Well, I want to thank you for coming today.
This is the first official Open Access Week um event
this week at Virginia Tech and we're addressing
ETDs In the open access
um in the digital landscape in the graduate school arena.
And this panel we have Jordan's Hall to thank.
Jordan Hill. Sorry, Jordan Hill to thank. Um he's an ABD
and a PhD candidate and ASPECT
the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and
Cultural Thought at Virginia Tech School of Architecture plus Design.
And he's going to discuss the American Historical Association's,
support of dissertation, embargoing and the
subsequent national discussion. And then we also have Karen
DePauw, Vice President and Dean of the Graduate School. And
she's going to talk about the administrative and policy perspectives
on open access ETDs.
And I'm Gail McMillan, the Director of Digital
Research and Scholarships Services at the University Libraries. And
I'm going to talk about some survey data that we've
gathered over the last few years. Um a baseline
survey and then two surveys of journal publishers specifically about
their electronic thesis and dissertation um surveys. And in
order not to take up a lot of time with
the background of the survey, I'm just hoping that
you'll believe me that these were rigorously conducted surveys. We
had statisticians on our teams that helped us um be
sure that we were asking questions in the right way
and conducting the survey. Well, plus two of the
surveys have been, one has been published and one
accepted for publication in one of our most prestigious library
journals, one that's published by the Association for College
and Research Libraries. So they've been um they've been
rigorously reviewed and we did these studies in part because
it's been 10 years since any data was collected about
thesis and dissertations. But first I'd like to talk
about the baseline survey and believe it or not for
as long as ETDs
have been around, nobody has yet bothered to gather
just some very basic basic data about institutions with
ETD programs. So we finally
did that in 2000 and just earlier this year um
and it was kind of an outgrowth of a project
that I'm working on that is funded by the Institute
of Museum and Library Services. And I conducted this
with Martin Halbert and Shannon Stark who were at the
University of North Texas. And we um we put
a survey online to Surveymonkey and then we sent out
the announcement about um the opportunity to take part in
the survey to institutions through various list serves like the Association
for College and Research Libraries. I sent it to
Karen and she sent it to the Council of Graduate
Schools. It went to the ETD
List serve the et de list serve a
variety of places. We tried to get a wide
distribution and we got 161 responses. And you
can see here that the majority of those were from
the United States but we also have some international partners
in this survey and 93% of those surveyed have a
ETD programs and 69% of those programs are mandatory.
We asked this question about whether the surveys the
ETDs Are publicly available
or not. And as you can see from the
data um the international institutions are more likely to have
all of their ETDs.
available than they are here in the U.S.
So you guys have a tough time seeing
the results. I'm having a tough time myself.
Um We asked um if you have ETDs
at your institution, do you
limit their access? And we wanted to find out
those that limit access only to the home institution but
also um embargo. And so here you can see
that in the United States were more more likely to
um have ETD Is limited
to the home institution. Whereas that's less the case
at our international survey respondents. But we wanted to
know not only if they limit access but why they
limit access. And so this um this chart kind
of shows you that progression of of the U.S. how
we're similar but also how we're different from um the
reasons for limiting access to ETDs
And the United. Oh and of
course the survey participants could answer could select multiple choices.
Actually this wasn't a choice question. This was
a narrative question where they just told us what um
why they limited access. So um in the U.S.
You can see that um just on
the author's request is a major part of why we
limit access. But there's also publishing and patent concerns.
You can see from the far right side of
this survey of this chart that in our international institutions
they're more likely to do it because the data is
sensitive or they have a mandated policy for limiting access.
We also wanted to know if embargo was an
option at other institutions or institutions. And so what
you can see here is that at the U.S.
Institutions they're more likely to have embargoes.
Um There are few fewer embargoed at the international um
level. And we also wanted to um To know
how long they embargoed them. So I don't think
this is really a very telling question because more than
a year, well, you know, is that
a year and a month? Or is that 12
years? You know, it doesn't really help us
get to that issue, but we also wanted to
know why um they were choosing to embargo. This
isn't dissertations. And so you can see um that
in the international arena as well as the U.S.
We do it because of patent. Um
and copyright concerns. Publishers concerns are more an issue
here in the United States than they are internationally but
our international partners in this survey are more likely to
embargo because of sensitive or confidential information. Now,
the two other surveys that I want to talk about
today were the surveys of publishers. These are conducted
in the last few years. Um And to we
wanted to ask, we asked about a dozen questions
but the main question we wanted to ask us this
one which of the following statements best reflects the editorial
policy or practice governing your enterprise manuscripts are revisions derived
from openly accessible ETDs
always case by case basis only if they're restricted to
the home institution, only if they're considerably different or
they don't want to consider them at all. And
then we gave them the option to give us other
reasons. So the first survey we conducted was in
2011 and it was of the Social science Arts and
Humanities. Um journal editors and university press directors.
So you can see here we had um not a
very large turnout, about 17% was our response rate.
Um We learned from this in our second survey
and did a better job. It was a surveymonkey
um survey we used the Thompson, Reuters impact factors
and selected the top five most impactful journals in the
social science Arts and Humanities according to their data.
And this the stated that they had compiled between 2005
and 2009 was the most current that was available to
us at that time. And you can see here
since we're going to talk about the History Association,
I thought would be interesting to note that of those
journals, only 8% focused on history, but of
the university press directors that responded that 80% said they
published um history in the field of history. So
this is how it breaks down. Um 45% will
always accept manuscripts based on openly accessible ETDs.
Another 20% on a case by case
basis. 14% will do it if the manuscript
submitted for publication is substantially different from the
ETD Another 3% of access to that
ETD Is restricted and only
4% said that they would not consider a manuscript based
on an electronic dissertation that was publicly available. So
we looked um wanted to break this down and look
at how the journal editors responded versus how the university
press um directors responded. And so here we see
that the journals are more likely to say that
ETDs are always manuscript based
on ETDs are always
welcome. The press directors are less likely to however
many more press directors, 44% will consider them on
a case by case basis. So, this is
just another way of looking at the chart we saw
previously. But it kind of shows you the difference
between what the press directors are looking for and what
the journal editors are looking for or will accept.
I think it's really telling. Um Perhaps as much
as the data are the comments that we receive from
over half of the people who responded to our survey.
So partly since you can't see what these are
saying I'll read some of them because they are telling
um 11 respondent says we do not consider the dissertation
to be an equivalent of a book. It is
a student work and a book is a professional work.
Another comment was dissertations have never um counted as
publications. A pdf of an unpublished work is still
an unpublished work. Um The question of whether an
ETD Is considered a prior
publication was a key um concern among um the students
and faculty at Virginia Tech. I know as well
as at other institutions. So this one of the
comments we received was that prior available through an IR
is not usually the deciding factor.
We are more interested in the quality of the work
how well it fits with our list and whether it
deserves wider dissemination and promotion. And the last comment
on the slide is an editorial review and publication process
entails substantial um refinement and revision of works that originate
as part of a doctoral work. And thus we
do not consider raw dissertations as competing with works eventually
published under our imprint. They're just a few more
comments. We always go through extensive review and revision
process. So even if starting point is out there.
The finished product is not. And then we
have a quote from the American Psychological Association which publishes
over 40 journals in their area. And they say
they have an official policy that thesis and dissertations even
if archived on a university site are not counted as
prior publication. And the last comment here is a
chapter of a thesis or dissertation will virtually never be
suitable as an article in my journal. Authors will
often have to come um contextualize the discussion and explain
the implications of their conclusion. And authors will often
find that after completing a dissertation they are able to
refine the argument a bit as well. So when
we did this survey we found that there were some
concerns among the publishers. Some we were aware of
some we weren't aware of um a new a new
twist to ETDs.
