ProQuest Eliminates Fees for Basic e-Submission to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
ProQuest is making it easier for students to contribute their work to the world’s most widely consulted source of graduate research. The company is eliminating fees for basic submission to ProQuest Dissertation &Theses Database through its ProQuest/UMI ETD Administrator. Use of the ETD Administrator -- with its simple, paper-free, online process – has grown significantly and now accounts for 60% of submissions. An assessment of ProQuest’s cost structure revealed workflow efficiencies as use has increased and the resulting cost savings are being passed along to users.
“ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database is the premier source for graduate research and serious scholars consider it an essential venue for discovery of their work. Because of this database’s importance, we’re consistently looking for ways to innovate and align the service with the needs of the scholarly community,” said Austin McLean, ProQuest’s Director of Dissertations Publishing. “Moving to a paper-free submission process was an obvious step and once we saw how well it was working, it prompted us to commission an exhaustive analysis of how this has impacted our internal workflow. The good news is that we’re experiencing cost savings significant enough to eliminate the basic fee, while still maintaining the same high quality editorial services.”
Approximately 99% of North American graduate degree-granting institutions contribute their graduate students’ works to the ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database, enabling them to be easily discovered and accessed. Submission through the ETD Administrator has revolutionized the process, making it twice as fast and providing a significantly easier experience by eliminating the need to box and ship paper copies of each dissertation or thesis.
ProQuest/UMI ETD Administrator is designed to support the needs of universities as well as students. Participating institutions have their own customized Administrator that guides students through the process of uploading their graduate works and providing all relevant information. An alert is sent to the school’s designated contact when each student submission is complete, providing an opportunity to review the submission before it ultimately goes to ProQuest. The ETD Administrator contains the ability for a university to create customized checklists and tags, among other functionality, that tracks electronically what previously had to be done by hand. Authors at the University of California-Berkeley, which electronically submits approximately 825 dissertations annually, will save as a group more than $50,000 through the elimination of the fee.
“We have been using the ProQuest UMI ETD tool for one year,” said Jeret Lamont, University of California - Berkeley’s Assistant Director, Graduate Division, Degrees. “It has been very, very helpful—crucial to our decision to go to electronic submission.”
ProQuest's UMI has served as the steward of significant collections, including graduate works, since 1938. During that time, thanks to successful publishing partnerships with 700 universities, UMI Dissertation Publishing has shepherded more than 2.4 million graduate works into the scholarly record for the advancement of research. In 2009, there was record usage of the ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database, with researchers from more than 3,000 universities, governmental bodies and corporations worldwide accessing the database over 200 million times.
About ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database
ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database is the seminal repository of intellectual output and emerging research from the world’s great universities. ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database, whose precursor was begun in 1939, now encompasses more than one quarter of a billion pages, creating a unique, continually growing trove of emerging research, landmark works and surprisingly engaging prose. Researchers rely on ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database as a source of enlightening information, as a pivotal component in making their own scholarly production available to the world’s intellectual communities. The archive is managed at ProQuest by a team of scholars and technologists, who combine their talents to make the archive accessible, reliable and supported by continually advancing technology.
About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that provide the most successful ways for people to search, find, use, and share information.
A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as UMI®, Chadwyck-Healey™, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich's™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.
More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any level and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others.
The company is nearing launch of an all-new platform that will transform delivery of several highly-regarded individual platforms into a consolidated research experience that will encompass all ProQuest family products over time. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.
For more information, please visit www.proquest.com.