“A great way to get your work read more widely”

Continuing the theme of Open Access Week, Kirstyn Radford speaks to York PhD holder Dr Clare Cunningham about how an open access thesis can extend the reach of your research ...

For University of York postgraduate researchers, Open Access is not some far-off future aspiration like a professorship or a global patent - it’s a reality they plan for as soon as they start writing their thesis.  The University’s Policy on Research Degrees dictates that “all theses deposited by research students after examination... will be available to the general public for consultation and for reproduction (as permitted in copyright law)”, unless commercially-valuable or sensitive material is present.  An author can ask to embargo their thesis for a year or more whilst they explore commercial possibilities,  but by keeping their work under wraps, might they risk missing out on opportunities to develop their scholarly reputation at the point when their doctoral research is most newsworthy?

Accessing theses then...

From the earliest days of the University, successful York PhD holders were required to supply a bound volume of their thesis for the University Library, where it would be shelved in a locked room to protect it from unwanted attention.  Potential readers were expected to identify a title of interest from the Library Catalogue or the British Library’s Index to Theses, submit a request to read it, and collect it in person, for perusal strictly on the premises.  Readers who weren’t based in York and couldn’t travel were able to enjoy a microfilm version, sent by post.  (For our younger audience: a microfilm was like a ginormous reel of photos of the thesis, page by page. Black and white - well,  yellowish really. Easily torn, or tangled up in knots. Only readable on a machine the size of a photocopier).

Aware that this wasn’t an optimal delivery model for the fruits of their postgraduate researchers’ labour, the Universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield decided to collaborate on an online platform for theses: White Research eTheses Online (WREO).  Launched in 2008, WREO now holds over 14 000 theses and dissertations, almost all free-to-view,  except those which are embargoed for the reasons above.  In addition to all York theses examined since 2012,  WREO also provides a home for earlier titles which have been retrospectively digitized by the British Library due to popular demand,  including two dating from 1968, just five years after the University was founded.

...and now.

Most WREO records include a searchable abstract and keywords supplied by the author, to maximise the chances that the thesis will be well-placed in any list of Google search results. A stable and succinct url makes for straightforward citation and social media mentions.  A York thesis uploaded this year on the subject of bi- and multi-lingual children in English schools has already been downloaded 238 times!  (For comparison, the most widely-read thesis in the Library’s collection of bound volumes, also originating from Education, has been requested 19 times in 6 years).

Dr Clare Cunningham, author of the ‘most-downloaded’ thesis, has this to say about her first experience of Open Access publishing:

It seems such a shame to work on something for 7 years (in my case…!) and for it to only be read by your examiners and those people kind enough to proofread for you! And that’s why I decided to take it a bit further and actually cite it on other websites and posts I was writing, with a link to the White Rose repository: a great way to get your work read more widely.  I didn’t embargo it because I decided I wasn’t going to write a monograph straight from it, but even if you are, a thesis needs to change a lot to become a good book, so it may as well get read!

Rather than relying wholly on word-of-mouth or serendipitous Googling to attract readers to her thesis, Clare took advantage of a relevant scholarly society’s blog platform for postgraduate researchers, publishing a plain English summary of her doctoral work.  An approach from The Conversation’s editorial team followed, with an invitation to contribute an article on the social and political context in which teachers work with multi-lingual children in English schools, which has been read over 10 000 times.  Now employed as a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at York St John University, Clare can look forward to many years of building her academic reputation on sound foundations: her examined thesis, free-to-view on a stable platform underpinned by the resources of three Russell Group universities.

Kirstyn Radford is a Research Support Librarian at the University of York.  She has worked in academic libraries for 25 years, long enough to remember when microfilm readers operated by electricity rather than hamster power were the latest innovation...