Thesis & Dissertation Publishing: ProQuest Copyright Options

Publishing your graduate thesis or dissertation electronically through ProQuest ETD is a requirement of the University of Wyoming. You will need to select either traditional publishing or open access publishing during the submission process. Review the materials explaining these copyright choices prior to submitting your thesis or dissertation. You may want to discuss the options with your major professor as well.

The traditional publishing option indexes your work in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (and associated) databases at no cost to you. Many academic libraries worldwide subscribe to this resource, making full text (PDF) content readily accessible to authorized users (i.e., students, faculty, and staff) at their institutions. ProQuest will sell individual copies of a thesis or dissertation upon request. You may also choose to make purchase of your thesis or dissertation available via third parties. If your thesis or dissertation is sold, you will receive royalties as long as you maintain a current address with ProQuest.

The citation record for your thesis or dissertation is findable in search engines for Google Scholar and google.com unless you opt out; however, your full text PDF will not accessible on these websites when choosing the traditional publishing option.

Open access publishing is an option that provides more access to your research work than with traditional publishing. Researchers and scholars around the world have access to your work without having to pay for access through a publishing company. This option involves an additional fee from the author (i.e., graduate student submitter).

To publish your thesis or dissertation as open access, select the "Open Access Publishing Plus" option when setting up your ProQuest ETD account. Follow the prompts and pay the additional fee. You will not receive any royalties with this option.

The citation record for your thesis or dissertation is findable in search engines for Google Scholar and google.com unless you opt out. When you choose the ProQuest open access publishing option, your full text PDF will also be freely accessible on these websites.

When submitting your thesis or dissertation to ProQuest ETD, you can specify whether you want it to be released immediately upon publication or for it to be delayed for a set period of time (i.e., 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years). Delayed release of a publication is called an embargo. You may want to specify an embargo period to protect your creative content while preparing a journal article, or pursuing publication by an academic press or commercial press, or to retain patenting rights, or for ethical non-disclosure reasons.

Your creative and original research work is copyrighted automatically. Registering your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office is optional, and costs extra. Copyright registration allows you to sue for statutory and actual damages as well as for attorneys' fees if someone steals your work and claims it as their own. Without registration, your copyright still entitles you to sue for actual damages (only) for copyright infringement.

You may create your ProQuest ETD account before you are ready to publish. Be sure to remember your log-on information for when you return to the website to upload your final document.