Completing Your Master's Thesis or Project

ScholarWorks @ CWU is the institutional repository of Central Washington University. The collection is curated and administered by the James E. Brooks Library. ScholarWorks @ CWU showcases the scholarly and creative output of the University community, including student projects and theses. Per guidelines established by the School of Graduate Studies and Research, all graduate students are required to submit their thesis to ScholarWorks @ CWU prior to graduation.

Use the document that best applies to you for instructions on submitting your work to ScholarWorks. If you have any questions, you can contact the School of Graduate Studies and Research or email scholarworks@cwu.edu.

There are numerous advantages to publicly sharing your thesis via ScholarWorks @ CWU. More people can find and read your work, meaning that you will reach a larger audience and may garner more citations to your work. In addition, you will increase the visibility of Central Washington University and benefit academia at large with your research.

Despite these advantages, in some cases, you may wish to embargo, or temporarily restrict access to your thesis or project. Three primary reasons for embargoing include:

• Your thesis or project has commercially sensitive content. Perhaps you need time to bring a concept to market or seek a patent.
• You wish to publish all or part of your thesis or project using a traditional press that regards open access publication as equivalent to prior publication. Most publishers do not operate in this way, but some may. Please do some research before choosing to embargo for this reason.
• Your thesis or project contains sensitive data or information.

Please consult your committee chair and committee members when making the decision to embargo. The School of Graduate Studies and Research and the CWU Librarians can also offer advice about embargoing your thesis.

In order to embargo your thesis, you must fill out the form below.

Embargo Request forms and Embargo Extension forms must be emailed to scholarworks@cwu.edu.

Students may choose to request a one-, two-, or five-year embargo to protect their ability to publish or patent their work in the near future. An embargo provides a temporary, delayed public release of the work via ScholarWorks @ CWU. Embargo requests must be received at least one month prior to the posting of the thesis to ensure sufficient processing time.

While embargoes are not intended to be permanent, renewals of the original embargo period are permissible. Although there is no limit to the number of times a student can request an embargo extension, embargoes that have been allowed to expire without a request for an extension will result in the thesis being made publicly available via ScholarWorks @ CWU.

You may find the following studies and articles helpful when considering whether or not to embargo your thesis:

• Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?
• Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers
• An Embargo on Dissertations Will Not Solve the Bigger Problem
• Embargo or Perish
• You've Spent Years on Your Ph.D.: Should You Publish It Online for Free?
• Can't Find It, Can't Sign It: On Dissertation Embargoes