My thesis is finally being printed. I spent more time than I had planned on the question of publishing and the process associated with it. Typically, engineering dissertations at my university are published via a specialized scientific publisher. As of a couple of years ago, the university began accepting digital publishing, i.e. putting it on the internet. So naturally, I needed do decide what to do. Virtually all of my colleagues went the publisher route, mostly as it is clear what to do and how to do it.

I did not want to do this, as it turned out to have a couple of drawbacks:

  • It is expensive. The publishing fees would have run into the low four figures which I would have to pay myself.
  • The publisher wants to retain copyright. I am allowed to self-archive the thesis if I forfeit any royalties arising from possible sales. This means that whenever someone wants to look at something in my thesis there is the publisher’s paywall.

I was happy to find that my university accepts publishing via its own library’s publication services. The catch: even using this route I needed to turn in six printed exemplars of the thesis. It required some effort, as my A4 manuscript submitted to the referees needed to be scaled down for printing in the required A5 format. This is typically something the publisher does, whereas I needed to spend some effort to accomplish this. After successfully navigating issues with things I’d never heard before such as versions of PDF/A or PDF/X, it is finally here.