They Said, They Said

The University of Iowa seems to have instituted a new policy that requires all graduate students to agree to allow publication of their theses as “open-access documents”, freely available on the web. A new clause, which now appears in the forms that graduate students sign as a matter of course in order to graduate, has creative writing students in a tizzy. The University of Iowa library apparently plans to scan the hard copy of theses and dissertations in order to make them freely available, but writing students object that once such materials are available, their works, often in the form of poems, plays and novels, will not attract the attention of publishers or movie studios. Other graduate students say they have privacy or other concerns.

Meanwhile, the University’s administrators say they don’t know who inserted the new language. The Graduate Library says it isn’t responsible for the new wording. Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education here.