It’s Open Access Week! While sharing knowledge openly is a public good, this year’s theme, “The Cost of Knowledge,” challenges us to think about the consistently rising cost of it. Who benefits? Who is negatively impacted?
Deep Blue Documents (DB Docs) is U-M’s institutional repository that preserves the teaching, learning, research, and creativity created at all three U-M campuses. It’s hosted and run by the U-M Library. As of September 2026, DB Docs contains 49,313 digital dissertations, the largest collection in the repository. While not comprehensive, it contains dissertations from 1884 to the present. While most dissertations from the past fifteen years are open access, 93.6% published before 2010 are restricted to U-M users.
How do these dissertations relate to Open Access Week’s theme this year? Here’s some background on dissertations, the U-M Library, and DB Docs:
- Pre-2010, dissertations were submitted to the Library as print books. These are available on the shelves like other items owned by the Library. Many of them are still in the Library’s collection today!
- Around 2010, Rackham Graduate School switched to electronic dissertations, and DB Docs started receiving semi-annual batches of recently graduated doctoral students’ dissertations. While current students can place a short-term embargo on their electronic dissertation, ultimately it will become open to the general public.
- The Library was able to purchase large batches of digitized historical U-M dissertations from a vendor. In these cases, we didn’t have the explicit permission from the author (the copyright holder) to make their dissertation publicly available, so access was restricted to U-M users (in effect, limiting access to the equivalent of the U-M Library holding a print copy).
While it’s fantastic that DB Docs has so many digital dissertations online, many of them have been only available to U-M users. We knew that there was significant interest in U-M dissertations because we’ve received many requests (sometimes daily!) from members of the general public asking for access to a dissertation restricted to U-M users. We would point them to:
- Their local library/institution's interlibrary loan service as a way of borrowing our print copy → not ideal because many requestors don’t have access to the library/institution or, even if they do have access, these libraries/institutions can’t afford this service.
- Vendors that may have the dissertation for purchase → not ideal because, like purchasing journal articles individually, it is expensive and not economically feasible for many.
So what is the impact of having U-M dissertations publicly available? This question can be hard to quantify. But we’re lucky to have a very rich corpus of requests from the general public asking for access to a dissertation restricted to U-M users. Their requests give us a glimpse into why having dissertations freely available online matters to the general public.
We analyzed requests from the general public for restricted access dissertations over the past four years and found that they can be grouped into these six broad categories:
- Indigenous tribal members
A request from a Torres Strait tribal member to access a dissertation related to the practices and traditions of their indigenous community.
- Historical fiction authors
“I am a writer working on a historical fiction novel about Gov. G. Mennen Williams first term as governor of Michigan…”
- Government agencies
“[Government agency] is updating our files for threatened and endangered species, specifically black toad (Anaxyrus exsul), and were wanting [sic] to apply the research from [this dissertation].”
- Zoos
“For our upcoming new African exhibit here in [Zoo in United States], we are going to be exhibiting the species Naked Mole Rats. This thesis would be very helpful when our keepers start working with this species. I would most appreciate a copy for reference for zoo personnel.”
- Readers who are personally interested in the topic
“I would like to request for a pdf copy of his thesis for my personal reading.”
- Family/friends of the dissertation author
“My late husband was in the Navy... I wish to share this story on Story Core on National Public Radio and wish to have more facts than just what he shared with me. He may have know[n] the man who wrote this dissertation.”
“I grew up in Irian Jaya and knew the author personally. He and my father worked closely together. Recently I have started trying to collect as many documents as I can about the area.”
“I am requesting access to the PDF version of [this dissertation], as it's my grandfather's PhD thesis. It's also of particular sentiment as my late grandmother typed each page using a typewriter.”
“My father passed away in 2013, and many of his writings have been lost to time. I would deeply, deeply appreciate being granted access to his dissertation so I can preserve his academic legacy for our family.”
“I wanted to get a chance to read [my father’s] PhD dissertation - and share w/ my wife & children.”
These requests highlight the wide variety of reasons why the general public might wish to access a U-M dissertation restricted to U-M users. While analyzing these requests may seem like a circuitous method for determining the impact of openly accessible U-M dissertations, they are directly from users and unprompted by us librarians–a gold mine of information for us. Of course, these requests only account for a small portion of our users–those who took the time to contact us to request access. We’ll never be able to know how many non-U-M users hit this roadblock and didn’t contact us, but it’s clear this scholarship is valuable to the general public for a variety of reasons.
Most people may assume that the only audience for dissertations is other academics. These requests qualitatively demonstrate that many dissertation readers are ‘educated lay readers’, readers outside of academia who are reading scholarly texts. Recently, the U-M Library’s AUL of Publishing, Charles Watkinson and collaborators, surveyed readers of university press books , which are almost exclusively scholarly texts. They found that 56% of readers were outside of academia; they were educated lay readers. Their work clearly demonstrates that there’s an appetite for scholarly works by the general public.
Fortunately, we’re receiving fewer of these requests because, over the past year, we’ve been able to make 10,014 dissertations publicly available, reducing the need for the general public to contact us for access (see our two other blog posts for more information on these projects, Opening access to 10,014 UM dissertations in Deep Blue Documents; Identifying, Digitizing and Uploading 95 UM dissertations into Deep Blue Documents). While we thoroughly enjoy reading about their connections to these dissertations, we’re happy that so many more dissertations are freely available online for the general public to access.
Many kudos to Rachel Woodbrook for being the driving force behind many of our projects to make U-M dissertations more accessible to the public. Thanks to Aurelia Hudak, who used her technical skills to modify existing code to automatically identify copyright status in digitized dissertation front matter. Thanks to our amazing graduate student assistants Katie Cutts and Lucía González González for their diligent work manually investigating the copyright status of many U-M dissertations and for combing through requests to access U-M only dissertations to find these jewels of wisdom from the general public. Finally, thanks to our colleagues who have advised on and supported this work, including Jeremy York, Melissa Levine, Jack Bernard, Charles Watkinson, and Jeremy Morse.