Your thesis has been successfully defended. What do to next? What about publish your thesis? The information that I am going to share are specific for my university. However, each university follow similar rules and procedure. Therefore, I will encourage you in doing your homework and find the particular specificity for you.

Why publishing your thesis?

Well, you have worked hard for your thesis, why should it become a forgot piece of paper? In addition, the good news is that there is not much work to do. Mainly is about following a procedure. Therefore most of the time you do not have anything to lose.

There may be specific cases where you may not want to publish your work. For example, if you developed your thesis in collaboration with a company, your external supervisor may prefer to keep the information. Maybe you deal with sensible data or company privileged information. In these cases, you may want to share your intention with both your internal and external supervisor. An open discussion may avoid unpleasant conversations.

How to publish your thesis?

Check with your library the specifics, most of the time is about just editing your front page and fill a couple of forms. For example these are the requirements in the library of Tilburg University:

• The thesis must have a cover page, title page and a table of contents
• The title page must contains the following information:
  • title (and possible subtitle)
  • full initials/first name, surname and (ANR) student’s registration number
  • date and year of graduation
  • name of graduation department
  • supervisor(s) full initials and surname
  • faculty name
• The pages of your thesis must be numbered
• The thesis that you will submitted must be one single pdf-file

Here you can find a link with more information (Tilburg University specific)

Should you made your thesis public?

This is up to you. By pubic I mean, available in the internet and searchable via google. On the other hand if you decide to keep it private, your work will be accessible via the university library. Each library has an internal search facility for accessing there databases. Most of the time they can be accessed only via VPN or physically at the library itself.

Here you can find a link to the thesis catalog for my university.

Publish your master #thesis using your #university #Library. Is free and will take #less then one hour!
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In summary

Publish your thesis is at almost zero work and there is a chance that it will be used by some of your present or future fellow students. Therefore you do not have much to lose and is mainly an upside.

In case you want to do a bit more these are a couple article that will help you:

• What will happen to your thesis and what you can do for influencing its visibility
• Consider publishing your thesis Open access for extra visibility
• Consider transforming your thesis in a scientific publication (Extra work will be needed)

This article (Publish Your Thesis in your University Library) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of posts at the following link:

The post Publish Your Thesis in your University Library appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

“Open access (OA) is a mechanism by which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other barriers, and, in its most precise meaning, with the addition of an open license that removes most restrictions on use and reuse.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

In case you wonder, there is a never-ending debate around the topic and refers to all the aspects of research. In the case of your thesis you may find yourself wondering if this is a good idea or not. In some cases you do not have to wonder at all as the university has chosen a particular path for you.

Some good reasons in favor of a the release of your thesis open access includes:

• Extra visibility for your work.
• Your thesis is going to be stored permanently and someone will take care about that at zero cost for you.
• Transparency.

On the other hand, some reasons for not to release your thesis open access include:

• You are giving away your right to use your thesis in an exclusive manner.
• You actually do not really want to have your thesis in public display.
• you may want to develop some commercial application and you do not want to give away your ideas.

As I said at the beginning, this is an open debate and for every good reason that you can find in one side, there is another valid reason on the other side.

Let’s analyze your situation. Depending to the regulation of your university you may find yourself in one of these categories:

1. Your thesis will be released open access based on university policy.
2. You would like to release your thesis open access.
3. You and/or your supervisor would like to not release your thesis open access.

In the last case (#3) you probably have done your thesis as part of an internship in a company or a lab and you have used resource that the company does not want to disclose at the moment. You may want to check with your supervisor what are your options and what is the best way to proceed. Probably you will submit your thesis following the standard procedure of the university.

The first case, that happen more often that you can imagine, is probably the worst one. Someone else chose for you and the thesis will be published in some obscure database of the university. If you find yourself in this category you may embrace point 2 and “convince yourself” that is the right way to go. I do not see what you have to loose after all.

In the second case I assume that you made the conscious decision towards “open access”. Consequently, you may want to maximize the visibility of your thesis and publish your work in as many repositories as you think they are appropriate. Please note, that I am not suggesting you to favor open access. You should evaluate this decision with your supervisor and whenever their opinion differs from what you are reading, just follow their lead. Nevertheless, if you decided for the Open Access option the link below will represent a set of resources that you may find useful for disseminating your thesis and ensuring maximum visibility.

Should You Release Your #thesis #openaccess ? What you should know before taking a decision
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Resources for publishing open access:

• www.openthesis.org
• https://oatd.org/

These are relatively known repositories after your defense you may what to submit your thesis there.

In the Netherlands, and probably in many other countries there is a similar system, all the theses, from all the universities are funneled automatically into this repository

• https://www.narcis.nl

In other words you do not have to do anything, just submit the thesis for defense following the procedure of the university and will be automatically published in the DB of the university (here you can find the one of Tilburg
https://tilburguniversity.on.worldcat.org/discovery ) as well as to the central repository.

