I am in two minds about signing the agreement to deposit my thesis to EThOS, or even to the university repository without restricting access. What are the pros & cons, how did you make your decision? I would be grateful for your opinions. By the way, I plan to publish some work from my thesis but I will not publish it as a whole. Thanks...

It depends on the circumstances and the potential interest in your data.

1) If you want to publish work from your thesis to journal for which you'd not receive royalties, it doesn't matter whether or not you sign the agreement to put it on the University Open Repository or on Ethos. You will not gain financially therefore there is no benefit from withholding your thesis.

2) If you plan to sell on information from your thesis as part of a book or collected works that may gain you royalty payments, or sell the information on to a third party, then I would restrict access as people will not pay if they realise they can download the core document for free. This latter course of action you might consider if you believe there will be a very high level of interest in your data.

3) Apart from this, the only other practical reason for restriction is commercial confidentiality for a fixed period (say five years) if an industrial sponsor has been involved.

4) I know some others consider their work as private and personal and restrict it for that reason. Others perceive that their intellectual property might be put at risk if they chose to make the data available (including my direct predecessor on my project) even if interest is minimal, however, this can be addressed by publishing the work to journal.

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Unless the reasons are financial or commercial, I don't see the point in restricting thesis access as a large collection of data gathers dust and never sees the light of day as a consequence. All the work contained therin has thus been done for nothing in my opinon.

I settled for making it publically available, but also publishing the key data to a reputable journal ensuring my copyright and intellectual property rights were protected. My name was associated with the work in print and could thus be proven as such.

If I'd thought a significant financial return was possible from sale of the information to a third party, or by book or collected works , then I would have restricted access. I did a little investigation to see if this was possible, however, people are loath to pay up if they think they get the information for free making this option a non-starter if your audience is a niche interest.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

My thesis is locked in a cupboard, in a locked office, with no possibility of publication ever due to the nature of it. If I had had the choice I would have made sure I had at least one article from it before I let 'let in into the real world' just so, as beefy says, your rights are established. It is too easy for people to obtain the whole thing once you have allowed it on EthOS.

======= Date Modified 16 Mar 2012 13:05:13 =======
The way the form read to me it would be made available after a time anyway and so I OK'd it. Personally, I'd rather bury the thing and hope people don't think it reflects my interests.

======= Date Modified 14 Mar 2012 14:36:02 =======

I think you can specify the time access is restricted for (typically 1, 2 or 5 years) and I think you can decide to restrict access indefinitely if you specifically instruct this as copyright holder. Because of cases of commercial confidentiality, a normal period can be up to five years. If you choose to restrict access, the chances are your average Uni. will forget it exists if it isn't uploaded to ethos and the open repositories straight away and it'll never see the light of day.

If it does end up in the public domain, you can approach the British Library in Wetherby (via e-mail on Ethos or in writing) and make a take down request. They are then obliged to remove the document from Ethos (though normally leave a record it exists). The same applies to you own Unis. repository.

Whilst there is a potential commercial value with my own work (still an extremely remote chance - science-based), its not going to come from sale of publications but from utilisation of findings. I therefore don't see a point in restricting access as the thesis document and resultant papers are actually adverts for the work. Anyone wants my help, they can then pay over the consultancy fees. Hiding it would not give that option.

Apart from my predecessor who thought not disclosing was the best way to protect his rights (disagree, I believe publication is better as your name is against the work in a verifiable document), I know of one other lad who once he finished buried the work (subject area in his case was theology and thus little to no immediate commercial value) for it to never see the light of day again as he regarded it all as very private and very personal. Er, okay?!

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

======= Date Modified 14 Mar 2012 14:46:05 =======
Thanks Ian, I think I understand. I'll look into it and see if I can make a take down request (it's already bound). I nearly asked on here but thought it was a done deal that it had to be open. It's not rational but I get really annoyed when people assume this topic is my area of interest.

Personally, I'd restrict access until you've had a chance to publish, unless you have already. I've had people asking me for a copy already - so far I've just ignored their emails, as they're people who will probably then use my lit review and findings to support their consultancy and they'll make a ton of money by spouting MY research badly (as they won't really read it properly and take everything at face value, rather than taking time to understand my work).

