Whose Dissertation Is It, Anyway? | The Scholarly Kitchen

"A pattern is starting to develop. Here’s how it goes: first, a scholarly organization makes a statement saying that authors in its field ought to be able to decide for themselves, within limits, whether and for how long their dissertations will be embargoed from public access. The statement is then publicly mischaracterized in the formal press, the blogosphere, and across social networks. The mischaracterizations then go viral, leading to a low-grade moral panic. This is what happened in the wake of just such a declaration made this past summer by the American Historical Association (AHA); I discussed that statement and the responses to it in an earlier TSK posting. Now comes word of a new and very similar statement, this one issued by the Organization of American Historians (OAH).  And the cycle of mischaracterization and panic has begun again, with a piece by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Education. The headline calls the OAH’s statement 'Another Push for Embargoes,' which manages to be wrong twice in the course of four words. The OAH’s statement is not a push for embargoes, but a push for authors to be given the choice whether or not to embargo. Nor, if it were a push for embargoes, would it be 'another' one—the AHA’s earlier statement was not a push for embargoes either. Jaschik’s third mischaracterization of the OAH statement comes in his first sentence: 'The Organization of American Historians announced Tuesday that it opposes requirements—being embraced by some universities—that all doctoral dissertations be shared online.' In fact, the OAH says the opposite: 'The OAH Executive Board strongly supports the right of authors to make their own decisions about the manner in which their doctoral dissertations will be published and circulated. The board urges history departments and graduate school administrations to support that right without qualification, understanding that embargoed dissertations will be available for public consultation upon the expiration of the designated embargo period.'  Note the very important final phrase of that paragraph (emphasis mine). The OAH appears to accept—indeed, to take it as given—that doctoral dissertations will eventually be shared publicly. What it urges in this statement, much as the AHA did in its own, is that 'advisers and students. . . consult with each other about the advantages and disadvantages of embargoing a dissertation, leaving the final decision entirely to the individual student.' There are two issues here, one of them relatively superficial and the other more fundamental and significant. The superficial one is the unwillingness of many commentators to accept or even acknowledge the existence of both 'advantages and disadvantages' when it comes to dissertation embargoes. This unwillingness is what leads to outrage in the blogosphere and Twitterverse whenever an organization like the AHA or the OAH publicly suggests that students should have the right to choose how and when their work will be publicly distributed. The deeper issue, however, is a longstanding one that this repeating cycle of debate may finally force academia to confront and resolve: it is the question of who owns the intellectual work created on campus ..."