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Theses, Dissertations, and Creative Components: Rights and Responsibilities

Important things for students to know when completing their thesis, dissertation, or creative component.

Publishing new articles based on your thesis

If you are planning to publish a new article, book chapter, or other work based on your thesis or dissertation, it is important to check the guidelines for the publisher you are working with and to be transparent and up-front with them about where your work has previously been published—even if you are planning to publish an edited version!

See this page from MIT for more information about publisher policies regarding reusing your thesis in future publications and reusing past publications in your thesis:

Isn't publishing portions of a thesis a normal practice?

Publishing an adapted version or portion of your thesis/dissertation is a common practice in many fields. You may publish an article based on original research you conducted during the development of your thesis, for example. In the humanities, it is common to see entire edited dissertations being published as monographs, though extensive editing is usually required to make the text appropriate for its new context.

Talk to the editor about where your content came from and how much has been / needs to be adapted in order to comply with publisher policies before you submit work based on your thesis for publication.

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Abbey Elder
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