Is that it makes the author um anonymity very difficult.
We haven't thought about this it's much more easy
to determine who whose work you're reviewing. Even a
blind review if you go looking for it. And
then as much as we may be aware of
ETDs, we found some
some of the editors and publishers were still saying they
never thought about ETDs
until just now. And there there was one
who said that we asked authors to stop distribution of
their ETD when we agree
to publish their revised material. And another one that
talked about ETDs
already are including published articles that was a relatively new
twist and we have that option here at Virginia Tech.
So the second survey we conducted was with the
science journal editors. Previous ones were social science humanities
journal editors and university press directors. These are just
journal editors. And I'll show you some of the
comparison data once we go through This. But we
got a better response rate this time. Nearly 28%.
Again we use survey monkey. But we had
some support from the board of the network digital library
thesis and dissertations. So after we did our online
survey when we didn't get a response, we had
the graduate students in the library program at Wisconsin phoned
them and asked them for their responses and we we
asked them to make up up to six phone calls
at all times all times of you know the week
and the day. So So we got an additional
28 responses that way. And we compared the data
with the survey respondents who you know filled out the
online survey and those that filled out the telephone survey
and determined that there really wasn't a difference in their
responses. So we combined the data. So here's
how the science editors responded to our survey and as
you can see over half said the manuscript which are
revisions derived from openly accessible ETDs
Are always welcome. Another 19% accept
them on a case by case basis, but 13%
said that they didn't want to consider ETD
These are the science journal editors.
So some of the comments received from those um survey
respondents once said peer reviewed publication that comes out of
a dissertation or thesis should not only be encouraged but
is crucially important for the scholars development and advancement of
scientific knowledge. Another one said it is our job
to archive and publish the best research. Thus we
are quite happy to publish material which otherwise would sit
languishing on online archives. We of course in the
library don't think that they're languishing there, but that's
okay. That was his comment. Another common is
work which has been published in archival peer reviewed journals
is considered appropriate for submission submission even if it is
accessible elsewhere. And two more comments um while we
recognize thesis as legitimate and sizable publications, they are
considered great literature because they do not go through blind
external peer review and are not published in a recognized
peer review reviewed outlet. They are not considered publication.
And lastly, our journal was has essentially ignored
any potential conflict arising from publication of ETDs
because the situation is really
not different from the days of the hard copy thesis
holdings by university libraries. They are simply more easily
accessible. So here's a look at the journal editors
and the two surveys, not the press directors but
just the journal editors. And you can see here
that the science journal editors are slightly more likely to
welcome species manuscripts based on their theses. Whereas in
the humanities they say they're going to look at them
on a case by case basis, which I think
is really kind of an odd way. Perhaps was
an odd way for us to say this. But
I'm sure every journal editor or press director would say
they consider manuscripts on a case by case basis but
that's what they chose to respond. And you can
see also that the sciences are more likely not to
consider work based on a thesis than are the humanities
and social science. So I thought that was interesting
and here is a look at all three of the
of the surveyed groups, the journal editors and the
sciences and the humanities and social science as well as
the press directors. So this just gives you a
different perspective on the same the same data. And
I think um what was interesting for me to find
out about this survey also was that they're not as
concerned about ETDs being
restricted to the home institutions. I mean that this
is really why we at Virginia Tech decided to have
this restriction is because we talked to um to journal
editors and I remember in particular the american Chemical Society.
I mean this was the best thing that we
could do for them was to limit access. But
according to the editors and press directors, that's really
not a major consideration. So we conclude from our
surveys that graduate students should submit their thesis and dissertations
for publications that most publishers are going to consider them.
We know there's a higher percentage, nearly 89%
in the social science and humanities that will consider them
and a slightly slightly smaller percentage in the sciences.
And um following the results of our survey and the
discussion we're going to have um later, it was
interesting that the Harvard University Press um director said,
you know, if you can't find that dissertation online,
it's hard for uh it's hard for them to
offer you a publication contract, which I think makes
a lot of sense from the um the comments we
received, there were three very clear um notices and
that is quality is the publisher's main concern, thesis
and dissertations have to be adapted for an entirely new
audience. And peer review is radically different in the
publication arena than it is in the graduate school arena.
And we kind of started to refer to this
kind of knowledge among among our Viber constituents as scholarly
publishing literacy that is being aware of who you know
who your constituents are. So now like to turn
it over to Jordan's talk about dissertation m bar going
um I just to give you a little background before
I read the American Historical Associations um stance I uh
there was this summer in the midst of you know,
a year and a half after I became a
doctoral candidate that I was um I found out what
dissertation embargoing was. I actually had no idea
what that was. I was too in my work
like I think many grad students are to kind of
be aware of these larger discussions that were happening um
and as a historian. Um I doing, you
know my researches on memorials in the aftermath of events
of mass murder and in order to write my dissertation,
I really have had to travel all around the
country, done almost three dozen um new oral history
interviews in order to compile information because there's really no
monograph length study thus far of the creation of this,
this particular kind of memory sites. So um
when I became aware of what dissertation m bar going
was um particularly because it was being put forward nationally
by the american Historical Association. Um I immediately uh
I thought you know, this pertains to me this
is something that's gonna be pertinent to me as I
move from this stage of my career into the beginning
of a professor job and a tenure track job hopefully.
Um And if in fact publishers are um starting
to lean away from dissertations that have been uh available
electronically, this is something that's going to be very
pertinent to me because while my dissertation is grounded in
the secondary literature, vast majority of my dissertation is
based upon a novel research that I've done because there
really are no monograph length uh studies on this topic.
Um So while I understand that I'll go undergo
a lot of revision in the coming years, um
a lot of the material kind of the the interviews
and the material that make up the research itself would
ultimately still be available in a lesser form. Um
So that got my attention. I contacted Dean to
paul this summer and said, you know, I
just having been involved with the graduate student community here
at Virginia Tech and the course of my time here,
um I just learned about this, it really
caught my attention and so I wanted to make sure
that other graduate students here and because we're recording it
perhaps elsewhere as well. Um just become aware of
this discussion and what dissertation and arguing actually is and
the reasons and rationales behind it because I think um
you know, it's it's interesting that um the science
journals were more remiss to publish because I actually thought
it would be the other way around. So I
was gonna say maybe I was planning on saying that
maybe this information is only pertinent for those of us
in the social sciences, but it seems based upon
the research that you did, that it's really gonna
be pertinent to all of us and it's gonna be,
you know, you're gonna want to be aware
of your options um and aware of just the ways
in which the publication and dissemination of your dissertation Um
have changed pretty radically in the last 5-10 years based
on uh new practices. So with that I'm gonna
read this summer, the American Historical Association released this
public statement about the embargoing and dissertations and it
caused really a pretty large national discussion. Um but
I wanted to read the original text because I think
it's very straightforward and it really kind of outlines very
nicely the ways in which um these practices have been
changing. Um The American Historical Association strongly encourages graduate
programs in university libraries to adopt a policy that allows
the embargoing of completed history PhD dissertations in
digital form for as many as six years um because
many universities no longer keep hard copies of dissertations deposited
in their libraries. More and more institutions are requiring
that all successfully defended dissertations be posted online so that
they are free and accessible to anyone who wants to
read them at the same time. However, an
increasing number of university presses are reluctant to offer publishing
contracts to newly minted PhDs whose dissertations have been freely
available via online sources. Presumably online readers will become
familiar with an author's particular argument methodology and archive sources
and will feel no need to buy a book once
it is available. As a result, students who
must post their dissertations online immediately after they receive their
degrees can find themselves at a serious disadvantage in their
effort to get their first book published. It is
not unusual for an early career um Scholar to spend
5-6 years revising a dissertation and preparing the manuscript for
submission to a press for consideration. During this period,
the scholar typically builds on the raw material presented
in the dissertation. Refines the argument improves the presentation
itself. Thus, although there is a close relationship
between the dissertation in the book, the press is
often considered them competitors. The book is measure of
scholarly competence used by tenure committees. In the past,
most dissertations were circulated through inter library loan in
the form of hard copy or microfilm for a fee
either way gaining access to a particular dissertation took time
and special effort for microfilm and for microfilm money.
