virginia tech thesis repository

ETDs for Virginia Tech Authors and Advisors

More current information from the Virginia Tech Graduate School and the University Libraries is available in the ETD LibGuide

Virginia Tech has had an international leadership role in ETD initiatives since the 1980s, leading to its January 1, 1997, mandate that graduate students submit their theses and dissertations online. A collaboration between the Graduate School and the University Libraries, Virginia Tech ETDs are available through VTechworks , the university’s repository of digital research and scholarship. Virginia Tech's ETDs and others are also linked from the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations and other resources.

A primary goal of ETD initiatives is to make the research and scholarship conducted by graduate students freely and openly accessible. Another goal is to give future academics opportunities to prepare electronic works such as book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations, assuming that they will be publishing electronically in the future also. Yet another goal is to expand the medium of expression for graduate research and scholarship to more than words and figures that can be reproduced on paper, to other media , including audio and video. There are awards available for outstanding ETDs.

In addition to the information on this Web site, consult the Graduate School’s deadlines . There are also FAQs (frequently asked questions) about the submission process and copyright .

For more information, view the background on the ETD initiative and the definition of an ETD .

For information or assistance, contact Virginia Tech Graduate School ETD Coaches: [email protected] or 540-231-8636

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Q. I am an alumnus and would like to access my thesis or dissertation.

ETDs and print theses and dissertations

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Answered By: Dawn Wong Last Updated: Jan 25, 2024     Views: 205

All thesis and dissertations since 1997 have been submitted electronically ( ETDs ). We are also scanning all print theses and dissertations. As long as your document was not "suppressed" at the time of submission (because it included proprietary data or national security concerns), it should be listed in the library catalog . Perform an author search using your last name at the time of submission. The catalog record will have a link to the online version, if there is one.

Access to these online theses and dissertations can vary. Authors can choose to limit access to campus computers for a period after submission. These restrictions are not always removed when they should, but an email to  [email protected] explaining that you want the ETD to remove the restriction to your own ETD (i.e., allowing unrestricted access).

We are scanning pre-1997 bound theses and dissertations, which is a long-term project. You can request that your thesis or dissertation be scanned by sending an email to [email protected] with the title and year. The item will then be on the priority list for scanning. When the item becomes available online, which may take several weeks, VTechWorks will contact you.

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Virginia tech's electronic theses and dissertations.

VT ETDs are migrating into VTech Works! 21,243 will move from the ETD Database to join the >1,300 most current ETDs already inVTechWorks. Virginia Tech has been a worldwide leader in ETD initiatives for more than 20 years. On January 1, 1997 VT was the first university to require ETDs. Our mission is to preserve and provide access to the research and scholarship of Virginia Tech's graduate students. ETDs give students the opportunity to prepare, submit, review, and publish electronic works such as book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. We support supplimentary files in media formats such as csv (data), audio, video, 3-D images, and others. VT's ETD policies, procedures, and software are openly available from this web site. The guidelines that apply to Virginia Tech's graduate students as ETD authors can be found at  etd.vt.edu  and the Graduate School.

Discover research data from Virginia Tech

Publishing and Repositories

Making your thesis research available to the scholarly community is an integral part of the research process. The first step is to deposit your finished and approved thesis into an Open Access repository. Major research universities now provide an option to deposit your electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) in a specialized thesis repository run by the university. At many institutions, it is a graduation requirement to deposit your ETD in the institutional repository. Contact your university library for specifics (or search its web site).

NDLTD provides a thesis repository for those individuals whose university does not provide an institutional repository. The NDLTD repository is part of Virginia Tech’s institutional repository  VTechWorks , which consists of many communities. At VTechWorks, look for  “ETDs: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations”  or immediately click through to  http://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/18725 . After registering, you may deposit your thesis. This will ensure that it will be harvested by  the NDLTD Union Catalog .

Beyond thesis repositories, it may be valuable to deposit your thesis in other appropriate Open Access repositories. Check out the following general-purpose repositories and social-networking sites for scholars:

• http://www.academia.edu/
• http://www.mendeley.com/
• http://www.zenodo.org/
• http://www.zotero.org/

There are also many disciplinary repositories run by independent organizations for the purpose of sharing research within one or more disciplines. The largest of these are:

• http://arxiv.org/ for Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy, and a growing number of other disciplines
• http://repec.org/ for Economics
• http://www.ssrn.com/ for the Social Sciences.

