Thesis uploads interfere for grads

It took Susan Fallows three and a half years of writing, researching and revising.

But the creative writing graduate student finally finished her thesis last fall: a historical novel set in Iowa titled The Round Barn. She graduated the same semester.

Like every aspiring author, Fallows dreams of seeing her work in print.

But soon after it was finished, she was required to upload an electronic copy of the novel onto UCF servers.

Within a year or two, the work will be available for free to anyone with an Internet connection, though a proposed policy could give future UCF grads up to five years before release. That could preclude her work from ever being published, since it would already be available online, Fallows said.

"[The requirement] tells students, 'Well, don't write your best work while you're in the [graduate] program, because they're just going to take it,'" said Fallows, 41.

The policy that requires an electronic copy of a thesis for graduation, known as electronic theses and dissertations, was pioneered more than a decade ago at Virginia Tech. UCF adopted it about four years ago, joining hundreds of schools worldwide that mandate or accept electronic copies.

The increasingly common rule is applied across all disciplines, and it's designed to garner bigger audiences for scholarly work, foster better research and store information more efficiently.

But while many schools have policies to guard against patent and intellectual property issues, including UCF, some students still fear for their work.

In addition to creative writing students, members of the UCF film department have also questioned the policy. So have scholars at other universities whose work might contain proprietary information.

Janelle Davis, an undergraduate creative writing major at UCF, plans to pursue a master of fine arts degree after graduation. She would probably not attend a school with an electronic thesis requirement, she said.

"I don't want to spend two, three, four years working on … a novel to have it published online and then not have it actually published," said Davis.

But others tout the flexibility and efficiency of the electronic method.

It makes the job of UCF's thesis and dissertation editor Nathalia Bauer, who must ensure all papers fit rigorous formatting settings, a whole lot easier.

"When I work with students, everything's done instantaneously," Bauer said. "I can make comments back, they can fix something and e-mail it back to me; we don't have to wait for the paper to come back to me."

It's also widely accepted that the electronic method provides a larger audience for theses, which could further the university's image and attract better graduate students. A quick catalog search on www.library.ucf.edu can retrieve the full text of any available UCF thesis or dissertation.

But Jeanne Leiby, a former UCF creative writing graduate faculty member, isn't sure a larger audience is always a good thing.

"As artists, we have the right to say when and where our work is distributed," Leiby said. "It's not the right of the university to decide that."

A policy recently drafted by the Graduate Council would restrict access to UCF student work for up to five years, if approved by the provost.

After holding back work for that long, the university could no longer contradict its philosophies on the open dissemination of information, said Patricia Bishop, the vice provost and dean of Graduate Studies.

"There are [probably] very few great American novels that have been written as a thesis," Bishop said, "but we do want to give every opportunity for students who have done some creative work to be able to find a publisher for it."

Leiby said even a five-year limit still threatens the ability of young writers to get published.

"My first book just came out, and some of those stories were in my thesis," Leiby said, "and I graduated in 1995."