Features
- Quick Custom Setup
- Configurable Options
- Training and Support
- Student Submission Process
- Administrator Tools
- Delivery to UMI
Quick Custom Setup
The setup for your site is quick and easy. You complete a web-based form to answer questions about the aspects of your site that we can customize, and we do the rest of the work.
Configurable Options:
- List of degrees: Graduate students will be able to select their degree from a Degree Type pull down menu during the submission process. If you provide us with a list of degrees applicable to your graduate school or program, we will use that list to populate the Degree Type field in the submission process.
- List of departments: Graduate students will be able to select their department from a Department pull down menu during the submission process. If you provide us with a list of departments specific to your graduate school or program, we will use that list to populate the Department field in the submission process.
- Link to your school or graduate school home page: From the main page of your customized ETD Administrator site, we can provide a link back to your graduate school or university web site.
- Graduate school or university logo: We can also insert a logo into your customized ETD Administrator site. It will appear throughout the site, and link back to university or graduate school URL you provide.
- Payment information: If students must deliver payment to the school, you may specify to whom the check should be made out and where it should be delivered.
- Guidelines for students: In order to provide students with the appropriate guidelines for formatting and submitting their dissertation or thesis, universities are encouraged to submit any existing university, graduate school, or departmental guidelines. We will link to the guidelines you provide from the main page of your ETD Administrator site.
- Resources for students: Important resources or contact information for students that should appear on the main ETD Administrator page can be listed (e.g., registrar, library liaison, writing instructor, etc.).
- Customized checklist: A customizable online checklist will help administrators keep track of the status of any submission. Once the administrator has verified the document conforms to all the items on the checklist, the submission may be accepted for delivery to UMI Dissertation Publishing (and the university library, if appropriate). The history of the actions taken for a particular checklist option will remain, so that the administrator may see what was checked or unchecked, when, and by whom. The ETD Administrator will not permit the manuscript to be sent to UMI Dissertation Publishing unless all the items have been checked.
- Administrator access: We can create any number of accounts with administrative access for the staff members who will be processing the submitted dissertations/theses.
- Option to allow for co-authors.
NOTE: We do not offer additional customization to the ETD Administrator beyond these features. We are happy to hear from you about any modifications that you would like to see in future releases, but cannot promise any changes.
Training and Support
Once we receive your setup form, your ETD Administrator site will be built within approximately one week and made available to you in "test mode.” You will be able to work with your site as much as you need to, in order to understand the process and get familiar with the workflow. Whenever you decide you're ready to use your ETD Administrator site to process real dissertations and theses, we turn a switch for you and you're up and running. Students may begin submitting immediately.
Detailed Description
Student Submission Process
Overview- Student creates a PDF version of the graduate work, rather than printing the graduate work for submission.
- Student creates an account on their school’s ETD Administrator site, and a system-generated password is sent to the student to confirm the email address.
- Student logs in and begins the submission process.
- Student agrees to the ProQuest/UMI Publishing Agreement. No signature is needed, but the student must accept the agreement online in order to continue.
- Student enters contact information (present and future).
- Student enters the bibliographic details of the submission – graduate work title, advisor, abstract, etc. The full text PDF file is also uploaded.
- Student has the option to upload supplementary files – audio, video, spreadsheets, etc. - and order printed copies of their work from UMI Dissertation Publishing.
- Student receives a confirmation screen. Corrections can be made as necessary.
- A confirmation email is sent to the student with reminders about payments due (if any), and details about how to contact UMI Dissertation Publishing with questions.
Converting Manuscripts to PDF Files
Students may use the ETD Administrator's online conversion tool to convert their manuscripts from a Microsoft Word (or RTF) document to a PDF file. Alternatively, they may produce their own PDF file. In either case, all manuscripts must be submitted as PDF files, and it is the student's responsibility to ensure that the PDF file is an accurate representation of their original manuscript.
When using the online PDF conversion tool:
- Converted PDF files are available for download for 4 days (96 hours) after the conversion.
- Students may convert files of up to 100 MB in size.
- Each student is allowed 5 conversions.
Once the student has created a PDF file, he or she may begin the submission process.
Submission Process Details
The submission process collects the information necessary to deliver the student's manuscript to UMI Dissertation Publishing. The online submission process for students essentially mimics the paper-based forms used in the past to submit manuscripts to UMI Dissertation Publishing. In order to proceed with the online submission, students must agree to the ProQuest/UMI Publication Agreement by clicking the appropriate option online.
- Information collected: Students are asked to provide contact information (including a future address), graduate work title, abstract, subject areas, advisor(s), completion dates, degree type, department, and the full text of the manuscript.
- Ordering bound copies: During the submission process, the students may also order printed copies from UMI Dissertation Publishing. This can be done online or via fax with a credit card, or by mailing a check, depending on the option selected by the school.
- Copyright filing option: Students indicate whether they would like to pay an additional $65 to have UMI Dissertation Publishing file for copyright on their behalf.
- Restrictions: Some authors have concerns regarding electronic distribution of their manuscript. If graduate school policy permits it, UMI Dissertation Publishing provides an option to embargo access for 6 months to 2 years.
- Supplementary files: Authors may submit files that are a critical part of their dissertation or thesis. This could include song or sound files, large scale images or maps, or video clips. If the set of files is too large for the student to submit online (larger than 100 MB), they can also be burned to CD or DVD and delivered directly to UMI Dissertation Publishing.
Designated graduate school administrators are notified immediately when the new submission arrives. Students also receive a confirmation email with reminders about any necessary payments.
Administrator Tools
The ETD Administrator provides a unique view for site administrators, giving them access to the graduate works that have been submitted by their students. The initial view is a listing of all submitted graduate works displaying the unique manuscript ID number, author, title, status, and the administrator assigned.
- Submission details: Click the title of a submission to see all the details and to work with the submission.
- Author details: Click the author's name to get access to all the contact information and send emails.
- Status: At a glance the current status of the manuscript is available (e.g. waiting for edits from student, checklist incomplete, ready for delivery).
- Reports: Administrators may generate reports as tab delimited text files. Reports may include manuscript IDs, author, title, submission date, delivery date, subject area, and administrator in charge of the submission.
- Internal notes: An internal notepad allows administrators to annotate the submissions if necessary. Notes are not shared with students; they are for administrators only.
- Request revisions: Administrators may request revisions from students by clicking a link on the site and entering the desired changes in the standard email template. These requests for revision letters are stored in the system for later review. When student revisions come in via the system, the administrator is notified via email.
- Version history: From the time the original PDF is submitted to the time the manuscript is delivered to UMI Dissertation Publishing, all versions of the full text are kept in the system.
Delivery to UMI Dissertation Publishing
After the checklist is completed and the graduate school administrator has verified all requirements have been fulfilled, a submission is ready to be delivered to UMI Dissertation Publishing. A copy of the exact same data that are delivered to UMI may also be delivered to your library via FTP. The delivered data come packaged as a .zip file that contains the full text, supplementary files, and a metadata file formatted in XML according to a UMI Dissertation Publishing DTD.
Administrator options include:- One click delivery to UMI Dissertation Publishing: Submissions may be delivered to UMI incrementally, as they are ready.
- Batch deliveries: If a school prefers not to deliver the submissions incrementally, but would rather wait to send submissions in batches, graduate works can be queued for delivery, and then delivered as a batch whenever the administrator chooses to do so.