Some researchers may even choose to start their own personal repository to provide open access to all of their research. This is possible with open-source software on a minimal web server. If you pursue this option, however, you need to consider reliability and long-term preservation issues.

If you want to pursue a career as a scientist or scholar at universities, research labs, or think tanks, it is extremely important to publish your work. Making your thesis available in a repository does NOT count as a publication for the purpose of academic hiring. Publishing your thesis is a process that is entirely separate from depositing your thesis in a repository.

It is customary to condense a thesis into one paper or to split the thesis research into several papers. Each paper is then submitted to an appropriate refereed journal. At most journals, an editor will send submitted papers out to at least three anonymous referees for evaluation on appropriateness, technical merit, and originality. If accepted, the paper is professionally copy-edited, formatted, and published. Some universities allow students to reverse the process. In this case, students publish research papers much earlier in the process, and the thesis is a collation of their papers, usually tied together with an extensive introduction.

In some cases, graduating students are encouraged to pursue book deals for the whole thesis. This is increasingly rare. If successful, it is almost always necessary to rewrite the thesis to make it appropriate for publishing.

Some students and their advisors fear that depositing a thesis in an Open Access repository may limit future prospects for publication. This fear is mostly unfounded if you submit your thesis to your institution’s repository only and as part of a graduation requirement. (See references below for a thorough treatment.) Even in those few disciplines where such Open Access is an issue, it is still possible to deposit your ETD to an your institution’s repository subject to an embargo period. An embargo period of one to two years solves most major issues.

If the ETD contains patentable ideas, the student, his or her thesis advisor, and their patent attorney may also choose to submit the thesis to a repository subject to an embargo period.

“Do Open Access ETDs Effect Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences? Findings from the 2012 Survey of Academic Journal Editors.”  Marisa Ramirez, Gail McMillan, Joan T. Dalton, Ann Hanlon, Heather S. Smith, and Chelsea Kern. College and Research Libraries. Accepted: September 15, 2013; Anticipated Publication Date: January 1, 2015.

“Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities?”  Marisa L. Ramirez, Joan T. Dalton, Gail McMillan, Max Read, and Nan Seamans. College & Research Libraries, July 2013, 74:368-380.

“An Investigation of ETDs as Prior Publications: Findings from the 2011 NDLTD Publishers’ Survey”  Gail McMillan, Marisa Ramirez, Joan Dalton, Max Read, and Nancy Seamans. Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Cape Town, South Africa, 2011.

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Attn graduates: Library items are due back by May 18

Congratulations, graduates! Please return all Library items ASAP. See a map of Library locations and drop boxes (PDF).

Electronic theses & dissertations (ETDs)

Electronic dissertations and masters’ theses have been deposited in the Libra scholarly repository at the University of Virginia since 2012. Libra makes UVA scholarship available to the world and provides safe and secure storage for the scholarly output of the UVA community. Submitting your work to Libra is a graduation requirement for all graduate students whose programs have required theses and for PhD students. LibraETD is can be used by all students, undergraduate  or graduate, whose programs have optional theses or capstones.

Before you upload your thesis or dissertation, be sure you have reviewed:

Copyright Essentials for Scholarly Work  (including Graduate Students)

The ETD Submission Checklist

Older dissertation formats

All dissertations submitted to the UVA Library in CD format were deposited into Libra in early 2014. Access to these items is UVA-only, replicating the accessibility level of the originally deposited CDs.

If you are the author of one of these dissertations and would like to change the access level to be world-wide open access, please  contact us .

Paper copies

We no longer accept paper copies for the Library shelves.  Many frequently requested dissertations from the UVA collection have been added to Libra through a generous grant from Jefferson Trust. If you are the author of one of these dissertations now in Libra and would like to change the access level to be world-wide open access, please  contact us .

If your dissertation was published in paper previously and you would like it to be added to Libra, please  contact us .

Many UVA dissertations were deposited in ProQuest until 2012, and some students continue to take the option to deposit to this commercial vendor of databases and other information products. ProQuest’s  Dissertations and Theses Full Text  database contains many dissertations published in the U.S. and is used by scholars worldwide whose institutions opt to provide paid access to the database. ProQuest also sells full-text copies of dissertations directly to the public, though it is worth noting they do not share revenue from those sales with authors. NOTE: To access "online" ETD's in Proquest, you must be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to the ProQuest database.

