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Stanford University Electronic Dissertations and Theses Project - Process Overview for SULAIR Staff

In November 2009 Stanford University launched a program for the electronic submission of doctoral dissertations and Engineering Master’s theses. The program was developed in a close collaboration by the Office of the University Registrar and Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR), and in partnership with Google, which will provide full-text, online access to the dissertations and theses at no-cost to the student, to Stanford, or to the public. This document describes how the dissertations and theses are collected, processed, added to the library collections and made available to the public online. In the future, the program will expand to include theses produced in other graduate and undergraduate programs.

As of May 2010, a total of 144 electronic submissions (from Fall 2009 and Winter 2010 Quarters) have been processed by SULAIR.

The ETD submission form is a web application that feeds the digital resources into SULAIR’s Digital Object Registry. This system, developed and operated by the Digital Library Systems and Services division of SULAIR, employs Fedora (http://www.fedora-commons.org/), open source repository software, for managing the digital files and associated metadata. The submission form is accessed by students from PeopleSoft, Stanford’s enterprise system for student information.  During submission, a student has the option to delay the public release of their work (no more than two years) as well as to limit the amount of their work (20%) that is accessible to the public on Google. Also, the student has the option of applying a Creative Commons license to the work.  For more detailed information on these options and related policies, see http://library.stanford.edu/about_sulair/special_projects/stanford_edt_project.html.

Following the student’s submission are two approval steps. First, a pre-designated member of the student’s reading committee, the “Final Reader”, is responsible for verifying that the submitted digital file matches the version accepted by the committee.  Then, a staff member of the Registrar’s Office conducts a final review to ensure all submission requirements and related degree-conferral criteria have been met. Once approved, the dissertation or thesis is then released to SULAIR’s Technical Services unit for cataloging.

During cataloging, SULAIR Technical Services staff review the MARC record while referencing the dissertation files, correcting and enhancing the metadata as needed.  The work is cataloged as an electronic resource.

Dissemination and Preservation
After processing by Technical Services is complete, several downstream workflows are initiated.

The enhanced metadata for the cataloged work is reflected back in the corresponding records in the Digital Object Registry. Copies of the files and metadata are then queued for ingest into the Stanford Digital Repository for long-term preservation.

Meanwhile, copies of the dissertations and theses files are made available to the Stanford University community through Socrates, the SULAIR catalog, and through SearchWorks, SULAIR’s next generation discovery environment. If the student elects to apply a release delay (embargo) at the time of submission, the work will not be available online to users outside of the Stanford community until the end of the embargo period (6 months, 1 year, or 2 years); any user with a SUNet ID will be able to access the work after cataloging is complete.

In a parallel workflow, the PDF files are delivered to Stanford’s contract bindery to produce a single bound hard copy of each dissertation or thesis to be added to the holdings of Stanford University Archives.  As the print copies are received from the bindery (estimated 4-6 weeks later), the catalog record is updated to reflect that a hard copy of the electronic resource is available from the library.

Finally, each thesis or dissertation PDF file and its associated MARC record are shared, via a secure http crawl, with Google. The full-text of the works are to be indexed and available to the public at on Google’s web site, honoring any release delay and access restrictions set by the student at the time of submission.  A link back to the Stanford catalog record is provided, so that users on Google can directly access the Stanford-hosted resource if they wish.

More Information
Details of the electronic dissertation submission process can be found in the Directions for Preparing Doctoral Dissertations for Electronic Submission, which is available from the Registrar's Web site:

http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/dissertation-thesis

Students can also get answers to questions about dissertation submission through Ask  Jane and through the Thesis and Dissertation Help Center wiki.

See also, Stanford University Electronic Dissertations and Theses Project, for more information about this project, including rationale; student benefits; and licenses, copyright, embargo and distribution details.

Last modified: June 1, 2010