Now, more and more university libraries are archiving dissertations
in digital form, dispensing with the paper form altogether.
As a result, an increasing number of graduate
programs have begun requiring the digital filing of dissertations because
no physical copy is available. Making the digital one
accessible becomes the only option. However, online dissertations
that are free and immediately accessible, make possible a
form of distribution that publishers consider too widespread to make
revised publication in book form viable. The social sciences
have been and remain book based disciplines and the requirement
that dissertations be published online poses a tangible threat to
the interests and careers of junior scholars in particular.
Many universities award tenure only to those junior faculty who
have published a monograph within six years of receiving a
PhD. While the online publication of dissertations with the
online publication of dissertations, social scientists will find it
increasingly difficult to persuade publishers to make the considerable capital
investments necessary to the production of a scholarly monograph.
Students who choose to embargo their dissertations should be required
to deposit a hard copy of their dissertation in the
university library or two for the purpose of inter library
loan. Alternatively, if the university libraries no longer
provide a way to archive physical dissertations, students should
be permitted to embargo the digital copy for up to
six years with at access being provided only on the
campus or with the students explicit permission off campus.
By endorsing a policy that allows embargoes, the american
Historical Association seeks to balance to central the competing ideas
in our profession. On the one hand, the
full and timely dissemination of new knowledge and on the
other, the unfettered ability of young historians to revise
their dissertations and obtain a publishing contract from a press.
We believe that the policy recommended here honors both
of these ideals by withholding the dissertation from online public
access, but only for a clearly stated and limited
amount of time and by encouraging other, more traditional
forms of availability that would ensure a hard copy of
the dissertation remains accessible to scholars and all other interested
parties. So with that I'll uh pass pass it
on to and just say that this was something that
was very important um to me to learn about this
discussion. And I think um with the state of
uh competitiveness in the job market in academia these days
is a very serious issue. Um And I'm really
glad that Virginia Tech is taking the time to address
it because ultimately it will benefit us all if scholars
uh if junior scholars who graduated from Virginia Tech ultimately
published their books without the problems that that have been
addressed by the American Historical Association. So thank you.
Okay let me just add a few comments and
then we'll open to discussion for sure. Um Virginia
Tech um and this was before my time. So
if you have questions about the real history of ETDs
we have to turn it
back over to Gail. But Virginia Tech was the
first graduate school, the first university to require ETDs.
uh electronic thesis
and dissertation and no paper copies. Uh That was
by policy in the nineties. Um I was at
another university at that time um uh working in the
graduate school and I remember when that happened and I
thought um that's cool except for the mandatory part.
I was one of those that was um a little
skeptical of requiring ETDs
of everyone. Um And then taking the job
here. Um I learned more of the history and
the background but Virginia Tech was was the first um
to to do that and thus has had a long
standing policy that all thesis and dissertations needed to be
archived. Um uh and Gail has been you've been
doing that the whole the whole time. Um There
was a policy at the time that allowed for some
restrictions. Um And I think that over the years
we have or embargo um we have continued to tweak
that to now. The policy is that when they
we assume that it will go into et de unless
the student requests um a year extension or or year
restriction or longer depending upon the case that is made
by the the student. I'm I know a american
historical association recommends six years. Um I have not
been as comfortable with that period of time but we
have approved some for three years with the possibility of
uh continuing the restriction. So we have right now
it's one year and they can come back and say
I need another year for the M. F.
A. S. Uh in poetry in english I
believe we have agreed now too. Five years.
Yeah. Um And so that is done. Um
And so all the M. F. A.
ETDs. That are
submitted, they have the five year. It could
be lifted um upon request but then a decision is
going to be made at five years. So you
know Jordan's I think has raised a very good point
about the embargo. Uh And indeed it is possible
here. I'm very comfortable as as Dean that um
we want the work published philosophically or out there open
access. Let me put it that way. Um
Philosophically. We at this university ask our grad students
um to do research to do scholarship. Um they
go about doing it and philosophically I believe people should
be told about it. Um And that comes in
the form of ETD It
comes in the form of presentations and other refereed publications,
refereed open access as well as um refereed um
uh traditional publishing. One other point here is that
as Gayle mentioned, we have we allow manuscripts published
manuscript to be a part of the E. T.
D. Now that raises a whole different set
of issues relative to copyrights. Um Mostly copyright not
um some of the other uh use of figures.
Um uh what's the term I'm looking for? Um
Fair use. Fair use. Thank you. I
um we've gone through um some issues with fair use
but we um in order to use a manuscript,
published manuscript um in a thesis or dissertation it requires
at least one for a masters and two for a
PhD often we will see more publications and these are
already published or they can be to be published.
Um Or I defined it as publishable if they're gonna
use the manuscript format then indeed they need to be
publishable not in review or actually published but um so
that's a whole different issue. Um And uh the
last point that I want to just bring up for
the purpose of discussion is top secret research. And
that's another tricky issue that if a um if a
d. Dissertation or thesis was done using uh top
secret um data or it was classified in any way
then it could not be by its classification of top
secret or classified or the other categories it couldn't go
into. Um the ETD
Um I have actually resisted um the notion uh and
we have the office of Research and the graduate school
have put into place a different type of practice so
that all of our grad students must publicly defend a
thesis or dissertation and have something publishable from that.
Um They can be involved in top secret research out
of which must come something that they can publicly defend.
Um I find it very challenging as the dean
to be able to um verify that um the work
is good. Um And it is defensible and publishable
when I can't see it. And no one in
the grad school can review it and I have refused
to get top secret clearance. Um I don't want
that so I'm not going down that that path at
all. But I think it's important if we are
a public institution that um the students have the opportunity
to present and defend their work and publish it.
So there's always a portion of that research um classified
research or top secret that could be put into the
public domain. Some of these these um thesis and
dissertations have indeed been classified up to a point and
then can be released later. So there's uh different
sets of issues. So it's the open access embargo.
It's the top secret research and it's the use
of already published um publications in E. T.
D. S. So um I think that gets
to to the mission of the Land Grant University as
well. I mean do we still have that same
land grant mission of conducting this research and then making
it publicly available so that it can be useful innocent?
Yeah. Can I ask you a couple questions?
Okay. And then uh your international part on
the survey, who where did those international institutions come
from? Do you remember? Oh there's um there's
a variety of them. They probably responded through the
ETD List serve. That's
probably how they how they heard about it. Um
I can't remember offhand that there was any particular area
of the world that they came from. It seemed
to me that they were distributed through europe and south
America largely. I don't remember a large asian response
but I I could I can tell you later but
I don't happen to know offhand because the protocols for
um archiving thesis or dissertations is very different around the
world. The copyright issues are very different as well,
you know? And the preservation issues are different
too. I know my colleagues in Germany can be
part of a distributed network, which is the way
we preserve ours, but it has to be in
Germany. There are legal restrictions to how wide their
network can be. So I don't know if that
affects the TVs necessarily, but I just thought that
was interesting. Yeah. Do you have another question
for me? No, no, no. I
just I I meant to ask that earlier. So
I have some questions. Okay. Um with the
M. F. A. Hearing about the specific
ways in which the M. F. A.
