Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) that appear in eScholarship are managed locally at each UC campus. For assistance with a thesis or dissertation in eScholarship, please reach out to the relevant campus’s liaison listed in "Who can I contact for help with theses & dissertations?"
Below are some frequently asked questions about theses and dissertations in eScholarship.
- How are theses and dissertations deposited to eScholarship?
- I need to update my thesis or dissertation - who do I contact?
- How do I update the title, abstract, and/or PDF of my thesis or dissertation?
- How do I extend the embargo on my thesis or dissertation?
- How do I remove my thesis or dissertation from eScholarship?
- What thesis-specific metadata can I read in eScholarship?
- How do I learn the date on which an embargo in eScholarship expired?
- Can I block search engine indexing of my thesis or dissertation in eScholarship?
How are theses and dissertations deposited to eScholarship?
UC's open access repository and publishing platform, eScholarship, is the final point in the thesis and dissertation workflow. In general, after you submit your thesis or dissertation to ProQuest as instructed by your campus, it is deposited to Merritt, the open-source digital preservation repository maintained by the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library (CDL). The thesis then flows to eScholarship from Merritt within 24 hours. The Merritt-eScholarship updater is scheduled to run daily at approximately 10:00 a.m. Pacific time.
To learn more about submitting your thesis or dissertation to ProQuest, consult the guides of your campus’s Graduate Division. (For example, "Publishing Your Dissertation" in the UC Berkeley Graduate Division Dissertation Writing and Filing Guide.)
Some schools or academic departments have posted their students' theses to eScholarship in the years before their campus had put in place the general workflow described above. In those cases, the thesis was placed by a representative of that academic unit in its corresponding eScholarship site. The source will be reflected in the thesis or dissertation's location displayed in the breadcrumb above the "Download PDF" button (see image below). Those that come in through the general campus-wide process will say "eScholarship > UC [campus] > UC [campus] Electronic Theses and Dissertations; theses and dissertations deposited by a department will show the department location instead.
Who do I contact for help updating my thesis or dissertation?
The eScholarship (and Merritt) team cannot make updates to your thesis or dissertation without direction from your campus. Please contact your campus liaison listed in the Helpdesk article: "Who can I contact for help with theses & dissertations?"
How do I update the title, abstract, and/or PDF of my thesis or dissertation?
The eScholarship (and Merritt) team cannot make updates to information about your thesis or dissertation without direction from your campus. Contact your campus’s listed liaison.
How do I extend the embargo on my thesis or dissertation?
The eScholarship (and Merritt) team cannot add or remove an embargo without explicit direction from your campus. Generally, an embargo extension must be approved by the campus graduate division. If you have already consulted with the graduate division, contact your campus’s listed liaison. They will contact ProQuest to extend the embargo, and the eScholarship and Merritt teams will watch for the change to come from ProQuest and apply accordingly.
How do I remove my thesis or dissertation from eScholarship?
The eScholarship (and Merritt) team cannot remove a thesis or dissertation without explicit direction from your campus. Generally, decisions about whether a thesis or dissertation can be removed are made by the campus graduate division. If you have already consulted with the graduate division, contact your campus’s listed liaison. Upon their instruction, the eScholarship and Merritt teams will withdraw the document from both eScholarship and Merritt.
What thesis-specific metadata can I read in eScholarship?
The only thesis-specific or dissertation-specific metadata in an eScholarship thesis or dissertation is the author, advisor(s), campus, abstract, ETD-specific identifiers (e.g. ProQuest ID), and the dates of publication, embargo, and deposit to eScholarship. In the eScholarship API, advisors are listed as “contributors.”
How do I learn the date on which an embargo in eScholarship expired?
Use the eScholarship API to learn when an ETD's embargo expired. This link has the below query for the date the embargo expired for the ETD https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2k3957sr:
{
item(id: "ark:/13030/qt2k3957sr") {
id
permalink
title
type
published
added
updated
embargoExpires
}
}Result:
{
"data": {
"item": {
"id": "ark:/13030/qt2k3957sr",
"permalink": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2k3957sr",
"title": "Engineered Adenovirus for Selective Replication in Tumors and Druggable Control of Virus Progression",
"type": "ETD",
"published": "2018-01-01",
"added": "2018-07-07",
"updated": "2021-06-30T01:01:40-07:00",
"embargoExpires": "2021-06-30"
}
}
}Can I block search engine indexing of my thesis or dissertation in eScholarship?
It is not possible to block search engine indexing of a thesis or dissertation. If you have chosen the "no indexing" option in ProQuest, the preference will not be transferred to eScholarship.