Dissertations & Theses

Open Access or Campus Access?

You may choose to make your ETD available as an Open Access or Campus Access document.  If you choose Open Access, anyone with access to the internet may view, cite, and download your work.  If you choose Campus Access, only users who have a UMass Amherst NetID and password may immediately download your work.  All other users can place a request to access your ETD through their own library's interlibrary loan department.  

The Campus Access option will expire after a period of either one year or five years, depending on the term you select.  The PDF will then become available as an Open Access document after the Campus Access period has expired.

Campus Access ETDs will have a lock icon visible on the PDF for users who are not logged in.  To download the PDF, you will need to login to ScholarWorks with your UMass NetID.

After your ETD is approved and posted, we cannot retroactively convert it to campus access.  However, if you choose campus access and would like to convert it to open access, please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu.

Do you want an embargo?

An embargo delays the availability of the full text of your manuscript for a specific period of time. The PDFs of embargoed ETDs cannot be viewed or downloaded by anyone other than the Graduate School and the University Libraries.  Titles and abstracts for embargoed documents are visible to all users.  Embargoes are typically requested when:

• a dissertation or thesis is being submitted to a publisher that restricts prior disclosure;
• a patent application is going to be filed;
• the manuscript contains proprietary information;
• there is a need to respect confidentiality.

We offer three choices for embargo term lengths: six months, one year, or five years.  If you need an embargo that is longer than one year, you must request a memo from your Graduate Program Director stating that person's approval for the extension.  The memo must be submitted to the Graduate Student Service Center prior to your degree date.  If you choose both Campus Access and an embargo, the embargo will supersede Campus Access control.

Embargoed ETDs will show the embargo lift date and will hide the download option for the PDF:

We cannot extend embargoes after they have lifted.  If you would like your embargo to be extended, it is important that you contact the Graduate School prior to the lift date.  If you would like to lift your embargo early, please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu.

Combining campus access and embargoes

Embargoes and campus access can be combined, but an embargo will always be prioritized.  Please do not choose embargo and campus access periods of the same length.

For example, if you choose a one-year embargo and campus access for one year, the embargo will override campus access and we will honor the embargo request and disregard the campus access.  This means that no users will have access to your PDF for that year.  

Do you want to offer your work to users under a Creative Commons license?

Creative Commons (CC) licenses help authors indicate how they would like their materials to be used. Authors who want to make their work available to the public for limited kinds of uses while preserving their copyright may want to consider using a CC license:

• Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY): This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered.
• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA): This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation as long as what they've created is distributed under the same CC BY-SA license.
• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially and they must credit you for the original creation.
• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND): This license lets others share and redistribute your work in any medium or format provided that they credit you for the original creation, they do not use your work commercially. If they remix, transform, or build upon your work, they may not distribute the modified material.

• Search ORCID to check if you already have one. If you do, sign in            
• Register for a personal account and complete your profile 
• To login to ORCiD using your UMass NetID, link your personal ORCID account to your UMass Amherst NetID by clicking the Access through your institution button

• Type in your affiliation or search for University of Massachusetts Amherst. Once you login to ORCID with your NetID, it will prompt you to link your personal ORCID account to your institutional record
• Update your notification preferences, grant permissions to other systems that use ORCID, link other email accounts, download your data, etc.
• Add information to your record manually, and/or link to import works from other trusted organization systems (CrossRef, DataCite, etc.)