Have had what was the reason or rationale our I
guess the request that led to the five year allowance
for the M. F. A. What was
it about those that particular scholarship and work that led
to that allowance for that group? That was because
it takes up to that period of time to publish.
So it's very similar. But aren't those,
those are pretty much published, publishable works as there
as the thesis that is submitted to the graduate school.
It's not because they're waiting to rewrite it to
revise it correct their poetry's and they're they're fiction and
that was my understanding one thing that I that I
think of just being part of this discussion and being
familiar with the H. A stance is that that
I haven't heard anywhere in the discussion is um something
you know, to extend it beyond perhaps a year
to say uh three years or something of that sort
for people who are for uh you know, junior
faculty or um you know, PhD candidates who are
concerned that there's a substantial amount of new research in
here that um while they're pursuing a securing a publication
contract, they would like it to be embargoed.
Um But as opposed to like just a blank,
you know, the H. A. Is suggesting
a blank slate six years. Um but perhaps a
three or four year period for uh for PhD candidates
who request it. Um And then any extension would
be contingent upon having secured uh publication contract because um
you know, just six blankets, six years,
I could see how some schools would be remiss to
allow that to occur. Um But it seems to
me based upon conversations I've had with faculty here and
elsewhere, um that within 3 to 4 years of
having secured your first position at another university. Um
If you were in fact moving to turn your dissertation
into a published monograph, you should know by then
whether or not you have the contract and the publisher
has problems with it because we know that there are,
you know, a significant number of publishers who
don't have problems with the so just to make them
blanket restricted because possibly you're going to contract with the
publisher, I think, you know, it would
be good if the students did some research to find,
you know, who are you likely to publish
your dissertation with? You know, that research doesn't
need to be put off for years before, you
know, and in the meantime hide the work that
you've done when and having for for interested for students
who requested having the three or four year period would
also allow them when they get in contact with the
publisher that's interested in publishing their piece. To be
able to ask that publisher. Okay, since I'm
under contract with you now, you know, I
have a deferment with my previous school. Um do
you care you know, now that I'm under contract
to publish this, Can I allow my school to
release the at this point, you know, past
work dissertation and um which would give us more information
as well. Right. About how about doing your
research beforehand to find out which publishers are in favor
of ETDs. Which
publishers have more open policies and then make your decision
about where you're going to publish. You know,
let that influence your decision rather than rather than restricting
access, not letting anybody have it, then do
your research, then find out what the publisher's policy
is. Then, you know, come back to
the graduate school. I I think that that kind
of research should be done up front by each individual
student or Well, I mean my only concern is
I'm in my final year. So I know how
busy I am now. And as I start my
new job, I'm not aware, you know,
depending upon what kind of school island at, you
know, in your first year or two of a
new job, you're gonna be given a whole new
range of responsibilities. And so, um I understand,
but at the same time, I guess my
thought process has been and I, you know,
I may just be incorrect here. But my thought
process has been that when I transition to another institution
and begin to have all those rights and responsibilities,
that will probably be a similar workload to what I'm
experiencing now. So the question comes of, how
much time am I going to have realistically to be
able to reach out to all the publishers who might
be interested in my piece based upon this? Um
You know, that some of the publishers may may
think that it's uh okay, whereas others may not.
Um I guess the point I'm trying to make
is just that I would like to be able to
be in consideration by as many as possible. Um
acknowledging the fact that I'm I can't really predict the
future in terms of what my next position will require
for me in terms of my time and energy.
Um and you know, that would be to do
that research is research time and then there will be
the revision and the other publication. You know,
it's just yeah, I think part of the problem
is that we we tend to get the attention of
graduate students as they're finishing. Whereas if we could
get their attention earlier in the process so that they
were thinking about these issues and addressing these, then
it wouldn't be so much, you know, now
I have all of these other responsibilities. And and
that was exactly why I reached out to this summer
because I totally agree, totally agree. Um but
I did discover it with nine months to go.
You know, and so I wanted to share this
information with other graduate students, preferably younger graduate students.
And I do think like I can only speak
on behalf of my program, the aspect program.
But we do in the first semester of second year
we have our professional development course in which we deal
with all of these issues like publication and whatnot.
And so it would be great if in next fall's
bow version of the professional development course, there was
a week spent or when we talk about the publishing.
Because when when I took that course two years
ago, it definitely we didn't talk about, you
know, I learned about m bar going three months
ago and the whole discussion surrounding m bar going.
And so I totally agree. I think it would
be really great um at this institution for the programs
that do have PhD level professional development for this to
be something. Um and even in the you know,
future professor it uh of course is that deemed
upon and Shelley Fowler teach uh to you know,
I mean things come up, new things emerge and
so it's it's nice to be on the cutting edge
and I mean I think just the fact that we're
even having this discussion is pretty cutting edge. So
just remind me of is the um aah a um
say that it's okay for um restricted to the university
community. I think they're talking about complete embargo.
That's the word they suggested. Well yeah, but
there's question seems to be that they said, well
if if they they said two things, if you
still have the ability to do hard copies that you
should be able to submit them if you're going to
embargo and if you don't um that they should be
at the what is the we believe the policy online
public access only for a clearly stated limited amount of
time. Um and more traditional forms of availability.
Yeah. They are taking the hard copy line which
I couldn't we couldn't we just continue to innovate in
the sense of we, you know, the school
has the heart of the digital copy and it could
be available on campus and um and at the request
and and per request as opposed to just openly available.
I mean to do the H. A.
Is suggesting and to use old methods you know?
But but why not? But we could do that
same we could do that same thing with digital copies.
Right. The digital copies not openly avail when
it's on embargo. But it is available on campus.
And it and it could be in it could
be available beyond campus by request. Okay. You
had read that and I just needed to wrap my
head around what? Because I didn't think that they
were saying that we could have it restricted only on
campus. I thought it was more restrictive. So
it's bye bye. Yeah. Well and it's very
antiquarian for them to still be suggesting that we would
do this with hard copies because we can do everything
we could do with a hard copy with the digital
copy and we haven't had hard copies of dissertations forever.
Makes no sense anymore. So on request who
would fill those requests? I mean I guess that
would be not knowing enough about kind of library procedure.
I mean I guess it would be wherever E.
T. D. S. I mean I
guess the libraries are responsible for those requests right?
Or well what we've we've hesitated in the past to
distribute a restricted access et one at a time.
So generally what happens when someone asked for a restricted
access et de I write to the author and say
you've had we've had requests at the library can we
make it publicly available because they don't want to have
to go back and back and back, you know,
to me. And I would say 99% of
the people are fine with that. They're they're ready
to release their TVs, I would say within a
year of their restrictions, Jordan what I I'd like
to and we need to get other people involved in
this rather than just the three of us chatting here.
But um All right. Um it used to
be that um people could pick the number of years.
Um And recently we've moved away from that because
my experience was that the default was restrict as opposed
to the default being open. And so we were
having a number of thesis and dissertations that obviously were
not um being able to be read by others,
so I'm very comfortable with. Um The default is
open one year is what we would like because many
of them will come back um and want to have
it opened, which I think is terrific if there
is a legitimate reason for um another year or another
to make maybe they were granted to gave good rationale
for that and then they would renew it. So
I think we have a fairly flexible system here that
then also allows for the M. F. A.
