Arizona State University
AC-11: Access to Research

The ASU Graduate College requires documenting and archiving all theses and/or dissertations as a requirement for graduation.(Adopted Nov. 2009)

Degree Completion: The final culminating experiences for graduate degrees vary by program. In many master’s degree programs a thesis is required, in other programs the culminating experience is an applied or professional project. In all PhD programs, as well as in most professional doctoral programs, dissertations are required. Theses and dissertations are officially documented and archived. Theses and dissertations are submitted to UMI/ProQuest, which makes their content available to the public. Information on the dissertation later appears in Dissertation Abstracts International.

The Arizona State University Digital Repository was created to hold creative and scholarly output from current and emeritus faculty, research partners, graduate students, and ASU staff members. Undergraduate contributions may be accepted with the approval of a faculty member or by request of the Barrett Honors College. Original research products and papers of the faculty and administrators and the unique resources of the libraries will be permanently preserved and made accessible with tools developed to facilitate and encourage their continued use. On October 20, 2010, the Librarians Assembly of ASU Libraries passed an Open Access Resolution declaring their commitment to Open Access. The ASU Digital Repository is an open-access repository and our content is available to ASU researchers, students and staff and researchers world-wide; with the goal to provide access to scholarly information available online, free, and unrestricted. Most of our collections, with very few items, are openly available and can be discovered via commercial search engines like Google Search. ASU Libraries have worked with the ASU Graduate College for many years to make ASU Dissertations and Theses available in our physical ASU Libraries collections, and since 2011, ASU Graduate College and the libraries have been adding the electronic copies of ASU dissertations & Theses to the ASU Digital Repository. The ASU Electronic Dissertations and Theses collection repository content is freely available to researchers worldwide and can be discovered easily via Google search, through ASU Libraries Online Catalog, through ASU Libraries One Search, and through ASU Digital Repository search. Most content in the ASU Electronic Dissertations and Theses collection is available upon deposit to the repository, with the exception of ASU students who chose to embargo their content for up to an including 2 years (after 2 years the content become freely available). The URL for the ASU Digital Repository policies is http://repository.asu.edu/about/policies/

At this time, Arizona State University (ASU) has an open access repository with appropriate policies managed by the ASU Libraries and the ASU Graduate College has a policy for all Masters and PhD candidates for their theses and dissertations for degree completion. However, ASU does not a formal open access policy adopted by and integrated into the institution’s organizational structure. This type of policy is currently being researched and developed.