UCT's Open Access Policy has been revised

21 Apr 2016
UCT's Open Access Policy has been revised
21 Apr 2016

UCT’s Open Access Policy has been revised, with amendments approved by the Board for Graduate Studies and the University Research Committee. The amendments occur in Section 5.3: Students Theses and Dissertations.

All research findings should be in the public domain; that is, all of UCT’s theses and dissertations should be available in the OpenUCT repository. There are, however, exceptions to this default position. Dissertations or research reports that earn less than sixty credits, or research reports submitted for professional master’s degrees, are not uploaded to OpenUCT.  There is also the option to delay public access to theses and dissertations in OpenUCT. However, in these cases, the metadata and abstracts of the theses and dissertations  will be available through open access immediately after the conferment of the degree.

The criteria for delaying access to theses and dissertations are set out in the document Guidelines for OpenUCT: Publication of Theses and Dissertations after Conferment of the Degree.

The criteria include:

  1. Deferment of a thesis or dissertation for up to 24 months from the date of graduation in order to allow the submission for publication of work arising from the dissertation or thesis.
  2. If IP protection is sought, a thesis or dissertation can be kept confidential for up to 24 months, with a possible extension of up to 36 months.
  3. The Senate Executive Committee can defer publication of a dissertation or thesis on OpenUCT for a defined period, or indefinitely, at the student's request, but in such cases, the student will be required to deposit a print copy of the thesis or dissertation in the Special Collections section of UCT Libraries.

The amendments of the Open Access Policy also state that grant holders are required to comply with any conditions for archiving theses and dissertations set out by the funder.

To enquire about the Open Access Policy or the Guidelines for OpenUCT, please contact the Scholarly Communications and Publishing office at extension 1263 or email openuct@uct.ac.za