S. To have the 55 years. Um
And hopefully some of those would be opened up um
sooner than that anyway. Um Because I I think
that scale says we're a land grant. I think
a public university has a responsibility to um get the
scholarship out there as soon as possible. But I
totally agree with you too about having students know the
information informed choices um for their scholarship. I think
the default being open. Yes, of course the
default being open. Um Yeah just informing students so
that they know about it. The default is open
of course. And then you know on a case
by case basis to use the terminology of publishers.
Students can uh you know, submit a request to
the grad school and say here's my scholarship, here's
why here's the period I'm asking for and this is
why that makes sense. You know, as long
as we have that would be the not, you
know, that would be the request. The default
is open. There's no problem with that whatsoever.
I think restricting access to campus for a year is
a very, you know, rational way of of
addressing this problem because it can still be known the
metadata about the thesis or dissertation is still available through
search engines like google scholar. I think sometimes graduate
students don't understand that when when E. T.
D. Is embargoed, there is no information out
there. There's nothing that says there's if you embargo
your et there will be nothing that says Jordan Hill
got a dissertation at Virginia Tech. There will be
nothing about your graduating from the history department with a
doctorate does that, which just leads me to ask
the question. Is that something we could also innovate
on in terms of the, the document is embargoed.
Whereas the information isn't, I mean it's just
something I just thought of but we'd have, we'd
have to change the system somewhat because now everything that's
embargo has handled the same way. And so students
that are part of a patent application would still want
to have more of their metadata embargoed. But I
would like to see that change to about embargo.
So we could at least say Jordan Hill got a
doctorate at Virginia Tech and maybe here's his his his
commit members and um you know, here's the department
he's in. Even if we can't say the,
can include the abstract even, you know, I
mean the title the abstract. I don't see any
reason that that wouldn't be available and I I agree.
I mean that's something you would exist, Jordan's
in the records, out of the registrar's office in
grad school. It's just not attached to public.
Yeah, the public couldn't find it. But I
have been a fan of getting the name the committee,
an abstract title available. So we can see
the scholarships scholarships that Well, like you said when
you're discussing the classified uh exhortations that use classified.
I mean I don't see, I can't think of
a reason that any PhD candidate or junior scholar.
I can't see any, I can't think of any
exception where the title, the committee and the abstract
would not be publicly available from, from the get
go. And I don't see any exception to that
rule. I don't see any reason that there would
be any exception to that. I agree. Well,
in in your area, that's not the case
for these patent worked on. You have questions.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you whether you had
or there was any additional info from the publishers on
their case by case basis. Um for example,
like, you know, what are some of the
criteria that they make this case by case evaluation on?
Because that information in turn I think would be
helpful to grad students as they're preparing to work.
So well, the comments that they made, you
know, had to do with the quality looking for,
you know, that's what they're looking for.
They're not saying just because you got a dissertation at
Virginia Tech, we're going to publish it. They're
looking for the quality of the manuscript that submitted to
them um, and doesn't address the audience that that,
you know, that they're marketing to. Um
those are the things that came out in the comments
that they submitted to us. Yes, maybe this
question is best addressed to Jordan's um in my attempting
to follow us in the blogosphere over the summer,
which is extremely difficult. Um you can't just couldn't
read at all. But there were some interesting cases
where people were saying that having their dissertation open was
a big help and, you know, one of
the publishers said, you know, it's nice to
be able to go and look at it. So
I'm wondering how much weighing you've done in terms of
like, the advantage of closed versus open, there
would be for your work or for other people in
the aspect program. Um you know, because it
seems like there's there are real advantages now that maybe
not all publishers are aware of. What, how
do you assess that open versus closed and advantages of
each? Um you know, I I followed it
for a few weeks as well and then got a
little overwhelmed. Um, you know, when I
saw the two graphs that you had, you know,
of, of publishers that said, um absolutely,
no problem. 100% will publish it of its
E T D. We don't care. And then,
I mean, the way that I saw the
graph was really like on both, in both cases,
it was about 50% that said that, and
then all the entire other side were different things,
but all those, the basically the other 50% roughly
we're saying yes, but or or no. And
so when I look at that, not having,
you know, having spent a few weeks trying to
become familiar with the discussion and it's a massive discussion
and it emerged very quickly and proliferated rapidly. Um
my thought processes, it seems like this is really
a new discussion that's happening in the academy in the
last, you know, four or five months and
I perhaps I'm a bit more informed than most because
I actually put some time into that, but at
the same time, I don't feel, I still
feel like there's a lot of information that schools don't
know That um you know, and and it's great
that we have this, you know, research into
this directly. But I still, when I see
that when I see the sphere and I have the
knowledge that I have from kind of investigating, this
what I see is 50% say not a problem and
the other 50% say perhaps, you know, could
be perhaps because just like your question suggested, what
does case by case mean? Well, um I
don't, I don't know the, you know,
I don't know the answers to that. What I
think I, you know, the main reason that
this caught my attention, it's just because I've been
trying to be really proactive and preparing myself, um
and and speaking to faculty here and across the country
and speaking to a recent junior faculty here and across
the country to just be as informed as possible.
And I, you know, it seems clear to
anybody who does that work now that um the market
is really competitive right now. And so when I
came across this discussion, um I think I put
so much time and attention into it um because it
seems like uh everybody's working really hard to to move
to the next level. Um And you just wouldn't
want to do something that would handicap you in the
future that you didn't even know that you were doing,
you know, when you made the decision at
the time um that you didn't even weren't even aware
of. Um And so I don't I don't know,
I mean i i it's interesting because I feel
informed about this topic and just being a part of
this discussion today leads me to see how much more
information I would like to have to really feel like
I was informed about this topic. I think it
would be nice to if the publishers felt more responsibility
for sharing what their policies are. It's not always
easy to find a publisher's policy. And you know,
it bothers me that we're letting this, you
know, this little these few percent run the program,
you know, this few percent of the of
the humanities journals, you know, 3% of the
respondents say they don't want to publish E. T.
D. S. And that's such a few,
a small number and we're letting you know it
and they're having so much influence. One of the
things that I thought was and many people that responded
to the HHS um mandate was where's your data?
Who are these publishers that say they have a problem.
They don't mention anybody. They don't mention any
numbers. It's also kind of nebulous. It's not
a good argument. It's just kind of scare tactics,
scare tactics and I and I fully appreciate what
you're saying, Jordan's about you need to be protective.
And I know that our faculty often advise students
to restrict access to their E. T. S.
And when we surveyed graduate students when they were
submitting their E. T. S. And we
asked them why the vast majority were doing it because
the faculty were recommending that and I know that they're
being protective of the graduate students. They want you
to have the best options possible for you know in
your future and publishing. I also think a good
survey to do would be a faculty to find out
how many of them published a book from their dissertations.
You know there's a fair number that haven't but
that there's no data there either be nice to have.
Yeah. Um What sort of based on their
stands, the A. J. Stands and what
kind of response did they receive from different communities and
uh whether it's scholarly publishing or the academic community.
Um what what some criticism that they received it as
Philip noted. It's there's you know if you go
and google this now it's never ending. You'll never
there's about a month you know pretty much july was
just I mean it was all that anybody was talking.
You know the H. A. Noted it
one discipline, but immediately every single discipline in the
world had volume is writing about it, like,
okay, so what would happen if we applied HHS
to our discipline? And and you know, as
much, I mean, a ton of people supported
it, but a ton of people didn't support it.
Um it's just once again, it's just it's
something that emerged really quickly and got a ton of
response. And so um there were the the range
of responses was really wide. There there were people
who said, oh, yes, absolutely, right.
