Several of Dominican's graduate programs work with outside agencies with Dominican's students writing their theses based on the intellectual property of those agencies. Dominican respects the intellectual property of those agencies and works with them so that those students can still publish their work on Dominican Scholar and not divulge intellectual property or data before it is released.
Embargo - a period of time during which a document is not publicly accessible. Although the document may not be accessed, the document's metadata will be publicly visible. Embargo periods can last from 1 - 3 years.
Thesis metadata - Thesis metadata is information about the thesis. Thesis metadata includes:
The Biological Science students' theses are based on research done with a thesis advisor, who will eventually publish their work. Because theses may contain data that the advisor is not prepared to publish, Biological Science students are required to place, at minimum, a 1 year embargo on their theses when deposited in Dominican Scholar.
When the embargo period is ending, the University's Scholarly Communications Librarian will notify the thesis author(s) via email.
Abstracts appearing in Dominican Scholar should be cleared by the student's thesis advisor to be sure that the abstract does not contain unpublished data. In lieu of an abstract, the student may instead include a line stating "Thesis abstract unavailable until thesis is removed from embargo."
When a thesis is removed from embargo, the thesis' abstract will be added to the visible thesis metadata by the University's Scholarly Communications Librarian.
Creative works are afforded greater protection under copyright more than factual work and 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 inaccessible to the public. Like a thesis under embargo, the thesis metadata will still be viewable.
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 up to 3 years.