I have had a lot of problems with my supervisor, mainly related to poor supervision, bullying and mis-spending of my grant money (I have an EPSRC grant which I obtained myself but she had financial control of it, as happens at my university for postgrad fundong ). Towards the end of the PhD my supervisor told me not to bother writing it up, then that it would fail (there have been two publications from it so there is no evidence to substantiate this claim). Her unhelpful advice coupled to these comments forced me to seek alternative support in the dept for the final stages of writing up. My new supervisor says my thesis is 'good' and it's due to be submitted in two weeks. As part of the admin process for submission my supervisor had to complete a form upon which she could request an embargo of the thesis. I understand why this may be required in certain circumstances and expected an embargo of five years or so for the electronic version. My old supervisor has not seen my thesis nor requested to yet she has embargoed the electronic and paper versions for 25 years, which is excessive I feel. There is no commercial value in the work which has not already been published so it's not an intellectual property/ patent issue. I can see no reason for this other than the inclusion of some data she doesn't like, because it could be perceived as contradictory other parts of my data presented in a paper likely to be published soon, but the data is real, not due to error and to have omitted it would have seriously undermined the thesis so I had no choice to include it. I have though pointed out reasons why it could be discounted, bearing in mind the need not to undermine a paper on which I'm a co-author. My question is, does it really matter if my thesis is embargoed in all forms for 25 years and if it is likely to do me any harm in furure (say by undermining the thesis) do I have the right to request a formal reason for the embargo and can I challenge it? I only have 2 weeks to possibly do this.

You ultimately hold copyright of the thesis itself, so if there is no commercial information in it then surely it's you who ultimately decides whether or not there is an embargo. The only context I can see is you're using data appearing in publication with her name on it, but that is a tenuous reason without a commercial or confidentiality reason to back it up.

If you are awarded your PhD, then I see no issues as such with the embargo and no hinderance to you in your future career. This is just petty to be honest and I wouldn't worry about it. It's up to you whether or not you challenge the embargo, but I'd wait until after you have had your viva and are awarded your PhD (concentrate on getting through).

If someone wants to see your work in relation to a potential job, I don't see a problem with you taking your thesis along to an interview for them to glance at should they not be able to see the electronic resource.


Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

HI Ian thanks for that useful bit of advice about the copyright. I think she's embargoing it because the data in it will be in a paper which is due to be submitted, and which also may crop up in any spin off's from that she's generated, which is why I expected an embargo of about 5 years. I can't see any reasn for extending this though. Yes I agree you are right about just getting through it and then raising it- all the way thro my PhD I've had to keep quiet about her so a bit longer wont hurt!

What are the regulations on embargoes? It's not normal that someone could unilaterally demand a 25 year embargo. I know a lot of places don't have embargo periods in the regs, but most places are very low - we're talking 2 years. It's not in the interest of the institution to withhold publication.

You've probably seen it, but this might have some good information for you:

Agreed, two years is normal at the request usually of the PhD candidate.

The very most I've heard of is five years and that requires there to be a reason for confidentiality. For example, an industrial partner on a PhD or MPhil might want to ask for two or five years to gain commercial advantage and prevent a competitor accessing the information in doing so, sufficient time for then to apply for a patent.

However, the confidentiality period is normally established at the beginning via signing of an agreement between the university, the industrial partner and the PhD / MPhil candidate.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

Hi ckc and Ian thanks for the link, no actually I havent seen this before so its really useful, thankyou. I've just seen the academic advisor in the students union who thinks this is bizarre. We have asked the dpeartment for a statement in writing in which they specify the reasons for a 25 year full copy embargo and what premise there may be for this length of time, together with evidence that this is necessary. I have had huge probelms with my supervisor who is a bully and actively tried to get me to quit before I wrote it up, she's just been made a professor and I know is probably concerned about my making a complaint about her (she's right to, I'm just intending to get my PhD first) but because she has good reason to suspect a complaint (and I am talking a big career threatening one here) I am wondering if this may be tactical in some way. She has stated to me verbally twice "you will never get a PhD from this University" so I am wondering, besides nobbling my examiners (which she's already tried, were on the second set now) exactly what she has up her sleeve. It's added stress on top of a deadline!

I can think of three reasons why it might be so long, but in each case, I rather doubt it's your supervisor who would be able to authorise such a long embargo - normally it would be a university committee / the dean of research making such a decision, so you might want to be careful before accusing your supervisor.
1) copyright - have you got permission to reproduce any previously published work, or figures / images etc taken from other people's work? It might be other people's copyright here that is the problem.
2) data protection - can human subjects be identified? This would actually be a serious problem and justify a lengthy embargo.
3) National security - I have read a permanently embargoed Oxford thesis - the bits deemed a national security risk are blacked out, the rest of the text is available.
Where I work at least, anything over two year's embargo has to go right to the top of the university for approval, and the longest I've heard of being given for commercial reasons was 2 years, which is what makes me suspect that it might be something else.

Hi bewildered, thankyou for your reply, and for the possibilities you've raised for the 25 years- I've considered all copyright issues and all figures have been credited where due, along with any work done by other people in the group- in fact my current supervisor has told me I've been over cautious about this. In addition the original supervisor has not even seen the almost complete thesis, although my current supervisor has my permission to show it to her and she knows it is available for her to read.
Her signature is on the form and she's dated it as 6th feb, which was the same day as it was given to her so it can't have gone to any committee ( I only received the form back back yesterday when visiting supervisor no 2, he's had it in his office since that date). The work is plain old biochemistry involving lab experiments, no humans, animals or anything with any commercial interest, let alone national security! I've contacted the graduate education council using their details on the links from ian and ckc, having read the report. Five years appears to be the maximum and that's in exceptional circumstances, so I'm just at a loss.