======= Date Modified 15 Mar 2012 10:56:50 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
Don't sign your thesis untill the restrictions aren't prohibited from it. Click on the link below

*edited by mods - broken link removed*

======= Date Modified 16 Mar 2012 13:02:28 =======
I'm going to look into this further.

Thank you for the suggestions. And thanks Mackem_Beefy for explaining different scenarios. I have published some work from it before, but there is one interesting project in the thesis I have not got a chance to find ways of publishing yet. Would the submission or award date of my PhD be a good enough evidence to prove ownership if someone decided to do the same work? I am not exactly proud of my PhD but it doesn't deserve to spend rest of its life in a dark shelf either. hmmmm, decisions decisions...

I'd think so because that's documented evidence which you can produce, if necessary.

======= Date Modified 16 Mar 2012 12:34:27 =======

404,

It's clear you don't want to place the information in your thesis into the public domain until you've had a chance to get a further paper out of it.  You feel possibly that if you do, other people may use or even plagiarise your ideas and data as their own before your new potential paper reaches print.

Can I suggest you therefore restrict access for two years, which will give you sufficient time to write the paper, put it through the refereeing process and get it into print?  Two years does seem a long time, however, that is on the back of one of my papers taking over a year to get through the refereeing process (only minor corrections were requested!!!) and it can take that long despite journal promises of a fast turnaround.  You will then have this data in print circulation proving that you are the originator of the data.

Delta, the actual thesis document is the actual proof the data is yours and not the PhD certificate, which only proves you have a PhD.  With the thesis not seeing such wide circulation and the papers seeing extensive distribution, it is the papers that will be the main proof of undisputable intellectual ownership.

In retrospect (and this represents me changing my mind on something I've said - shock, horror), I would have restricted access for two years until I'd got at least a couple of papers out of the thesis.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

Sorry, that's what I meant because if you can produce the thesis which contains the content and dates documented through the university should you not be safe and sound?

D

i never even thought about these things until this thread! Not I'm not sure what to do. I have two concerns (1) a lot of unpublished data. Now my thesis wasn't totally ground breaking and as I studied a patient population there isn't much that could be stolen, but I do wonder if I should be concerned. Also when you submit for publication they ask if data is published elsewhere. Will this count? (2) I have cpyrighted material as I included copies of questionnaires and tasks as appendices. these are all things that are amostly available elsewhere online, but I am concerned about copyright issues with some of them. I don't know if I could have the thesis available but restict access to the appendices.

======= Date Modified 16 Mar 2012 15:08:58 =======

You should be to be fair and in theory the thesis is accessible via Ethos and the repositories. 

However, journal publication is and will remain the best way of disseminating information and allowing your work (and your association with it) to become well known and are well accessed and indexed by the search engines now.

In contrast I've had a representative at my former PhD Uni. all but say that the copies held on repository (and this definitely applies to Ethos) are not indexable by the search engines.  I think this applies mainly to the scanned copies of older documents that are held on both Ethos and the repositories that are uploaded on request at a later date (even though the documents can be put through text recognition so the text can be searched).  Newer documents that are converted to PDF directly from the Word or Latex version are.

Your average person will still just do a Google or Bing Search and still not think about the relatively new Ethos or repositories.  Someone with a bit more nouse and knowledge will.  If that person is slightly dishonest they may decide that because the document will not be well accessed to take ideas from it for their own prestige or financial gain without the original owner or author knowing.  If the information is in refereed journal or paper form before the thesis is made public and intellectual ownership is establish by the refereeing and publishing process, would that make it easier to establish intellectual ownership in case this is challenged?

It's a hard one to be honest.  It's more credible to allow access now with Ethos and the repositories compared to in the past when the thesis was at best pushed into the University library and could only be obtained from the British library in paper form if it was found in the catalogue.  I guess it's down to relative public knowledge of such sources, however, I find myself thinking I should have waited until I got at least two papers out of the thesis to firmly establish intellectual ownership before making the thesis public.

Perhaps this discussion has got me thinking and mebbies I'm a little paranoid about it as a result. :-)


Ian (Mackem_Beefy)