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Graduate Thesis Style Guide: MFA in Creative Writing

Intelectual Property

Dominican University of California respects the intellectual property of others.  If your thesis is based on the unreleased research, data, or other intellectual property another be sure that you have proper permissions in place to distribute that work on Dominican Scholar. The IP holder should know about:

Embargos. An embargo is a delayed release. All theses have the option to be embargoed for 1 - 3 years. Embargoes will delay the availbility of the full-text downloads of a thesis but the thesis metabdata will still be visible.

Thesis metadata. Metadata is information about the thesis. Metadata that may be visibile to the public includes:

  • Thesis title
  • Author name
  • DOI 
  • Graduation date
  • Degree and program information
  • Names of the student's thesis advisor, thesis readers, and program chair
  • Abstract
  • Author comments (optional)
  • Additional files (optional)

MFA in Creative Writing Theses and Public Availability

Creative works are afforded greater protection under copyright law than factual work. In addition, Creative Writing graduate students often enter writing programs with the express purpose to publish their work. Taking this into account, full-text theses from the Creative Writing MFA  program deposited into Dominican Scholar will automatically be made inaccessible to the public although the thesis metadata will publicly visible.

Students who wish to have their thesis made publicly accessible upon deposit into Dominican Scholar can make the request to the University's Scholarly Communications Librarian.  Students also have the option to have their thesis under embargo for up to 3 years.