And then there were people that said, oh
my gosh, we're so, you know, we're
so based on the book and and you know,
the tenure process and that's what we need to be
changing. You know, we need to be looking
at that rather than say, don't make your et
de available, we need to say as the tenure
process working. Is this the best, you know,
the best way for it to operate and everything
in between and based upon that comment. I mean,
I think, yes, totally. I mean,
I think that this does expose the ways in
which higher education, um and the way and the
ways in which 10 year work and the way in
which junior faculty, the hoops that they have to
jump through in many ways, our models that were
created 100 and 5200 years ago that don't match.
Um, but that's exactly the reason that embargo ng
caught my attention because I would love as a PhD
candidates, hopefully soon to be junior faculty to have
the system change. But until the system changes,
I don't want to handicap my potential to be a
successful scholar because new methods of elect chronic submission are
causing publishers who may perhaps have been interested to be
maybe not not interested but wary. And I mean
the reason I think it spoke to me so much
is um my research in particular, you know,
I have had to look at a lot of secondary
literature about memorials generally. So I know a lot
about war memorials and presidential statues and all, you
know all the traditional kinds of memorials. But my
research is the first monograph on a particular kind of
memorial memorials created in the aftermath of mass murder.
There's there's not there's nothing else out there. So
a freely accessible ETD Of
my dissertation would be the document on this particular phenomenon.
And so that yes, I would love to
in a perfect world where the where the academia wasn't
structured in such a way. I'm all for open
access. The problem is is that open access,
if that's going to limit my ability to be a
success, you know to attain tenure and move in
the system in the way the system is currently structured,
then I just need, I I think it's
intelligent of me to be informed and to proceed intelligently
based upon the way things are not the way things
should be. There's one graduate student who who doesn't
agree with Jordan's and he's releasing his dissertation one word
at a time over a six-year period. This is
his response to you know, you think I should
embargo this for six years. Well in six years
you can have it all. But in the meantime
he's got a program running. So a word is
released, you know every 10 minutes or something.
It's really quite quite. Yes. Yeah. Well
I appreciate all this. What is your nose is
the discussion has been excuses phds and masters students that
maybe some of these can apply to me but but
but I was wondering how much how much thought has
gone into into masters Masters system themselves in terms of
it is the time for what we've done is to
take place. Especially um if I I want to
do the PhD program but I don't know when I'll
get there and if so what institution. Sure.
Well that's the open access to the masses. Yeah.
Well the data that we um that we surveyed
about wasn't particular to dissertations or theses that applied to
ETDs of all kinds.
Yeah so you should you should look at the
data and in terms of it just applies to dissertations.
It applies to thesis as well. My my
admittedly limited. It's just a personal response though.
unless with, because I got a master's before I
came to Virginia Tech at another institution and I published
and I had a thesis and it's electronically available now
unless you have, you were of the belief that
your Master's thesis, which thesis 10, you know,
master's thesis tend to be 80 to 150 pages
I think for a range of disciplines. Um,
unless you were seriously um considering pursuing the publication of
that and kind of a book format, I I
wouldn't see, I've never, I haven't run into
very many people who were concerned about this topic with
regards to their Master's thesis because generally speaking as you
move on to the PhD level, you either continue
or transform slightly or radically the research you're doing.
And um, I mean just to mock myself a
bit, I mean, my master's thesis was a
great stepping stone, but I I, myself and
I think the people that I know who have their
master's theses, you know, if you're gonna move
on to the next step. I don't think that
this discussion particularly with regards to embargo Ng is as
something that you need to worry about as much,
I think doing a good masters theses. So you
can get into a good PhD program should be your
predominant concern because that the master's thesis show that you're
ready to do a graduate scholarly level of work and
that kind of becomes your stepping stone into a PhD
program. But this discussion, particularly with Embargo ng
is about publication of first book and I don't I
don't know of many people who turned their master's thesis
into a book publication. So that's just what limited
knowledge I would have with regards to that question.
Would it help in a graduate school application to have
your thesis online and link to your application or part
of your application packet in some disciplines? Yes.
What what area are you in philosophy? Mhm.
It might actually be helpful to have your thesis online
in part, you know, so that you can
you can write about it in your application and link
it to, you know, the actual document so
people can see it easily and question forgive for Gail.
Um I think this uh division of what's published
versus unpublished on the internet is a really odd conversation.
I mean, I think most people, if
they can find it on the internet, it's published,
this is totally available. I mean we're using
like, okay been through a printing press and printed
on paper. Well, no, I think I
think um published has to do with that editorial process,
you know, with the review of it and
it goes through a different review prop process for,
you know, thesis and a doctorate versus a journal
article in a scholarly journal or a book. And
so that when when the, when our survey respondents
talked about, it's not a publication. I think
that's the way they're looking at it. You know
PhD it's a doctorate. It's on the internet.
It had this you know small review committee but it's
not it's not like a published book. And,
yes. Yes that's what they when that's what they're
they consider publication is they have you know put their
editorial expertise into that work. And that could be
open access or traditional public. It's the review process.
It's the review process is also the I mean
more kind of logistically the assignment of an I.
S. B. N. Number is the technical
you can have a new peer reviewed I. B.
S. And publications and you can have peer
reviewed I. B. S. And publications.
But if it doesn't have an I. B.
S. And I think generally speaking that's been the
means by which official public. I mean that's how
I was taught. I think that's that line is
getting blurred because we're there all kinds of identifiers you
can you can have on your work and it's more
it's it's more that we're trying to be able to
bring all of one publication together. And if it
has one number assigned to it that kind of helps
us distinguish it from other versions of the work.
But and dissertations don't usually get any kind of S.
B. N. Number or I mean they
have they have a unique identify or in the repository
where they reside but that's unique to that repository.
Not to assist a national system. Go ahead.
Weird question about um I guess the field of history.
So I guess this is for Jordan's um not
being that familiar with her fields. I thought it
was really interesting that okay to get a professional position
you need to have published a book. The monograph
is the stamp of the historian but the published book
you have to get permits, you have to get
the approval of the publisher. The publishers motivation is
to sell some books. So I mean this is
probably way off the cuff. But I wonder if
there's been any discussion in your discipline about the fact
that um most of the history that gets written has
to be something that's going to sell. I mean
I know it's a it's a big yeah I mean
yeah I mean yes it's a big discussion and I
think a lot of I mean I feel really fortunate
to have a really um active and engaged chair of
my dissertation who from the earliest stages dr Marian mullin
and um history department here who from the earliest stages
has really. I came in I guess I came
in from my masters with kind of more high and
lofty, you know I mean I came in with
more high and lofty ideals and I think the mark
of a really good advisor um particularly in the field
of history. And I would say that I think
that this resonated because while they're talking about history,
I think the message of the H. A.
Resonates strongly in political science, in philosophy, religious
studies sociology. I mean all of those kind of
social science departments, perhaps history is the most rigid
about the monograph, you know, but all of
those disciplines share a number of similar features with this
regard. And so I think um you know,
I think the thing that I just really feel fortunate
about is that I've had a chair who from my
earliest time here at Virginia Tech really encouraged me to
think um pretty strategically about what project I was gonna
pursue for for five years of my life. Um
not just with regards to my interests and my initial
more idealized view of the world and academia. Um
but to be, you know, to pursue a
project that I was both passionate about so that I
could complete. But I mean the big thing in
history is the historiography, right? Historians, perhaps
more than any other discipline. Uh The review of
the exhaustive review of the literature within whichever field you
would want to pursue becomes kind of paramount for um
making a decision once you are familiar with all of
that as to whether you proceed and and the fact
of the matter is I spent my first year and
a half of Virginia Tech did the historiography of my
first planned dissertation and abandon the project. For exactly
that reason I realized that it was possible. I
talked to all the scholars around the country and they
said yes, this is possible. But it felt
very constrictive. I always do this. I felt
like I was gonna do this for the next four
years if I pursued that project. Um, and
I realized I didn't want to feel that way like
mentally and physically, um, in, in,
you know, producing my first real piece of scholarly
work. Um, and so yeah, I think
perhaps more than in other fields, um, hopefully
you have somebody that's giving you the feedback that you
can pursue the work you want, but you,
you really need to be pretty strategic and in knowing
if this is something that um, is a contribution
to the existing literature on similar topics. I want
to bring up something too about university presses because I
think you raise a good point about the person,
the entity that's deciding is all about selling books.