ProQuest charges fees for submission, and they have particular formatting and copyright requirements.  Please see their  submission instructions  for details. UVA does not require thesis or dissertation deposit to ProQuest, nor does UVA have an institutional agreement with ProQuest for such deposit. Students who opt to deposit with ProQuest do so as individuals contracting with this vendor.

Libra Contents

• Libra: Search and submit
• About Libra
• About LibraETD
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Virginia Tech Data Repository: Home

• Deposit Agreement
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• Preparing Data for Deposit
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Publishing Data in the Virginia Tech Data Repository

• Restricting Access to Deposited & Published Data

Data Preservation Actions

The purpose of the  Virginia Tech Data Repository  is to highlight, preserve, and provide access to research products (e.g. datasets) of the Virginia Tech community, and in doing so help to disseminate the intellectual output of the university in its  land-grant mission . The Virginia Tech Data Repository and Virginia Tech serve the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world’s community through the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge.

To find or publish non-research data objects (e.g. preprints, presentation slides) created by the Virginia Tech community please visit  VTechWorks .

Current Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and graduate students can log in to the Virginia Tech Data Repository to deposit and request publication of datasets at no direct cost. Other Virginia Tech members can be given access upon request at  [email protected] .

Before Depositing data in the Virginia Tech Data Repository for publication and to receive a DOI , depositors should read and follow the steps in “ Preparing Data for Deposit ”.

All datasets deposited and for which publication is requested will be reviewed and must meet certain requirements. These are described in more detail in “ Preparing Data for Deposit ”.

Note that publication of datasets is a process mediated by the Virginia Tech Data Repository Administrators and may not be completed the same day as a request for data publication is made.

The Virginia Tech Data Repository uses the Figshare for institutions platform for data deposit, publication, and access. For documentation on use of the Figshare for institutions platform refer to the  Figshare user guides ;  please note that actions described in these user guides will take place on the  Virginia Tech Data Repository  as opposed to figshare.com .

Data and associated materials will be accepted for deposit in any language and in a variety of forms and formats. 

Depositors are initially allocated 1GB of system storage towards data publication on the Virginia Tech Data Repository. Depositors can request more storage from the Virginia Tech Data Repository Administrators.

Virginia Tech Data Repository Administrators can provide assistance with research data deposit, publication, and documentation. Consult the  Curation Services page  for more information and contact  [email protected]  for assistance.

Restricting Access to Deposited & Published Data

The intent of the Virginia Tech Data Repository is to make data and other research products openly available to the general public and wider research community. However, we recognize that certain research situations necessitate restricting access to such content for a certain period of time. This content can be embargoed, i.e. deposited in the Virginia Tech Data Repository with the expectation that it will be made openly accessible to the general public (e.g. Published) in the near future. 

Restricted access objects on the Virginia Tech Data Repository will neither be discoverable nor accessible by the public. Do not deposit data in Virginia Tech Data Repository that violates law, ethics, or institutional policy; while we make every effort to maintain the privacy of restricted data, any server can be vulnerable. Examples of such data are enumerated in the  Virginia Tech Data Repository Deposit Agreement .

After data and metadata (i.e. content) deposited in the Virginia Tech Data Repository are requested to be published, it is considered ingested content. This ingested content is copied and packaged using the  BagIt File Packaging Format  and replicated to the systems of the  Academic Preservation Trust . 

Provenance of the content is tracked from its ingest to its publication. Published content is also replicated to the systems of the Academic Preservation Trust, including all provenance about the content and correspondence with the depositor. Any future versions of published datasets are similarly stewarded. 

How long published data are to be preserved is found in the  Virginia Tech Data Repository Deposit Agreement  under the responsibilities of repository administrators.

Current Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and graduate students can log in to the Virginia Tech Data Repository to deposit and request publication of datasets at no direct cost. Other Virginia Tech members can be given access upon request at [email protected].

Virginia Tech Data Repository Administrators can provide assistance with research data deposit, publication, and documentation. Consult the  Curation Services page  for more information and contact [email protected] for assistance.

Last modified 24 April 2024

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