If you intend on publishing the content of your thesis in a journal before uploading your thesis onto DalSpace, ensure that the author agreement that you enter into permits you to deposit that content onto DalSpace.
It is best practice to check whether a publisher will allow you to submit a copy of your thesis onto DalSpace before signing a publishing contract with them as submission of your thesis onto DalSpace is a requirement for the completion of your graduate studies.
For more information on publishing in DalSpace, check out this LibGuide.
If you happen to have submitted your thesis into a journal before putting it onto DalSpace, not all is lost! Depending on certain factors, there may still be options.
If the journal has open access, it may allow you to publish your thesis onto DalSpace without any extra action required. Other journals may only allow the non-final version of your thesis to be added to DalSpace, check the publisher's website for details.
Check the section below for more information on how to determine a journal's open access policies.
You can also learn more about Open Access from our LibGuide on Open Access.
Many journals are not open access and authors need to give up copyright of their work. Some journals, however, may allow authors some limited rights to reuse work. This can take the form of allowing authors to deposit a version of their work into an institutional repository. This is called Green Open Access. The publisher might also specify that the work can be used in a thesis or dissertation (Note: Green OA and reuse in a thesis/dissertation do not mean the same thing as some agreements may stipulate that Green OA is permitted, but reuse in a thesis for open deposit is not. Whether Green OA permission is sufficient depends on the details of reuse in your case).
Dalhousie's Copyright Office has information on retaining author's copyrights. It links to resources on drafting an author addendum which is an instrument that can be used to negotiate a copyright transfer agreement with a non-open access publisher to help you retain more author rights.
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) also has information on how authors can negotiate to retain some rights to their work when publishing in a journal.
Certain journals, as part of the agreement you sign, may request that you not publish your thesis anywhere else for a certain period of time, giving that journal exclusive distribution rights to your thesis for that period of time. Since submitting your thesis onto DalSpace is a requirement for graduation, an embargo can be requested to delay submission onto DalSpace. This means that after the specified time period has elapsed, your thesis will be published onto DalSpace automatically. It is best NOT to presume that an embargo will be observed for your thesis. Instead, every effort should be make to ensure that you retain sufficient control of your work to ensure that you can comply with Faculty of Graduate Studies submission requirements.
For more information, contact dalspace@dal.ca