The Graduate College is announcing a change in the doctoral deposit process that will take effect starting May 1, 2016.
For many years the Graduate College has required that depositing doctoral students make their dissertations available through ProQuest in part to ensure the wide dissemination of the work. These dissertations are included in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and Dissertation Abstracts International. Since 2010, all dissertations are also included in IDEALS, the Illinois digital repository. Through web searching and WorldCat indexing, IDEALS allows for dissemination of the work.
The Graduate College Executive Committee voted last fall to remove the requirement that students provide their dissertations to ProQuest for dissemination. This change will take effect May 1, 2016.
Doctoral students depositing for the August 2016 deposit period (after May 1) will be asked to choose if they would like to send their dissertation to ProQuest during the process of submitting their document to the Graduate College. The campus will transfer the document and metadata to ProQuest for the students who wish to make their dissertation available in ProQuest.
Because of the different disciplinary uses of the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and Dissertation Abstracts International, we encourage departments and faculty to advise students on the best practices in their field for inclusion in these databases.