Make your PhD thesis available on Open Access. The sky won’t fall on your head!

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Sten Christensen, Sydney eScholarship, University of Sydney Library


“If I make my thesis available on open access I won’t be able to publish it.”
Wrong, you will still be able to publish it.

There are many misconceptions in relation to making your thesis available on open access, this is the main one and it’s incorrect. Any reputable publisher will take the thesis as a raw manuscript and will edit it so that it is palatable to a wider audience. As such there should be a marked difference between the thesis and the published work; therefore there should be no issue, see Thesis into book. Advice to the desperate

A simple and effective way to make your thesis available on open access is to archive it with the Sydney eScholarship Repository. There are many benefits to be gained from doing this:

  • Receive international exposure to your thesis
  • Provide access to your thesis via the Web
  • Have your work indexed by Google Scholar and be included in the National Library’s Trove Discovery service
  • Have secure archival storage
  • Receive  a permanent and citable web link to your thesis

If you are still unsure, listen to past University of Sydney PhD students talk about their experiences in making their thesis available on open access:

Depositing your digital thesis

To find out more go to http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/theses/deposit.html