Public Access to Graduate Thesis

The award of a thesis-based graduate degree is conditioned on the student uploading their completed thesis in the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation system to ensure its availability to the public. Although the student retains the copyright in the thesis, by uploading the thesis in the electronic system, the student assigns a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to Mines to permit Mines to copy the thesis and allow the public reasonable access to it.

Under special circumstances, Mines may agree to include proprietary research in a graduate student’s thesis. The nature and extent of the proprietary research reported in the thesis must be agreed upon in writing by the principal investigator and the student, and must be specified when the thesis or dissertation is uploaded into the electronic system.

In some cases, the proprietary nature of the underlying research may require the school to delay public access to the completed thesis for a limited period of time. In no case will public access to the thesis be denied for more than 12 months from the date the thesis or dissertation is published by the electronic system.