Hey guys, do you know what'll happen if you dont submit your thesis loan and deposit form? If I don't agree, then I suppose the school/ library won't be able to keep a copy of my thesis in the public. I'm not happy to have my thesis either stored in the library or online. But the admin told me that the max. period to impose a restriction is 2 years with possibility to extend further. What am I to do?

*bump* Can anyone help Sunnyday?

Why do you want to restrict and why do you want to restrict for more than two years? Is it commercially sensitive?

When you signed up to do your PhD, you might have signed something saying the library and online repository could hold copies and make available immediately, or after six months, one year or two years.

This aside and assuming you haven't signed anything, in theory if you are the copyright holder you could refuse outright to have your data distributed. However, you might have to challenge the current practice legally in order to do so and it may be a solicitor's / lawyer's letter if a challenge is made may be sufficient to make Universities introduce five year restrictions or even permanent ones in line with copyright law.

I have to admit if you want to continue restricting, I find it hard to understand how the University can just go ahead and make the data available without your express say so after two years rather than assume that no action on your part means you're giving your consent. You instead have to indicate again that you want to continue restriction after the two years (i.e. you opt into continued restriction rather than opt out).

I've never heard of anyone restricting beyond the six months, one year or two years and I don't know of precedent to enforce a longer period. That said, I had a long discussion with my predecessor who was pro-restriction as he did not want to distribute. Six month, one year, two years and (if commercially sensitive) five year periods were available.

In the vast majority of cases, the commercial value of the data produced during a PhD is minimal and it only later commercial work (where the real value normally lies) that normally develops any such work into a viable idea. For that reason, I distributed as I saw no value in sticking the data on a shelf somewhere to gather dust and be forgotten about as my data had no real commercial value.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)