Office of Graduate Studies. 
• You do not need to print a hard copy of your dissertation. ProQuest will send the library a bound copy. This will appear on your final invoice but you will not be charged for it. You will also be asked if you would like to order your own bound copies during the submission process.
• If media (video, audio, computer programs, and/or significant number of images) needs to be included with the dissertation, please pay attention to the requirements for supplemental files.
• If the dissertation includes equations, please note that the Microsoft Word Equation Editor should not be used. Instead, use italic Times New Roman font and Symbol font along with superscripts and subscripts to create equations. 
• If you use images and media in their dissertations, note that Fair Use guidelines for using other people’s creations (photographs, artwork, infographics, etc.) for educational use often do not apply to dissertations because they are published in Proquest. It is not enough to cite the source of media you did not create. Students are responsible for obtaining copyright clearance for all non-public domain media used in their dissertations.

Changes after dissertation has been delivered and published 

If you need to make changes after a dissertation has been delivered to Proquest, this will be done through Proquest. Proquest will require:

• a “correction fee in the amount of $47.00 for our vault repair process”
• an email of permission/approval from the graduate office at the university giving authorization for the changes to be made to the published manuscript
• the complete corrected PDF copy of the manuscript.
• To process payment by phone, please call 800-521-0600, press 2 then 1 (M-F from 8AM to 6PM EST) - any Author & School Relations team member can help, just provide the publication number)
• Both graduate office approval and the updated PDF can be emailed to disspub@proquest.com

Copyright of Materials Used in Your Dissertation

Increasingly, dissertation writers are using images and media from other sources in their dissertations. Understanding copyright rules is an important competency for scholarly communication in the 21st century. Students usually do not have to worry about copyright when creating presentations that will be shown in class or writing papers that only their professor or classmates will see. However, since your dissertation will be published by Proquest, you will need to follow fair use guidelines for using other people’s photographs, artwork, infographics, etc. This often means obtaining copyright permissions for the display of other people's work in your dissertation.  

ProQuest UMI ETD provides information on publication and copyright considerations for dissertation publishing. Please review these guidelines before submitting your dissertation.

You are responsible for obtaining copyright permissions for all non-public domain material used in your dissertation. As author, you are responsible for ensuring that material reproduced in your dissertations complies with copyright law. 

When you have collected all copyright permission letters and emails, you may add them as an appendix to your dissertation submission. You may also choose to thank copyright owners who gave permission to use their work in your acknowledgements section.   

Also see these resources:

A Graduate Student's Guide to Copyright: Open Access, Fair Use, and Permissions from University of Michigan

Charts and tools to help you determine copyright status from Stanford Libraries

Copyright of Your Dissertation

According to Stanford University, 

"Copyright protection is automatically in effect from the time the work is in fixed form...

Registration of copyright is not required, but it establishes a public record of your copyright claim and enables copyright owners to litigate against infringement. You need not register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office at the outset, although registration must be made before the copyright may be enforced by litigation in case of infringement. 

Early registration does have certain advantages: it establishes a public record of your copyright claim, and if registration has been made prior to the infringement of your work, or within three months after its publication, qualifies you to be awarded statutory damages and attorney fees in addition to the actual damages and profits available to you as the copyright owner (should you ever have to sue because of infringement)."

As the creator of a work, you own the copyright of your dissertation. Submitting your dissertation to ProQuest does not affect that. However, Proquest offers a copyright registration service that files for copyright through the US Copyright Office for a fee.  Regardless of whether you register copyright, you can still publish via the Traditional Publishing Agreement, ProQuest's Open Access, or through Digital Commons.

When you publish with ProQuest, you can choose either the Traditional Publishing Agreement or Open Access. The Traditional Publishing Agreement is non-exclusive, which means you can also publish your dissertation elsewhere. 

Open Access makes your dissertation freely available online. ProQuest charges a fee for this service. If you wish to make your dissertation available open access, you can also do so through Salve Regina's institutional repository, Digital Commons, for free. If you'd like to do this, you can select the Traditional Publishing Agreement with ProQuest and then upload your same PDF file here. Your Open Access dissertation will appear in this collection and you will receive reports from Digital Commons about the usage statistics of your work. If you submit your dissertation to Digital Commons for Open Access, you still must submit to ProQuest, and the library recommends Digital Commons submission as the last step. Providing Open Access to your dissertation is not the same as putting it in the public domain, so you are not giving up any of your rights as author, just maximizing your readership.