Embargo Policy
The Joint Office of Graduate Studies expects that all theses and dissertations submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a graduate degree be published in electronic form. Doing so serves to document the basis upon which a student’s degree has been awarded and also to share the results of our students’ research with the scholarly community and the public. A copy of the full text of the policy is published in section V.B. Publication of Theses, Doctoral Projects, and Dissertations of the Graduate Bulletin.
Electronic versions of theses and dissertations are stored on and available from ProQuest and Lauinger Library’s DigitalGeorgetown. Students may elect to embargo their thesis or dissertation on the ProQuest side during the uploading process. Permission to embargo the thesis or dissertation from distribution via Georgetown’s own digital resources, however, requires additional steps.
Indicate an embargo on ProQuest PDF on Publishing Options screen by answering Yes to the “Delaying release in ProQuest” item when creating a ProQuest profile. This is the signal to the Graduate Studies office that a student is requesting a Georgetown embargo. Additional information will be emailed from gradstudentservices@georgetown.edu.
The Joint Office of Graduate Studies offers two types of Georgetown embargoes:
- A common embargo under which the text of the thesis or dissertation will be withheld from public distribution but will be available to anyone with a Georgetown NetID and to any researcher who contacts Georgetown Library in advance and arranges to travel to campus to read it.
- A restrictive embargo for cases involving a pending patent application. Under this type of embargo, the text of the thesis or dissertation will be completely suppressed. A restrictive embargo requires a letter of support from the student’s advisor underscoring the reason for the stricter embargo.
Both types of embargo are available for a period of up to two years. They are renewable under specific circumstances. During the period of either embargo, metadata concerning the thesis or dissertation, including title, author, and an abstract of the work, will be available online.
See the full policy cited above in the Bulletin for more information on both types of embargo and how to request a restrictive embargo. The common embargo requires a letter from the student.