UKnowledge

The Graduate School at the University of Kentucky implemented a policy in Fall 2013 that requires all finalized master's theses and doctoral dissertations to be submitted to UKnowledge and made freely accessible online.  Depositing theses and dissertations in UKnowledge enhances their online visibility and discoverability.  It does not require authors to transfer copyright to the university.  Templates for theses and dissertations are available online.  Information about preparing theses and dissertations are available here.  

Students should pay attention to these issues before submitting their theses/dissertations:

1. The ETD approval form must be filled out, signed by both the advisor and the Director of Graduate Studies, and uploaded to UKnowledge with the thesis/dissertation as instructed in the submission guide.
2. Students wishing to request an embargo on their theses/dissertations (i.e., a delay in online access) should discuss it with their thesis/dissertation committee chair (or co-chairs if any).  If the committee chair(s) supports the embargo, they must indicate it on their ETD approval form.
3. Students should ensure that their theses/dissertations are free of errors.
4. Students have to follow the Preparation of Theses and Dissertations guidelines to convert their theses/dissertations to PDF format. 

If you have any questions about preparing your thesis/dissertation, please contact the Degree Certification Officer assigned to your department/program.  If you reuse copyrighted materials in your thesis/dissertation and have questions about it, feel free to contact Digital Scholarship in UK Libraries for assistance.

Theses and dissertations completed by University of Kentucky students can be found in InfoKat Discovery. For new theses and dissertations that have just been released, they may be findable on UKnowledge only until after they have been added to InfoKat Discovery.

Other resources for finding theses and dissertations include:

Students as authors by default hold the copyright of their theses and dissertations.  Regarding whether to register copyright of a thesis or dissertation, the Authors Alliance has discussed some of the benefits and explained how to register copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.  For more information and resources concerning various aspects of author rights, visit this tab of the Open Access guide.  If you have questions about copyright ownership, please contact Digital Scholarship in UK Libraries for assistance. 

There is an international initiative that addresses problems related to confirming the identity of researchers with similar or the same name. It is ORCID, which issues unique identifiers to distinguish individual researchers. Different stakeholders in the research community, including funding agencies, higher education institutions, and publishers, plan to adopt the ORCID ID as a means to disambiguate the identity of researchers and to track their scholarly activities and contributions. More information about ORCID is available from the video below. 

Click here to register for an ORCID ID. Once you have created the ID, take some time to add information about yourself and your research outputs.  This will help build your professional online presence and reputation.  Last but not least, remember to add the ORCID ID to your CV, scholarly publications, grant applications, and academic profiles such as a personal Web page. This will help clarify your identity as a scholar among others who have names similar to or same as yours.