e-Dissertation Only Policy Adopted by the UC Berkeley Graduate Council

As you may have heard, the Graduate Council mandated that all doctoral dissertations be submitted in electronic form effective with the Spring 2010 semester.  Paper copies will no longer be required.  A new twist added by the Graduate Council creates an automatic two year embargo of the e-dissertation from public access, unless the student declares it can be released earlier. 

The Library has been working on plans with the Graduate Division to have the e-dissertations sent to us soon after they are filed.  We will hold embargoed dissertations in a dark-archive (no access permitted) until the embargo period has ended.  If the embargo has been waived, or once the embargo has expired, the Graduate Division will release the e-dissertation to ProQuest/UMI and the Library will create an OskiCat catalog record that will link to a copy of the PDF e-dissertation on a Library server.  The Library copy of the e-dissertation will also be archived in the CDL Digital Preservation Repository.

Depositing the UC Berkeley e-dissertations into eScholarship will be considered once there is more information on how this process would work.

Plan 1 Masters degree candidates will continue to submit two copies of their theses on archival-quality paper.

 Bernie Hurley (4/9/10)