Now, dissertations and theses are more discoverable than ever. ProQuest has arranged with Google and Google Scholar to allow indexing and searching across bibliographic data for graduate works published in 2007 and forward. Searches will retrieve basic metadata for each graduate work (title, author, abstract, keywords, etc), and provide links to ProQuest for purchase or access. 

These new dissemination avenues broaden author exposure beyond the traditional research community. Most scholars benefit from increased exposure to their published work, so the ubiquity of Google and Google Scholar should benefit most graduate students.

What graduate works are indexed and searched by Google?
Right now, Google and Google Scholar  are indexing dissertations and theses published in 2007 and 2008. However, Canadian graduate works are not included, nor are any that are embargoed or restricted at an author's request. In 2007, we started adding dissertations and theses, unless the author indicated we should not in the publishing agreement.

What about Open Access and free institutional access?
Our efforts through Google/Google Scholar are about expanding the availability of dissertations and theses beyond the scholarly community.  Obviously, this is not intended to substitute for the kinds of liberal and/or free access that researchers normally have to dissertations and theses through institutional subscriptions to the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) database.

And of course, dissertations and theses published under our new Open Access Publishing option will be available for immediate, full-text download from ProQuest's PQDT Open web site, and the bibliographic data will also be searchable via Google/Google Scholar.

What if a graduate author doesn't want their work to be made available through Google Scholar? 
ProQuest allows several ways to restrict access, in whole or in part. Graduate authors who prefer not to see their work discoverable via Google Scholar can direct our Author and School Relations staff to place a restriction on their graduate work. We can also arrange to restrict listing in Google Scholar and other 3rd parties but allow distribution to the academic community through our traditional, direct channels.

Graduate authors who have reasons to more fully restrict the distribution of their work should work with their graduate school and ProQuest's UMI Dissertation Publishing group at the time of submission to arrange embargo or restriction.

I have more questions about dissertations & theses in Google and Google Scholar.
Please contact us at scholarlypublishing@proquest.com.  We'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.