Mandatory Open Access Publishing for Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Ethics and Enthusiasm

Use the link to access pay-per-view options for the article published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship available from Elsevier.  The abstract reads as folllows:  "In 2008, two authors of this article (Hawkins and Kimball) started hearing disturbing comments from several of our students who were completing dissertations: 'I have to give up my copyright to the university or I can't graduate.' At first, we couldn't believe such a thing - surely no university would hold students' degrees for ransom if they refused to forfeit their intellectual property rights. This experience led us to look more broadly at university and library policies as they relate to student work. What we found in reviewing more than 150 graduate school and library websites was disturbing: in their enthusiasm for OA, universities and libraries across the U.S. are cajoling, armtwisting, or even coercing students into in effect surrendering the copyright to their dissertations and theses, sometimes with the threat that students cannot graduate if they disagree."