Are you dreaming about having finished your thesis? It’s been examined, you’ve made the required amendments, taken the copies to be bound and now you can have a well-earned rest, put your feet up, get your life back, plan the graduation party. It’s all done. Right? Well, not quite…..before you party we want you to deposit a digital copy of your work on Scholarly Commons.
Long, long ago when I was a postgraduate student things were very different. My pride and joy – my magnum opus – my beautiful thesis with its carefully chosen elegant black binding – was destined to sit on a university library shelf and gather dust. Apart from me and my supervisor and the examiners, maybe no one else would ever read it because they either didn’t know about it or they couldn’t get their hands on a copy.
Fast forward into the 21st century. Universities all over the world now have online repositories where their students’ theses and dissertations are made freely available for anyone in the world to read on the web. At AUT our repository, Scholarly Commons, currently holds the full text of more than 1200 theses, dissertations and exegeses and this number increases on an almost daily basis. Collectively, they have been downloaded over a million times. Have a look at the usage statistics.
So how will other researchers find your work on Scholarly Commons? Perhaps they have never even heard of AUT. Not a problem. Search engines like Google and Google Scholar regularly harvest the world’s repositories and will lead researchers to online theses.
Try this search on Google Scholar: pronunciation vowels popular music
At the top of the results list is Andy Gibson’s 2010 MPhil thesis from AUT: Production and perception of vowels in New Zealand popular music. Click on the link in Google Scholar and – voilà – you arrive at the abstract in Scholarly Commons. Scroll down and there is a link to the thesis (GibsonA.pdf) which can be downloaded and read in full. Andy also supplied some audio clips with his thesis – a really effective enhancement.
It generally takes just a few minutes to complete the deposit. Read our Guide to the Deposit Process first so you understand the steps involved and can correctly prepare your files. If you need any technical help our Research Repository Administrator, Rudy bin Mahli (ph 09 921 9999 ext 6066), will be happy to assist.
I’ve deposited, now what?
Now you have a worldwide audience. Hard to believe? Find your thesis on Scholarly Commons and click Usage Statistics – For this item to generate a table of download stats. For example, Jason Smith’s 2010 PhD thesis has been downloaded 475 times.
You now have a URL (a ‘handle’) that is a permanent online link to your thesis. The handle for Andy’s MPhil, for example, is http://hdl.handle.net /10292/962 . You can use the link for your thesis in many ways:
- include it in your CV/job applications and applications for future research funding;
- send it to your research participants so that they can access your thesis online and see the research to which they contributed;
- send it to your family and/or your ‘support team’ – they can see what you’ve achieved with their help;
- send it to your friends – now they’ll know what you’ve been busy with all this time;
- click on it from time to time to remind yourself of your success!
Now you can party.
Author: Dr Robyn Ramage
