UPDATE: Submission of Dissertations in Electronic Form

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From: Joseph J. Duggan Associate Dean of the Graduate Division

Re: Submission of Dissertations in Electronic Form

At its meeting of October 12, 2009, the Graduate Council mandated that all doctoral dissertations be submitted in electronic form effective with the spring 2010 semester. Previously doctoral candidates presented a paper copy for the University Library and had the option of submitting the ProQuest/UMI copy either in electronic form or on paper. This change of policy will result in the saving of approximately half a million pages of paper per year, make Berkeley doctoral dissertations more widely accessible, and spare doctoral candidates the cost of purchasing archival-quality paper.

Each dissertation will be submitted as a PDF document in a single copy via ProQuest/UMI's ETD Administrator site (www.etdadmin.com). The document will be reviewed by staff in the Graduate Services Degrees unit for formatting. When the dissertation is in acceptable form, the student will bring to the Degrees office an original approval page signed by the dissertation committee and the two exit surveys that we ask doctoral candidates to submit. After the conferral of degrees for the semester in question, the PDF will be forwarded to the University Library and to ProQuest/UMI for release to the public.

A doctoral candidate will, as now, be able to request, with the support of the dissertation committee chair, that the dissertation be withheld under certain circumstances from release to the public for a reasonable length of time. A form for this purpose will be available through the Forms and Applications section of the Graduate Division web site.

Master's degree candidates under Plan I will continue, for the present, to submit two copies of their theses on archival-quality paper for the University Library.

The Graduate Division will continue to accept paper copies of doctoral dissertations filed in the fall semester 2009, but for spring semester 2010 electronic filing will be required.

For further details, see Instructions for Preparing and Filing Your Thesis or Dissertation available through www.grad.berkeley.edu, or contact Assistant Director for Degrees Jeret Lemontt (lemontt@berkeley.edu, 642-7330).

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Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:57:32 -0800
From: Jeret Lemontt
Subject: More information on electronic dissertations

Dear Colleagues,

Since our announcement regarding electronic dissertations, I've received many of the same questions from students and departments. As such, it seems like a good idea for me to send out another message in order to share the answers.

Effective Immediately!
Students can submit their dissertations electronically for the Fall 2009 semester without the need to file a paper copy with the Graduate Division. The electronic-only option is our strong preference and seems to be the preference of most students. We are accepting paper dissertations for the remainder of the fall term, primarily out of consideration for students who may have already purchased and printed on the archival paper.

Filing Guidelines Revised
Shortly after the announcement was made concerning electronic dissertation submission, we revised the Instructions for Preparing and Filing Your Thesis or Dissertation document, available as a PDF on our website. This revision details the steps for filing electronically, but also includes a number of other changes rolled up. Major changes include:

• Required margins have been changed to 1 inch all around for simplicity and consideration of the new electronic format.
• The title page should no longer include previous degrees earned.
• Dissertations are now required to be single spaced.
• Creation of a new form, the Dissertation Release Form, that is required for all doctoral students
• The signature page, which can now be printed on any paper, should include the title of the dissertation
• Abstracts should not be signed.
• All students filing their dissertations electronically should follow the current, revised guidelines. Students electing to file by paper for this term only should follow the old guidelines. The old guidelines are no longer posted in order to prevent confusion, but I can provide a copy if needed. However, if a student is filing by paper it's likely because he or she is already working off the old instructions.

Single Spaced. Really?
I've gotten a number of questions from students saying something along the lines of, "I just read the dissertation formatting instructions and is says that dissertations should be single spaced. Is this really true?" To which, of course, the answer is: "Yes". Nearly all of the formatting requirements, and hence the changes, are dictated to us by the University Library. They have asked us to require electronic dissertations to be single spaced.

I hope this is helpful to you and your students. Please let me know if you need any further clarification.

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