Doctoral Guide to Finalizing Your Dissertation

You must pass the dissertation format check assignment in DISS 9400 before you can upload your dissertation to the OhioLINK ETD Center. When you pass the format check you will receive an archivable pdf which includes the approval form signed by your committee.

Use this archivable PDF for the OhioLINK ETD upload. You can find instructions on submitting your dissertation to the OhioLINK ETD in "A Guide to Submitting Your Dissertation":

Students are responsible for making any changes requested by the OhioLINK ETD administrator during the process. As part of the submission process, students must click the boxes to

• submit their paper's bibliographic information, abstract, and full text; and
• authorize their work to be added to the ProQuest dissertation database.

Students must also fill out the requested information. As part of this process:

• under paper information: 
  • The name should match the name on the dissertation/approval form
  • the number of pages is the number of pages contained in the entire PDF of your dissertation;
  • you should use semi-colons, rather than commas, to separate keywords. keywords shoud be entered using lower case (except for terms/abbreviations which should be capitalized).
     
• under degree information:
  • select the following college, based on your degree:
    • Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.) = Business Administration;
    • Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Instructional Design Leadership = International Institute for Innovative Instruction;
    • Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Organizational Leadership = International Institute for Innovative Instruction
    • Doctor of Healthcare Administration (D.H.A.) = Health Programs;
    • Doctor of Professional Studies (D.P.S.) in Instructional Design Leadership = International Institute for Innovative Instruction;
  • enter the committee chair/members in the same order as on your dissertation's title page;
     
• under publication information you must make a copyright/license selection. See the "selecting copyright / Creative Commons license"  box below on this page for information to help you make that determination.

For the copyright selection, you have three options:

1. Copyright, all rights reserved. My ETD will be available under the "Fair Use" terms of copyright law. This may be required by third-party publishers you work with to publish your paper commercially.
    
2. Copyright, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author. [This is the Creative Commons "Attribution – Noncommercial –No Derivative Works" license.]
    
3. Copyright, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may be modified only if the modified version is distributed with these same permissions. All use must give me credit as the original author. [This is the Creative Commons "Attribution – Noncommercial –Share Alike" license.]

Which option you pick depends on what permissions you’d like to give people who want to use your work. The first option is the most restrictive option. If you select this option, anyone who wants to use your work will have to seek your permission, unless their use falls within a copyright exception such as fair use. This is a good option for students who plan to publish their work in other forms later because some publishers require authors to retain this level of copyright in order to publish with them. Another reason students might pick this option is that they want control over whether people can copy, distribute, or modify their work. 

The other two options make your work available under what is known as a Creative Commons license. These licenses let you tell others who want to use your work, up front, the conditions you are placing on their use of your work. You might choose one of these two options if you don’t plan to publish, or plan to publish with a publisher that does not require restrictive copyright. A reason many authors choose a Creative Commons license is that they want people to be able to use and share their work more openly. 

The second option applies a CC-BY-NC-ND license. This license means anyone using the work must attribute it to you, cannot use the work for commercial purposes, and cannot modify the work.  

The third option is less restrictive than the second one. It applies a CC-BY-NC-SA license. Under this license, anyone using the work must attribute it to you and cannot use the work for commercial purposes. However, they are allowed to modify your work as long as they make the work available under the same Creative Commons license you applied.

Whichever of these options you select, you still retain the copyright of your work. You will be able to use your work as you want, and will be able to grant others the right to make use of your work in whatever way you want., Your work will be available through the OhioLINK and Proquest dissertation databases, as well as the University’s Institutional Repository, FUSE. Selecting a license simply lets users know how they can use your work.

For additional information, see the following pages of our Copyright Research guide:

• Fair Use
• Publishing / Author Rights
• Publishing / Creative Commons Licenses

Students are responsible for making any changes requested by the OhioLINK ETD administrator during the process. As part of the submission process, students must click the check box to authorize their work to be added to the ProQuest dissertation database.

After publication, your dissertation will be available in the OhioLINK ETD Center, Proquest Dissertation & Theses Global, and Franklin's institutional repository, FUSE (Franklin University Scholarly Exchange).

For Proquest, please note that it typically takes Proquest 6-8 weeks to load your dissertation into the database after it has been transferred (transfers occur on the 1st and 15th of each month), but it could take longer during busy times. Dissertations are uploaded to FUSE after the end of the term in which they were submitted to the OhioLINK ETD Center.