Submitting your dissertation or thesis to UMI

There are a number of issues to consider as you prepare to submit your graduate work for publication. All are addressed below:

If your university does not participate in ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing program, you can still publish your work with us;  use this form to request a publishing agreement.

Depending on the method supported by your graduate school, you will submit your manuscript in one of three ways – as a paper copy we will scan, as a PDF file through our online submission tool (preferred), or via FTP site.

Electronic Submissions. Online submission ensures that we receive the highest quality copy of your manuscript, with color images preserved. The most important consideration for you when you submit electronically is to be sure that you embed your fonts in the PDF you send us. For more direction on embedding fonts and other guidance, please see our Preparing Your Manuscript Guide .

FTP Submissions.  The most important consideration for those who submit graduate works in PDF format via FTP is to adhere to our XML DTD (Document Type Definition).  Please see our Electronic Submission to UMI using FTP for complete guidelines.

Paper Submissions. Some schools ship paper copies to us, which we scan as an image PDF during the publishing process. The most important consideration for you when you submit a paper copy is to ensure that the printing is high quality, with crisp, dark black characters for the best scanned copy. Please see our Preparing Your Manuscript Guide for more recommendations.

Including supplementary material with your submission

More and more graduate authors are taking advantage of new technology and including supplementary digital materials with their dissertations or theses. These can range from an audio file or spreadsheet all the way to a software program written as part of a dissertation. If you are an author at a school that uses our online submission system, you can submit supplementary materials in electronic format through the online system. Just follow the instructions during the submission process (note that files that total more than 100 MB should be sent to us on CD or DVD).

If you are an author at a school that still submits paper copies for scanning, please include a CD or DVD of your supplementary materials with your submission. Please consult our Supplementary Digital Materials Guide for additional instruction.

Including material produced by other authors in your dissertation or thesis can serve a legitimate research purpose, but you want to avoid copyright infringement in the process. Republishing someone else's work, even in abbreviated form, requires permission from the author or copyright owner. You must receive permission from the author(s) and include it with your submission before we can publish it in your dissertation or thesis.

For more detailed guidance on avoiding copyright infringement, please see our Copyright Guide . In addition, Dr. Kenneth D. Crews, a Professor at Indiana University's School of Law, has kindly given us permission to provide free access to his booklet Copyright Law and Graduate Research: New Media, New Rights, and Your New Dissertation. It provides a detailed overview of copyright law that no new dissertation author should miss.

Copyrighting your own dissertation or thesis

As an optional service, UMI Dissertation Publishing will act as your agent with the United States Copyright Office and register your copyright as part of the publishing process. We will prepare an application in your name, submit your application fee, and deposit the required copy or copies of the manuscript. However, you must select this option and pay the fee (currently $65) at the time of submission, in order for us to act as your agent.

Choosing Traditional or Open Access publishing

UMI Dissertation Publishing has introduced a new Open Access publishing option, in addition to the standard Traditional publishing option. Which one is right for you? We recommend consulting with your graduate school for their guidance, and you might also consult our Open Access versus Traditional Publishing Guide .

Contacting UMI Dissertation Publishing

If you have any questions that are not answered here or elsewhere on the ProQuest website, you can contact our Author and School Relations team directly at 1-800-521-0600 x7020 or via email at disspub@proquest.com.