Subject: Electronic dissertations From: Laszlo Mihaly Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 13:00:34 -0500 To: "pagra-l@lists.sunysb.edu" CC: pafac-l@lists.sunysb.edu Dear Students, As you know, the Graduate School started to accept dissertations in electronic form. They will be published by ProQuest/UMI on the WEB, see http://proquest.umi.com/login This form of publication results in nearly immediate and world-wide access to your work, which is good. The flip side is that copyright issues must be addressed fully. (The same laws apply to traditional "paper" dissertations, but they were not enforced vigorously.) Before you decide to submit electronically, I recommend that you read this document http://www.grad.stonybrook.edu/gradinfo/forms/PubAgreement.pdf very carefully. You will see that you must decide if - you want to copyright your work - you want to embargo it for a certain amount of time - you want to allow access by search engines. I recommend that you discuss these issues with your advisor. Most importantly, IF YOU USE ANY MATERIAL ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN A COPYRIGHTED SOURCE you should get permission from the author. That means practically any figures or graphs that are not authored by you or your close collaborators. Getting permissions is not complicated, but time-consuming, as authors of review articles know very well. Do not leave this to the last minute. If you do not get the permission you must change the content of the dissertation accordingly. By the way, the Graduate School raised the fees related to the submission of the dissertations. The current fees are listed on the top part of this document: http://www.grad.stonybrook.edu/gradinfo/forms/PersonalInfo.pdf . Chris Jacobsen noticed the fee increase first, and he asked for clarification from the Grad. School. We will keep you posted if we learn anything new. Best, Laszlo -- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Laszlo Mihaly Graduate Program Director Department of Physics and Astronomy Stony Brook University 631 632-8279 laszlo.mihaly@sunysb.edu ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^