Appendix B: Dissertations, Theses, and Reports

General Requirements
Publication
Embargo

A. General Requirements

The faculty of individual graduate programs should establish policies regarding an appropriate style and general format of dissertations, theses and reports for their students. In the absence of detailed program requirements, the supervisory committee is responsible for specifying the style and general format to be used. Specific format requirements may be found in the current Student Guide for Master's and Doctoral Candidates, available on the Graduate School website under Requirements and Guidelines for Electronic Theses, Dissertations, and Reports.

See Appendix R of the Kansas State University Handbook (http://www.k-state.edu/academicpersonnel/fhbook/fhxs-1.html) for a full description of University policies and associated institutional procedures for intellectual property.

Regardless of the style and format used, a thesis or dissertation must be sufficiently complete to allow an independent investigator to repeat or verify all of the work leading to the author's results and conclusions. In certain cases, when a manuscript prepared for publication is to be used, the terseness or page restrictions required by professional journals may prevent an author from meeting this condition with the publishable manuscript alone. In such cases, the thesis or dissertation must include additional materials that ensure independent reproducibility tables, descriptions of unproductive or unsuccessful explorations, derivations, and so forth.

An abstract, not exceeding 500 words, must accompany each copy of the dissertation, thesis or report. A thesis or dissertation must also include a title page that carries the signature block listing the major professor(s).

All dissertations, theses, and reports are submitted electronically. Details regarding specific requirements are available on the Graduate School website. Dissertations, theses, and reports are submitted to K-State Research Exchange KREx). Access to all Electronic Theses, Dissertations, and Reports ETDR) are available on the KREx website.

Dissertations theses, and reports may be bound for personal use. Bindery information is available on the Graduate School ETDR website.

B. Publication

A dissertation is an original contribution to knowledge, and it should be available to interested scholars outside of Kansas State University. After completing their doctorate, authors may publish their dissertation in any form they see fit, but the University participates in a program intended to make these works accessible to the widest possible audience.

Dissertations are archived by ProQuest, and the abstracts submitted with them are published in Dissertation Abstracts. Works so listed are available from ProQuest as on-demand publications. A publication form from ProQuest must be completed online and submitted with the electronic dissertation.

C. Embargo

The purpose of an embargo is to delay for a limited time public dissemination of patentable or otherwise proprietary or sensitive materials.

Students will have the option of choosing to embargo their work when completing the KREx submission. Doctorate students will also need to complete the embargo option when submitting to ProQuest. An embargo should only occur when it is deemed necessary and only for the minimum time required.

To embargo, the student must set an embargo date and complete the justification during the submission of the ETDR to KREx. At the end of the embargo date, the ETDR will be released by the Library and will be available online.

An embargo does not delay the conferral of the degree. The student whose dissertation, thesis, or report has been approved to be embargoed still deposits the ETDR submission fee for graduation.

An embargo is normally limited to two years. Nevertheless, under compelling circumstances that require continued protection, the Dean of the Graduate School may approve further embargo at the student's or major professor's request on a year-by-year basis. The student must send a letter requesting an extension of the embargo at least three months prior to the release date. The letter should include a justification for the extension and a proposed release date.