And that has just gotten in my view uh,
worse because of the decline of the university presses because
university presses were less about making money and publishing scholarship.
Um, and, and there many of them
have closed. And so then it forces, um,
if the model exists that a monograph or a
book is required for tenure, uh, that these
folks have to go find somebody who will publish it
or there's the vanity presses as well. And now
those are not reviewed in the same way by tenure
and promotion committees, but, you know, technically
they are published if, if you will. So
I think it's been exacerbated by the fact that the
decline of the university presses. That's really interesting.
I hadn't thought about, you know, pick a
topic that's marketable. You know, it's not just
you have to be interested in it and there has
to be, you know, good resources to draw
on, but you want it to be a marketable
top topic because that's how you're going to get your
first book published. Well, I hope it's a
young faculty member at a new university or at a
university, you're part of, you know, wave
that will help rethink this. Um, I mean,
these are discussions we've been having in the future
professor laureate, uh, you know, that we
have, you know, the program that we here
have on tech that is, you know, when
I talk to graduate students around the country is something
that is unique to us. So I think,
yes, the graduate students who are leaving tech um
are informed about these topics and that is, you
know, for a lot of us, I mean,
maybe not everyone, but for most of the
people who had the opportunity to go through um,
that certification, you know, just being aware of
all of these topics. I think it motivates a
lot of us to um really pursue um, being
the vanguards as we move into the academy in,
uh continuing to further the change so that, you
know, Yeah, the embargo discussion points. It's
it shouldn't be about the embargo discussion, it should
be about the system that the embargo discussion is occurring
within, causing it to even be a discussion,
ideally open access everyone all the time. Um Yes,
ideally. But the system that the embargo discussion
is occurring in makes it so that to be that
idealistic about it could perhaps really um come to hinder
you significantly or cause you not to get tenure um
at a future point and that, you know,
and I that's so yes, that's that's the goal
question curious as to welcome each. I am much
like I haven't been, but for example, my
my decision they actually discourage publication of the journal article
until until each tenure unless it's in a top journal
When I was speaking as to the overlap. I
was the point I was trying to make was not
that the disciplines don't have very much distinctive features and
and look for different things. I was just saying
that I think the reason that the H. A.
S. Uh discussion resonated so widely and across
such a large range and I mean, ultimately,
even outside of the social sciences, um the point
I was trying to make is just that and maybe
I have a different view because I'm in the aspect
program, right? But I've had a lot of
interaction in my five years here with uh political scientists
and philosophers and religious studies scholars and have come to
see that a lot of the pressures and the expectations
within those disciplines regardless of the completely different method,
a logical and um, tool kits that, that
the disciplines would use. There's a lot of similarity
when it comes to publication within those particular social sciences
in my experience. And I mean that's something that
I think the aspect program has shown me that a
lot of people, you know, at the PhD
level, there's still pretty rigid discipline. Garrity is
still pretty much the norm I think around the nation.
Um, so a program like aspect or the
PG policy, globalization and governance or sts science and
technology studies. These are three PhD programs we here
have here at tech, um, that really are,
you know, they're quite innovative and, and
they give those of us in those programs a really
expansive view of uh, of disciplinary difference and disciplinary
similarity. But do they emphasize more the similar,
I think it's actually a person by person. Some
people in these programs. I mean really, I
mean, you know, ideally again, if we
want to live, you know, if we want
to talk ideally ideally, yeah, it'd be really
great to be able to be in a five year
long dialogue with people from a whole bunch of different
disciplines that help to bolster whatever your focus is and
that's what's great about these programs. Yeah, that's
what's great about these programs but at the same time
with regards to thinking strategically, uh you got to
get a job at the end. It doesn't,
it's you know, if your goal is academia um
then you need to balance your uh interdisciplinary acumen with
uh Enough disciplinary rigor and ability to prove that.
You know, I mean I'm in the job search
right now and 70% of the jobs I apply to
our history jobs, so I need to be able
to prove to them that I'm a historian despite the
fact that I'm graduating from aspect. So um there's
a number of ways in the past five years that
I have pursued publication and accreditation and um the coursework,
you know, a sufficient amount of course work
in the you know, kind of classic historical graduate
courses to exemplify that I qualified for that position and
others. Um But yeah, I mean uh that
is something you have to assess if you if you
go into a P. H. D. That's
not just a disciplinary PhD, you kind of have
to do two jobs, you have to have the
knowledge of interdisciplinary, which I think is great.
I mean and it's really big at the undergraduate and
master's level, it's far more popular, but I
think when you get to the PhD level, the
novelty of the new hot topic of interdisciplinary t for
a lot of people gets a lot less novel I
think. Yeah and I think and and and once
again, I think it's going to change? And
that's I think a goal for a lot of people.
But you still have to, you just have
to be mindful that you're entering for those of us
that are entering right now. We're entering in a
time of transition and so we need to be both.
You know, hopefully in the future, maybe
there's the ability, you know, maybe we,
you know, this generation of graduate students will be
able to kind of pave the way for things that
don't make as much sense in the 21st century to
not be so mandatory. But I think we would
get ahead of ourselves to say that we're not um,
that at this stage it's it's it would be
good to be to be familiar, at the very
least with disciplinary mandates amidst a discipline, interdisciplinary education.
I guess this is not a question so much
as a comment that was for Karen's comment on the
university presses as library. And he thinks a lot
about Scarlett communication and especially about the sort of marginalization
of the humanities, particularly at a university of Virginia
tech where stem is so important. Um, you
start thinking about connections between things and starting with the
fact that it's very difficult to publish a monograph in
the humanities right now, harder than ever. Probably
has to do with the fact that so many university
presses are failing or become much more restrictive in the
amount of stuff that they publish. But why is
that because and maybe I'm taking some liberties here.
But many people say that it's primarily because libraries aren't
publishing as many aren't buying as many monographs as they
used to. So why are libraries buying as many
monographs as they used? Well, largely, it's
because of the periodical costs. The serials crisis is
mostly coming from stem journals, the nature sciences and
sells all the journals where they sort of have a
monopoly and can raise these prices. So in a
way, it's all of this has come about because,
you know, humanity is just getting squeezed and
squeezed and squeezed. And now it's becoming really hard
for people like uh, in the in aspect programs
and history and so on to publish a monograph simply
because through no fault of their own. Just simply
because monograph publishing has gotten squeezed in this way.
So I'm just sort of throwing this out there.
How can we sort of keep the humanities from getting
marginalized in this way? You know, I don't
know how history and english and these other programs and
say, hey, Your library budget is, you
know, 80% paying for science stand journals and you
have to maintain some monograph buying in that process.
