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Graduate Student Services: Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Submission

This guide is designed to meet the specific needs of graduate students who use the RWWL library.

CAU Electronic Theses and Dissertation Submission (ETD) Policy

AUC Woodruff Library gathers and archives master’s theses and doctoral dissertations to ensure that the scholarly works of graduate students at Clark Atlanta University are preserved and accessible.

To electronically submit theses and dissertations, authors must garner approval from Graduate Education before gaining access to the ETD Submission Tool. Final versions of approved electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) should be uploaded as a word document and adhere to copyright as stated in Clark Atlanta University’s Guidelines for Submitting Electronic Theses and Dissertations on the CAU Thesis & Dissertation Website.

Electronic theses and dissertations are freely available for viewing and downloading from the library’s institutional repository (RADAR). Authors wishing to restrict access can contact GraduateEducation@cau.edu to request an embargo. An embargo request indicates that an author does not wish to have their work accessible for a specified period of time.

For additional information contact: dsd@auctr.edu

Submitting to ProQuest

Once it is available online, you can self-submit your thesis or dissertation to ProQuest for inclusion in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database, following this guide:

https://about.proquest.com/en/dissertations/

The AUC Woodruff Library does not submit theses or dissertations on behalf of students.

ETD Submission Workflow Guide

  • CAU ETD Submissions site - Follow the instructions in the guide above to submit your ETD using the CAU ETD Submissions website (OJS)

Embargo Policy

Embargo Policy:

The CAU Graduate program will only grant an embargo if a student: 1) has a publication deal or 2) has time-sensitive research with a governing agency. If either of these purposes are relevant, the student must provide the publication deal or governing agency that will be willing to provide a letter of support. 

If there are further questions, contact: GraduateEducation@cau.edu

What is an Embargo?

In academia, an "embargo" is a restriction placed on a thesis or dissertation that allows only the title, abstract, and citation information to be released to the public, while the full-text of work is kept hidden for a limited period of time. An Embargo typically lasts from one to five  years following the publication of a thesis or dissertation via the college or university's Institutional Repository. Since every school has a different set of rules about whether and how theses and dissertations can be embargoed, you are urged to contact the CAU Graduate Center for further information about the process and approval of an embargo request. Most theses and dissertations are not embargoed, and are made publicly available following their formal defense as part of completing a masters or doctoral degree. 

 

Why Embargo a Thesis or Dissertation?

  • If the author plans to publish all or part of their thesis/dissertation in the future and knows that publishers in their field consider open access electronic thesis/dissertations to be a prior publication, an embargo might be an option. The author might be concerned that making the work public will interfere with this.
  • If the author's work is based on data generated through research that will support other publications from people on the research team, like the advisor. There might be embargo options for this situation. 
  • If the author has previously published all or part of the thesis/dissertation, and the publisher is restricting public release of the work in some way. 
  • If the thesis/dissertation contains research data covered by a nondisclosure agreement for a specified period of time. 

Graduate Education at CAU

The timeline for ETD Submissions is available on the CAU Graduate Education website, here:

ETD Librarian