Position Statement on Open Access to Theses and Dissertations | Harvard OSC

"The OSC's goal is to remove access barriers to Harvard research, help Harvard authors build audience and impact, and help readers find and retrieve the Harvard research they might need for their own work. We support open access for theses and dissertations, flexibility for students in different circumstances, and the shortest embargoes that will serve student needs.

A recent Harvard University Press (HUP) blog post speaks to "the possibility of a dissertation's availability actually working in favor of a young scholar seeking a contract." One of the Press's editors, Brian Distelberg states, "I'm always looking out for exciting new scholarship that might make for a good book…And so, to whatever extent open access to a dissertation increases the odds of its ideas being read and discussed more widely, I tend to think it increases the odds of my hearing about them." The HUP post notes that the process of "scouting for new voices, new ideas, and new inquiries" often happens online, and concludes with the simple assertion that, "If you can't find it, you can't sign it."

Open distribution is also in keeping with the Form of the Dissertation guidelines from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which emphasizes the long-standing academic tradition of sharing dissertations in an effort to disseminate research and knowledge: "The assumption that underlies the regulations concerning the deposit of PhD dissertations is that they must be 'published' in the old sense…This assumption echoes a traditional European idea that the candidate for a doctorate must make a contribution to knowledge and cannot have a degree for making a discovery that is kept secret." Harvard Professors Gary King and Stuart Shieber address this tradition in a recent OSC-produced video and speak to the importance of making one's research openly available...."