So, you know, future students will be able
to publish monographs, that sort of thing. I
don't know if this is an exact chain of events
or not, but it just seems like things are
sort of getting pushed to the side and I was
wondering if anyone had any thoughts on that. Well,
I think you've hit on something that I've,
I would agree with kind of the, the circling
around and, and what has happened, the costs
of journals, you know, far better than I
are thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, which
break a budget. Um, and um, and
there's many of these things, I think in higher
education, I'm gonna take my 30,000 ft level and
say we need to identify what the elephant is in
the room and metaphor. Not in this room necessarily,
but, but um, I I think higher
education and colleges and universities have to take a look
at what it is that we are about. Our
costs are tenure promotion, our systems, um,
and get back to whatever is the essence of,
of what a university should be a land grant university
or wherever. Um, I think we're losing some
of them, um, because we're so focused on
on getting dollars. Um, we have to have
dollars, but um, but then it puts us
in a situation uh, at tech. Going back
to your first comment about um, university like tech.
And we're known more for science. And first
step our largest college sometimes is liberal arts and human
sciences at the graduate level. Its engineering is the
largest and human sciences, liberal arts and human sciences
is the second. Um, and I try to
reinforce that whenever I get a chance to disrupt the
notion that Virginia tech equals stem because it doesn't,
facts are facts, but perception is reality. So
the facts are that we are more comprehensive institution,
but yet we're only viewed in a, in a
certain way. Um, so I mean, I
just had about 16 different arguments or comments, you
know, there, but it it going back to
it, I think it's really important that we,
each university has got to figure out what it's gonna
be and then and address the issue. Now,
that's my optimism too, that we would be able
to do that. Well, I wanted to add
to, I really bring out what what is a
fairly recent like for for many years, I was
told anyway that the arts and sciences were one college
and the separation between the college science, uh,
was actually not too, That's cool. Yeah.
And so think about for how many years that's free
bird together? Only series separated. And so I'm
hoping that look at that species of persecute. So
you stuff too leveraged the discussion of, I was
just gonna say that, I mean, dean to
pause comments are great and I completely agree that at
each institution we're gonna have to do, you know,
the kind of work that, um, that
dean has long stood up for in terms of perception
versus reality. Um, but your question, right,
is a systemic question as well and the systemic
issue. I mean, we we we would be,
I think at this point we would just kind
of be burying our heads in the stand to not
acknowledge that um, this kind of really emerging dominance
of stem as active, you know, like as
valuable academia, you know, stem has become not
just here on this campus, but nationwide when it
and it really comes down to right allocation of federal
funds into the system of higher education and the rhetoric
politically, um you know, has increasingly been moving
uh in the course of my, you know,
decade of as a graduate student and has just become
more and more obvious that um, the value that
our society places on uh the liberal arts and human
sciences or the social sciences or whatever you call it,
is, they're increasingly being seen more as those
annoying required core classes and that, you know,
that we should really be putting our nation's financial,
I mean, we hear from the President, we
hear it in the house, we hear in Congress
that we, you know, if we want to
continue to maintain our educational dominance on a global scale,
that uh all sensible people know that that effort
and energy needs to be directed towards. I mean,
essentially stem that stem is valuable and worthwhile and
that the humanities and social sciences are increasingly seen um
as core at best and perhaps, I mean,
discussions have occurred in a number of schools, including
this school's last round of uh, you know,
our budget from 2012 to 2013, I was on
that panel and you know, I think a lot
of us in the human sciences were really shocked that
we actually had to spend about three months of that
year and a half long period defending the proposal that
was put forward, that one way we could innovate
at tech would be to eliminate core requirements period,
which was rhetoric for, let's eliminate essentially the social
sciences and go to a two major model. So
students would get an engineering degree and Biology degree and
would take absolutely no core classes, which was a
way of saying that the, you know, northeastern
part of the campus was not serving any purpose if
we wanted to be, you know, and the
fact that we had to, you know, and
the fact that we even had to have that discussion
was an example on our campus of what I see
is a larger issue that we're dealing with right now
as a society as to whether or not um,
you know, what's the value of anything that's not
stem right? I think that's kind of the bigger,
but then the National Science Foundation seems to be
reserving some place anyway for the social sciences because I'm
applying for the NSF graduate research Fellowship and they have
a social sciences section, it exists for sure they
have education, they have sociology and so I'm sure
that's like it could be leveraged into understand because I
suppose so if we can find ways to leverage the
enemies in which they at least focus on on sites
where our stuff, I don't think that. Yes.
Yeah. But I'm standing more for the value
of the liberal arts and social sciences of their own
accord. Um, I think that that we have
a long millennial tradition in the east and the west
of the value of human thought, um and human
knowledge with regards to things that don't ultimately end up
being manufactured on an assembly line, being something that
human beings have value for a very long time.
But we find at the turn of the 21st century
that increasingly that, I mean, even the discussion
that you just suggested, I mean this is one
of the major discussions, right, okay, well,
we'll allow the human, you know, the
social sciences to exist if the they can integrate a
bit more with the hard sciences, you know?
And and my answer is no, I mean,
no, I mean maybe I maybe some, you
know, maybe someday that I won't even be allowed
to say that anymore. But my answer is no,
I mean the work that we do is valuable
in its own right, and we do not have
to um integrated into stem to make it worthwhile.
What we do has a history far, I mean,
has a history far longer millennium long of being
valued by Western system. I mean, since we're
in the west by Western society, I mean globally
as well, but I'll just I'll stay in the
west when we when we when we throw the Socrates
and plato quotes, right? That's the tradition that
the this this segment of our society uh that that
the social sciences is now under attack. It's only
recent that we saw that as something that we really
that we question and the whole stem discussion as I
understand it is really a way of um you know,
I I see that kind of those kind of
suggestions as very um very problematic because it's like,
okay, you can you can continue to exist if
you integrate into our stem discourse and you know,
uh no history is valuable in its own right.
Philosophy is valuable in its own right and apologize took
us off course a little bit. I guess what
I'm suggesting is that maybe universities and libraries could do
more to sort of subsidize monograph publishing so that you
know, without necessarily a view to sales or selling
books. So that wouldn't be quite so hard for
for people just to find a publishing contract. You
don't find a publishing contract, you don't, you
know, uh get tenure university. So I think
that sort of seems like a bottleneck right now.
Yeah, well I don't want to go back to
it is a systemic problem and we and the elephant
in the room that we're not talking about is what
is the role and purpose of a university now,
I'm gonna take it back out to not the practicalities
but um because yeah, Virginia Tech, yeah we
could do some of those kind of things or another
university could do to could could try to do that
but it's not addressing the real problem. And um
and that is the direction of the university that marginalizes
the social sciences and humanities. Um If a university
and I'm not talking about Virginia tech, if a
university were to value the social sciences and humanities it
would do something different. It would be apparent and
it would be no. And that's the conversation we're
not willing to have. And that to me is
the elephant in the room metaphorically speaking that we've got
to figure out how we value the whole thing or
we can go down the route of the I.
I. T. S over in India which are
purely um um tech focused and engineering. Nothing wrong
with that. That's great for them. But if
we're a land grant university or a liberal arts college
down the road, I mean that has, we
need to know what our university is about and then
supported in in that way and disrupted. If if
at tech we do have our second largest college is
the liberal arts and human sciences, then we should
behave like that. Um, and um, and
I think that's important that we talk about that.
And Jordan mentioned hard hard science. I always call
it hard science. Yeah, I'll give them that.
And then there's the hard to do science called
social sciences and humanities. So we probably need to,
Yes, I think I'd like to draw this
to a close by saying that perhaps one of the
things that we can do at Virginia tech is to
make more of the work that we do in the
social science and the humanities available through our open access
E T. D. S. Thank you all
for coming. Thank you guys very much.