Electronic Approvals/Signatures

[Melinda Deyasi]

I would appreciate finding out if your schools are using an electronic approval system for theses and dissertations. 

I've heard that some schools have a mutually accessible form (that includes the student's name, major, thesis title, etc.) on which they could indicate their approval by checking a box or applying an electronic signature.  Other schools are gathering approvals by having the professors access the student's file/account and checking off a box.

As you may be able to tell by now, I don't know much about this area, but my boss would like me to look into it.  We are trying to streamline our processes here, and although we use ETD, we still collect paper versions of theses and dissertations, including a signature page.  We need help.

Thanks very much.

[William Donovan]

Melinda, our workflow goes like this:

We use ProQuest's ETD administrator tool. I have designated one or more colleagues in each of our graduate school's deans' offices to be an ETD co-administrator. As such, they are notified every time a graduate student submits a thesis or dissertation. These colleagues send me an email stating that the student is "cleared for publication" as soon as the dean's office has verified that a student has fulfilled all requirements including approval of their thesis/dissertation. Once we (in the Libraries) receive this clearance email, we then review the ETD for any problems. If there are no problems or once they have been fixed, we "deliver" the ETD submission to ProQuest. Soon thereafter ProQuest ftps all of the files and metadata to a Boston College server. If the student had agreed to deposit their ETD in the BC repository, we make it available soon thereafter in eScholarship@BC.

Hope that helps,

Bill

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Bill Donovan, Ph.D./M.L.S.

Digital Imaging & Curation Manager/ETD administrator

Boston College

(617) 552-1370

bill.d...@bc.edu

[Kara Oswood]

Our documents are processed as ETDs through ProQuest, but the signature approvals and final defense forms are still all original signatures submitted separately to the Graduate Division.
Kara Oswood
University of California, Riverside

[Matt Dumouchel]

Hi Melinda,

 

Our electronic repository distributes the draft copy of the thesis for review to each of our examiners and collects a report and decision once the review is completed.  We use the Digital Commons platform which comes packaged with a review process and has fit our business needs quite nicely.  After the in-person examination is successful a final copy is submitted and reviewed electronically prior to publication. 

 

If you’d like to learn more you can check out a webinar I did on this and other features of our repository here: http://digitalcommons.bepress.com/webinars/46/.  If you have any questions about what we’re doing at Western please send them my way.   

 

Good luck with your endeavors!

 

Matt Dumouchel
Manager, Information Systems
International and Graduate Affairs Building, Room 1N07
London, ON, Canada | N6G 1G9
p. 519.661.2111 x82684 f. 519.661.3730
mdum...@uwo.ca | grad.uwo.ca

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