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Many people published their PhD theses in ProQuest, and it looks cool. The thesis is indexed by ACM as a book, so you can list them in the publication section in your CV. I wonder if there is any disadvantage if I do the same?

To be honest, I really doubt that anyone will ever read my thesis. But I have spent 3 (extremely painful) months to complete it. So I want to decorate it a little bit.

My university has a public repository for PhD theses, it is googlable, but not indexed. I already put my thesis in ArXiv.

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    Have you looked at related questions like this, or this, also with respect to statements contained therein such as 'The role of ProQuest for dissertations is not a "publisher". Even if you "publish" your dissertation with them, it is still considered "unpublished" work in many fields.' Given that the crucial change is getting indexed by ACM, rather ... Jul 13, 2015 at 11:42
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    ... than being subject to any form of reviews or quality control, it seems reasonable to check whether "you can list them in the publication section in your CV" is really an advantage gained by using ProQuest, or whether it is rather the higher chance for permanent availability of your thesis document to other researchers, while having your thesis show up in your university's thesis repository might be totally sufficient for citing it and listing it somehow in your C.V. Jul 13, 2015 at 11:44
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    so you can list them in the publication section in your CV — You can list your thesis in your dissertation even if you don't submit it to ProQuest. In fact, you must list your thesis in your CV, even if you don't submit it to ProQuest.
    – JeffE
    Jul 13, 2015 at 20:06
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    Since your thesis is already on ArXiv, it's already permanently (and freely!) available. So I don't see any advantage to also making your thesis available through a more painful interface that requires your intended audience to give other people money. Presumably the results in your thesis will also be (or have already been) published in other indexed publication venues, so even having your thesis indexed by ACM isn't a clear advantage.
    – JeffE
    Jul 13, 2015 at 20:11
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    @JeffE Thank you, can you turn your comment into an answer, so that I can close this question.
    – sean
    Jul 14, 2015 at 10:20

3 Answers 3

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I don't see any advantage to posting your thesis to ProQuest, but I don't see any real disadvantage either.

Since your thesis is already on ArXiv, it's already permanently (and freely!) available. So I don't see any advantage to also making your thesis available through a more painful interface that requires your intended audience to give other people money. Presumably the results in your thesis will also be (or have already been) published in other indexed publication venues, so even having your thesis indexed by ACM isn't a clear advantage.

You can list your thesis in your dissertation even if you don't submit it to ProQuest. In fact, you must list your thesis in your CV, even if you don't submit it to ProQuest.

(JeffE's answer.)

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    Why must you list your thesis on your CV? I think in many cases saying you did a PhD and saying the institute and general subject area would be sufficient?
    – ping
    Jul 29, 2015 at 17:15
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    "So I don't see any advantage to also making your thesis available through a more painful interface that requires your intended audience to give other people money." Indeed, this is a disadvantage; someone might accidentally pay ProQuest for something they could have (legally) obtained for free.
    – PersonX
    Nov 15, 2017 at 16:51
  • I see two disadvantages: 1) if you want to edit your thesis (to append an errata, for instance), you have to change it in two places. 2) Any non-consistent modification in the metadata can also result in duplicate entries in aggregotors like dissemin or google scholar. With @PersonX 's comment, that starts to count a bit.
    – Clément
    Nov 15, 2017 at 19:16
  • @Clément: you cannot edit your thesis after submission anyway. You can edit your arXiv preprint, which then becomes an "updated version of the thesis" or something like that. And confusing google scholar is unfortunate but unavoidable; google scholar is an AI built of heuristics, so it getting confused is in its character. Nov 15, 2017 at 23:18
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Just wanted to add to the discussion that some universities or graduate schools (mine included) require students to submit a Ph.D. dissertation to ProQuest. In fact, that is a part of graduation requirements in my school. Having said that, it is my understanding that a dissertation, published via ProQuest, is referred to as "unpublished doctoral dissertation" in citations (and should be, at least, per APA Publication Style Guide). I think that the underlying logic is that a ProQuest publication is considered a publication to e-repository, rather than through peer-reviewed outlet.

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To JeffE's answer I'd add that there are better tools to make your thesis discoverable, unlocking publications from poorly-indexed institutional archives. ProQuest seems one like many; there are also problems with academic social networking websites.

I see you are from the UK; EU has a very nice DART-Europe E-theses Portal. Make sure your university joins it! It's also useful when you're searching sources, in my experience.

Alternatively, see Peter Suber's tips on how to self-archive your work; Zenodo is a valid repository nowadays, and gives you a DOI.

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