26 Submitting Your Thesis
Once you successfully defend your thesis, you must finalize the content of your thesis with your committee members. Even though your committee members will sign off on the thesis at the end of the process, finalizing your content needs to happen before you deposit the thesis with the Graduate College. When the content of the thesis is set, make sure you’ve included all required elements in your thesis and that the formatting is correct. Only then should you submit your thesis.
With the exception of MFA students, who have the option of submitting their thesis in hard copy form, all students will submit their thesis via ProQuest. I will then check the formatting and send you corrections if they are needed. Once you make the formatting corrections I send, you will then resubmit the corrected thesis to your ProQuest account. I will check the thesis one more time, and then accept it.
After the Graduate College accepts your thesis, your committee members will receive an email notification from ProQuest, letting them know the thesis is ready to be verified. The Graduate College will track committee verification to make sure committee members receive notification. Right now I’m the contact person, should you have questions about who has or hasn’t signed off on the thesis. Once all committee members sign off on the thesis, the process is complete. You will receive a notification from ProQuest, letting you know that you are all done.
Below are some pointers to keep in mind as you complete the ProQuest registration process:
Type of Publishing
ProQuest will present you with the choice of Traditional and Open Access Publishing (for a fee). Because your thesis will be made available to the public via the UI Libraries, select Traditional Publishing. There’s no need to pay an additional $95 fee for Open Access Publishing.
Embargo
If you opt for an embargo, make sure to designate the length and the reason.
Contact Information
Especially if you’ve chosen to embargo your thesis, be sure to include both your UIowa and a permanent email address (Gmail or Hotmail, for example). This will give the Graduate College a way to contact you after your institutional email address expires.
Committee Member Information
Be sure to list your committee members’ names and email addresses correctly. This will ensure your committee members receive the email needed to sign off on your thesis.
Copyright Registration
Your thesis, by virtue of being in fixed form, is already copyrighted. For a $75 fee, ProQuest will register your copyright for you. You may also register your copyright directly at https://www.copyright.gov.
Bound Copies
Students do not automatically receive a copy of their thesis, but must instead order one if they wish to have one. Because they take less time to process and are less expensive, the Graduate College recommends ordering bound copies through Thesis on Demand.
Thesis Fees
During the semester in which you are graduating, two fees will be charged to your U-bill: a $145 thesis fee to cover processing and review costs, and a $10 publication fee, which covers the archiving of the thesis.
