The Way IR: Making ETDs Globally Accessible from the Jump Off

For many graduate students at UTA, spring semester brings the final stretch of their graduate journeys, which, depending on the program, includes the submission of their thesis or dissertation. After gathering research and defending your work, you might be eager to add “Published Author” to your resume. As authors, you know who’s publishing your work and understand why you’re publishing your work, but where does your work go from there? Expanding on a conversation started by Leah McCurdy and Vanessa Garrett nearly a year ago, this blog post aims to explain to graduate students, faculty, and aspiring graduate degree seekers what it means when they publish their work in an institutional repository. 

Defined broadly, an institutional repository (IR) is a digital archive that houses research and related works of a specific institution, like a university. For UTA, as defined in the aforementioned blog post, our IR “permanently preserves and provides access to scholarly, curricular, and professional resources developed by UTA community members.” UTA Libraries’ Digital Publishing Team hosts and supports the IR on behalf of the university and makes its contents openly accessible and free to anyone with an internet connection. For the past year, UTA Libraries has been working diligently on the migration of our IR to a new platform. Formerly called the “UTA ResearchCommons,” our new IR, MavMatrix, will store all pre-existing publications and welcome new ones, including your electronic theses and dissertations, (or ETDs for short). Though we’ve made a switch to a new platform to host our IR, UTA’s goal of providing global, free access to research remains intact.  

As part of the Open Access movement, many have moved away from traditional publishing models that restrict access to scholarly research, and open access repositories are at the forefront. When you submit your work to our IR, it becomes part of UTA’s scholarly record, making it open and accessible without readers having to pay exorbitant subscription fees or authors having to pay high article processing charges (APCs). In addition to monetary advantages, publishing your thesis or dissertation in an IR presents unique protections to you as an author.  

Unlike with traditional publishers, publishing your thesis or dissertation in UTA’s IR allows you to retain your rights as an author. Traditional academic publishers have unique policies outlining the permissions for the use of your work. Often, this means signing a contract that transfers your copyright to the publisher so that they own your work. When you publish your ETD in UTA's IR, the submission process allows you to attest to a Non-Exclusive Copyright Release. This ensures that you retain your copyright and the ability to publish your work elsewhere without needing permission from UTA. Additionally, the publication of your ETD in UTA’s IR comes with the ability to select a Creative Commons license that dictates what future users can and cannot do with your work. Publishing in an IR provides options for your current and future needs and gives you control over your own work in the long run.  

Additionally, IRs maintain constant management and support to ensure the long-term preservation of your work. For example, if you find that you’d like to publish in a major journal, you will be able to cite your thesis or dissertation in any article that you write for that journal and increase the traction on your ETD in the IR. This practice is already embedded in most journal publisher policies, under a ‘green open access’ opportunity. Moreover, the preservation and security of your work in the IR will ensure that whether you’re pursuing a career in academia and weathering its “publish or perish” sentiments or applying for jobs in your designated discipline, you will have access to your graduate work long after you leave UTA. Even now, as the IR migrates to a different platform, all of the existing works in the ResearchCommons along with their permalinks are being redirected to new locations in MavMatrix. Where the IR goes, your work goes with it.  

In recent workshops provided for graduate students, our digital publishing team invoked the Nelson memo published in August 2022 by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), requiring the open access publication of all federally funded research and its outcomes as a commitment to the worldwide dissemination of information. These mandates will only expand across STEM and beyond. Publishing your thesis or dissertation in an institutional repository puts you ahead of the curve. Though federal mandates have a way of prompting conversation, a lack of knowledge regarding open access publishing persists.  The OSTP has set a deadline for federal agencies to update their open access policies by the end of this year. By the end of 2025, Nelson’s memo will have gone into full effect. As we continue to answer questions about the benefits of IRs, we suspect that this memo paves a clearer path for the future of open access publishing. Openly publishing your ETD in an IR not only empowers you, as an author, to make decisions for your own work but also benefits future readers by increasing the visibility and impact of your work on a global scale. The sooner your research is available, the sooner others have access to that knowledge.  

Since the beginning of April 2024, graduate students have already begun submitting their ETDs to our new IR with our digital publishing team on standby to assist with questions about the submission process as well as inquiries about MavMatrix. Greater awareness of IRs makes for one piece of the puzzle, but an IR’s contribution to the Open Access Movement also relies on the dedication of academic libraries to the distribution of knowledge and collaboration between students, faculty, and other stakeholders within the university’s community. If you require assistance with submitting your ETD to UTA’s IR or want more information about open access publishing, feel free to reach out to the Digital Publishing team at librariesops@uta.edu.

Creative Commons. About CC Licenses. https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/ 

The White House. (2022, August 25^th). OSTP Issues Guidance to Make Federally Funded Research Freely Available Without Delay [Press Release]. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ 

The cover image for this blog post is "Small Globe in Hand Mixed with Banner" by Hang Pham-Vu, licensed CC BY 4.0. It is a derivative of "Small Globe in Hand" by Fernando of cferdophotography licensed on Unsplash, and was modified to add the blue "Open @ UTA Libraries" banner.