Update on Biology Thesis project

May 20, 2015: Also anything 3+ years old can go up on Digital Commons. (RAS)

From Rey Sia on May 8, 2015:
Biology has decided to go with one year embargo on Biology theses, and would like to know who retains the copyright.

Reply on May 9, 2015:

I have been working with bepress to get this set up over the past week. We have never handled theses this way before, but I think we have a process set up that will work.

The student will retain copyright to the thesis. What they agree to is a nonexclusive right (for the College) to distribute their submission ("the Work") over the Internet and make it part of the Digital Commons @Brockport.

The student should be directed to http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/bio_theses/, where they will find links in the sidebar to formatting guidelines, uploading instructions, and a link to submit their research. As part of the submission process, they click through an agreement verifying their ownership of the information. For more specific wording, see page 2 of http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/thesis_guidelines.pdf. The student then uploads their thesis and metadata, and the system notifies me. I send an email to the adviser listed by the student, asking them to review the thesis, and give me their decision. When approval is granted by the adviser, I add the thesis with a one year embargo, and a note to the record that will generate a reminder email to be sent to the adviser at the end of the year. If the adviser replies they would like to renew the embargo, the process is repeated. (Was there an agreement about how many times it can be renewed? To keep the process manageable, it would be helpful to me if we could keep the maximum number of times the embargo could be renewed to two. Do you think that would work for your faculty?)

We have never approached the approval process this way before, so there may be a little bit of tweaking needed in the beginning. The submission form is open now, so students can start submitting anytime, but I will be at a conference on Monday and Tuesday of next week, so any faculty notifications will have to wait until after that.

In order to help the process go smoothly I will be happy to answer any questions that come up, or walk through the process with the advisers.

Reply from Rey Sia regarding embargo on 5/11/2015:

The maximum number of embargoes as two should be fine. Thank you.

Rey A. Sia, Ph.D.