In our November "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I recently have had a number of requests for a pdf of my dissertation. I defended in 2018 and am currently a postdoc. At the moment, I've polished and published a few sections of the dissertation; however, I'm currently in the process of refining other elements into their own proper articles. Is there any reason, besides the somewhat dated content and style, that I shouldn't post a pdf version of my dissertation on my website? When I've searched for advice on this topic, I've found blog posts (usually from other humanities fields) that recommend not making the dissertation freely available (e.g. https://theprofessorisin.com/2011/08/24/the-perils-of-publishing-your-dissertation-online/). I would love some advice from folk in the tenure-track process on this matter.
This is an interesting question that I have to confess never coming across before. Having read The Professor Is In's post above, the main worry there seems to be book publishers not wanting to publish something that's already available online. However, this worry seems to me a bit overblown in philosophy. My understanding is that some disciplines (English?) generally expect faculty to publish books for tenure. But this isn't the case in philosophy, and my impression is that publishing dissertations as books is pretty rare. Further, the Professor Is In updated their post with data indicating that almost no publisher would refuse to publish a substantially revised dissertation, and that posting dissertations online is in general no obstacle to tenure.
By my lights, a more relevant worry about posting dissertations online might be 'idea poaching', i.e. someone reading your dissertation and publishing ideas based on yours without appropriate attribution. Here again, though, I'm not sure how seriously to take the worry, and of course in one sense 'publishing' your dissertation online (via ProQuest or even on PhilPeople) does constitute a public record of the relevant ideas being yours. So, I'm really not sure what to advise. I uploaded my dissertation to PhilPapers prior to obtaining tenure, and it didn't prevent me from obtaining tenure or from publishing papers based upon it.
What do you all think?
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