Another popular repository in Europe is probably DART,

• http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php

You may want to check if the university automatically publish your thesis there and, if not, act accordingly.

Finally in this Swiss website you will find an interesting collection of repositories that I would recommend to explore if you have the time:

• https://www.swissuniversities.ch/en/services/e-resources-uasas/resources-by-document-type/dissertations/

This is a bit of extra work but will ensure proper visibility for your thesis. After all, what is the point of releasing your thesis open access if you are not going to share it? You spent months in building a good work, this is the time to share it!

This article (Should You Release Your Thesis Open Access?) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

If you like what you read, consider sharing it!

The post Should You Release Your Thesis Open Access ? appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

First of all, publishing a thesis is not synonymous with releasing the thesis in open access. Open access refers to the idea to make your thesis publicly available on the web. Publish a thesis refers to use the content of your thesis for building a scientific publication and submit it to a peer-review journal or conference.

In the case you are considering making an article in a blog or in LinkedIn, that does not still goes in the category of publishing. However, it deserves special attention and I will write an article about that later.

As you may already understood that this activity will require extra work, sometimes a lot of extra work. Consequently, we may want to understand what are the benefits (if any) in your particular case. What follows are a set of generic suggestions/ considerations, however you should be aware that each case is different and you may want to think critically before taking on board these suggestions.

What are the benefits of publishing a thesis?

Lets see them point per point, a publication may:

• Differentiate you from the crowd
• Position you as a (young) expert
• Shows that you are capable of think critically and scientifically
• Good addition to have in your CV
• Improve your chances of passing a selection for a PhD fellowship

Some of these benefits may be interesting you. If that is the case you may want to consider the extra efforts and decide accordingly.

Is the work that I have done publishable?

Let’s be very honest and direct. If you are doing a bachelor thesis, the chances are very low. If you are doing a master thesis you may have a few more possibilities. You may want to be very open and direct with your supervisor and have their opinion on board. If this was your intention since the beginning (see make the most of your thesis) you may want to make it clear during one of your first meetings. If you are maturing this idea while writing the thesis you may want to ask their opinion during one of your sessions. My suggestion is to be humble and consider the fact that building a publication will take an extensive amount of time. At the same time, maybe you are working on an existing thesis and/or your supervisor has existing material that could be combined with your work. This is one more reason for speaking freely.

Also, be aware that some thesis are just not designed for been published. Maybe you are doing it in conjunction with an internship, maybe the work that you are doing is just at the beginning or simply it will require too much additional work for making all the additional extra attentions that you need for publishing. If that is the case, just move forward to your next adventure. The alternative will be to publish it alone and the chances that you have all the expertise required are very low. Probably it will result in a lot of work for you and a rejection by a publisher in the end.

When should you publish the thesis?

This is a easy one. Strictly after the submission of the thesis. Your main goal should be obtaining a master degree and not to publish a scientific article. You are going to have limited resources at your disposal so, use them wisely and focus on what should be your main priority: graduate, possibly with a good grade.

Where should I publish the thesis?

Ask your supervisor. If your plans are not to continue to study you want to limit the additional work required to the minimum and focus on a venue of acceptable quality but not too thought. After-all there is never a guarantee when you will submit your work. Been rejected is part of the game.

With who should I publish the thesis?

As already mentioned, clearly with your supervisor as you have been mentored the all time. Your supervisor may also have additional work that could be combined with what you are doing and may have a few colleagues that could contribute to that work. In other words you may want to ask to your supervisor to take the lead of this task. In general authorship or co-authorship, position of author is an intricate topic and each community of scientist have a different approach to the question. I will probably write a dedicated post about that and you can consider this answer as the short version.

How much does it costs to publish and article?

It is relatively expensive. Conferences require a participation fee and your presence. Journal may be free (unless open access) but may require considerable additional amount of time. In general, this is yet another reason for involving your supervisor. The university usually have funds allocated to publications and, if this is the case, you do not have to worry about these aspects.

Summary: Should I Publish My Thesis?

I do not think that a general answer to this question exist. However I hope that you will use this article for reflecting about your particular case and been able to figure out your specific answer. Independently to what you will decide, focus on your thesis first and keep your supervisor in the loop and ask for his opinion and support on this task.

Should I Publish My #thesis ? The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. A few questions for reflecting if it is beneficial for you
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This article (Should I Publish My Thesis? The Good, the Bad, the Ugly) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

If you like what you read, consider sharing it!

The post Should I Publish My Thesis? The Good, the Bad, the Ugly appeared first on Francesco Lelli.