To Restrict or Not to Restrict Access: The PhD Candidate's Intellectual Property Dilemma

The NDLTD software allows submitting PhD candidates to restrict or withhold access to their thesis or portions of their theses. At the same time there is increasing agitation within the research and library communities that research results be made openly available. At Caltech in the U.S. a study was undertaken to examine the motivations and impact that the decision to restrict or withhold had for the first submitters, the group of PhD candidates who, in 2001/2002, voluntarily added their theses to the newly created Caltech ETD repository.