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?
- How are theses and dissertations included in UC Library Search, the UC-wide library catalog search tool?
- Who do I contact for help updating my thesis or dissertation?
- 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 student theses and dissertations (ETDs) are made publicly available on eScholarship, UC's open access repository and publishing platform. In general, several months after you submit your thesis or dissertation to ProQuest as instructed by your campus, ProQuest delivers all associated files to the California Digital Library (CDL) at the UC Office of the President for subsequent processing by CDL’s ETD service, including:
- Creation of catalog records for review and upload by campus librarians, to ensure discoverability in UC Library Search (UC’s systemwide library catalog);
- Submission of ETD files (PDF, supplemental files, and metadata) to eScholarship for public access; and
- Deposit of all files to Merritt, the open-source digital preservation repository maintained by the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at CDL, to ensure long term stewardship and preservation.
Embargoed ETDs have descriptive information (metadata) available in both eScholarship and UC Library Search; the full-text file will be available in eScholarship once the embargo expires. A very small number of UC ETDs have a permanent embargo; these items will be submitted to Merritt for preservation, but will only be discoverable in UC Library Search, and not eScholarship, because eScholarship is an open access repository.
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.
How are theses and dissertations included in UC Library Search, the UC-wide library catalog search tool?
CDL’s ETD service generates the catalog records for campus librarians to review, optionally augment, and submit to UC Library Search, the systemwide catalog. Typically an ETD record will be available in the catalog two days after the associated ETD files have been received from ProQuest.
Who do I contact for help updating my thesis or dissertation?
Corrections or updates to your thesis or dissertation are managed by your campus and not eScholarship. 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?
eScholarship cannot make updates to information about your thesis or dissertation; those are handled by your campus. Please contact your campus’s listed liaison for assistance.
How do I extend the embargo on my thesis or dissertation?
eScholarship cannot make updates to information about your thesis or dissertation, including embargo information; those changes are managed by 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’ ETD contact. They will contact ProQuest to extend the embargo, then update the ETD catalog record that will in turn trigger an update throughout the ETD service, including eScholarship.
How do I remove my thesis or dissertation from eScholarship?
eScholarship 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 document will be withdrawn from public access in eScholarship; the files will remain in Merritt for preservation purposes only.
What thesis-specific metadata can I read in eScholarship?
The only thesis-specific or dissertation-specific metadata displayed in eScholarship is the author, advisor(s), campus, abstract, ETD-specific identifiers (e.g. ProQuest ID), and the dates of publication, embargo, and deposit to eScholarship. Note that 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": "2021-06-30 01:01:40 -0700",
"embargoExpires": "2021-06-30"
}
}
}Interpretation:
The ETD https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2k3957sr was added (uploaded) to eScholarship on 2018-07-07. Its embargo expired on 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.