When you submit your thesis or dissertation, you will be offered several options for restricting access.  Access options should be discussed with your adviser. Some colleges have embargo policies or standard practices, so do not embargo or close your ETD without checking.

If you embargo or close your thesis or dissertation, it will still be listed and indexed in the Georgia State University Library Catalog and in ScholarWorks@GSU, and the title, author, keywords, and abstract will be displayed on the web in the record for your thesis or dissertation.

Embargos

When submitting your ETD, you will select either:

• No embargo required. By choosing no embargo you are agreeing to publish your thesis or dissertation in ScholarWorks@GSU immediately. This option will provide the broadest possible access to your work. The full-text of your thesis or dissertation and any supplemental files will be accessible on the internet, and your thesis or dissertation will be indexed and discoverable via major search engines. 
   
• Embargo. By choosing an embargo, you are requesting that there be no access to the full-text of your Dissertation for a specified period of time. Your dissertation will be listed and indexed in the Georgia State University Library Catalog and in ScholarWorks@GSU, but the full text of your Dissertation, and any supplementary files, will not be accessible until the expiration of the embargo. The title, author, keywords, and abstract will be displayed on the web in the record for your Dissertation even if you have restricted access to the full-text copy. If you are embargoing due to patentability concerns, make sure your abstract is written so as to not be considered prior art. If do not want an abstract displayed at all, enter “No abstract to protect patentability” in the abstract field when you upload your thesis or dissertation.
  
  

Closed Thesis or Dissertation

When you are uploading your thesis or dissertation, you have the option of Closed Thesis or Closed Dissertation. If you submit your ETD as Closed, access to it will be restricted to the Georgia State University campus as long as it remains Closed. You must take affirmative action to open your ETD to wider access. This level of access is the equivalent of the access that was available when theses and dissertations were only on a library shelf. Your thesis or dissertation will be shared as the result of an Interlibrary Loan request.