SJI welcomes doctoral dissertations and master's theses for publication consideration. If accepted, your dissertation or thesis will be published as a PDF file in its entirety. It provides exposure beyond traditional microfilming of abstract. We only require a non-exclusive Publishing Agreement which means you can publish your work with another publisher at any time.

Each submission will be sent to three reviewers with final decisions reported to the author within four weeks. If your dissertation or thesis is accepted for publication, you will be asked to submit the License to Publish agreement along with a processing fee of $99.95. Why is this fee necessary? Please see below.

1. Submit your material to SJI Editor (info@scientificjournals.org) as email attachments.  The email subject should be "Submission to SJI--Dissertation or Thesis"

2. Your submission may follow any style manual (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

3. Cover Page
Include a cover page as a separate file attachment (it should NOT be in the same file that contains your dissertation or thesis). To facilitate anonymous reviews, indication of authorship should appear only on this page.  This separate cover page must contain the following information.

Title of dissertation or thesis
Name of author
Academic department or discipline of author
Institutional affiliation of author
Degree earned (M.A., Ph.D., etc.)
Date degree earned
Mailing address
Email address
Telephone number
Name of Advisor or Committee Chair
Dare when dissertation or thesis accepted

Desired field of reviewers (Since the Journal of Dissertation covers multiple fields or disciplines, we need to ensure that your dissertation or thesis is sent to reviewers in your specific field.  Please specify your desired field of reviewers (for example, indicate that your dissertation or thesis should be sent to reviewers in the field of Physics, Biotechnology, etc.).

4. Manuscript
Include your dissertation or thesis as a separate file attachment (PDF format). At the beginning of the dissertation or thesis, include a title and an abstract (no more than 600 words). Your manuscript must be edited and polished to high professional standards. Submissions with numerous grammatical errors will not be sent out for peer reviews.

5. University Acceptance or Signature Page
Submit a copy of the university acceptance or signature page for the dissertation or thesis as a separate PDF file attachment in the same email. This page should contain the signature(s) of your advisor and/or committee members.

Why We Charge a Processing Fee

Like other open access journals, our peer-reviewed journals provide free online access to full text articles. In addition, our journals also provide free online access to full dissertations and theses. We do not charge subscription fees to readers or libraries.  We cover the costs through processing fees. We concur with other open access journals that immediate, world-wide, barrier-free, open access to the full text of research literature is in the best interests of the scientific community. The more widely and freely accessible the information is, the greater its value to scholars and the public. Open access to research literature allows scientists, educators, students and the general public to read about the latest scientific and academic developments as soon as they are published. All of our open access journals are immediately available free of charge to all Internet users from around the world. 

The processing fee keeps us alive. It costs money to produce hundreds of peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted articles, dissertations and theses that are ready for online publication in a timely manner.  It also costs money to maintain our offices, employees, databases and archives, and to host our massive Web site on a server that is accessible around the clock. If an organization cannot generate sufficient revenues to pay its bills, it will not be able to sustain its operation and consequently, will have to close down its services.

As a small part of the cost of providing this service—the authors, universities, or funding agencies can pay a small processing fee, to help cover the actual cost of the publication process. Many funding agencies, authors and institutions now support this view and are willing to help in the open access publication process.

According to surveys carried out by BioMed Central in 2005, many funding agencies are willing to fund article processing charges (report available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/funderpolicies/).

A recent survey of authors in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science (PNAS) found that nearly 50% of PNAS authors expressed a willingness to pay an “open-access surcharge” of $500 or more to make their papers available for free online immediately upon publication. This is above and beyond the $1,700 in page charges that the average PNAS author already pays (report available at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/5/1111).

BioMed Central's processing fee ranges from $495 to $2365 for its various journals (http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq).  Public Library of Science (PLoS) charges from $1250 to $2,500 for processing an article for its numerous journals (http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html). Some journals charge $20 to $150 per page for processing an article. NAR charges $1900 per article for non-members. PNAS charges an average of $1,500 for processing an article. Optics Express charges $450 for articles six pages and under, and $800 for articles over six pages. Our processing fee is very low compared to all other open-access journals.

The Open-Access Movement

In light of declarations supporting open access to research literature from international bodies including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), many scholars now believe that open-access publishing is the wave of the future.

The open-access concept shifts the funding from the point of access or subscription fees to the point of dissemination or processing fees.  During the past few years, the escalating cost of research journals has forced many individuals and institutions to cancel their subscriptions. The recent wave of mergers among publishers has also increased concentration in many fields and has contributed to the price increases. This is detrimental to both readers and authors, because readers’ access to research is limited, and consequently reduces the authors’ exposure and impact. It creates barriers for large parts of the scientific community from scholarly interaction and access. Consequently, access to scientific knowledge has gone into a state of decline in recent years.

According to the Blackwell Periodical Price Indexes, there has been an average increase in journal prices of 178.3% in science and technical journals between 1990 and 2000. Institutional subscriptions to individual journals can cost up to $20,000 today. Recent estimates indicate that profits for traditional journals are, on average, 40% in a $7.3 billion industry.

Dr. Ian Gibson and his research commission have criticized traditional publishers’ pricing practices stating "They have shown no interest in engaging with the concerns of academics and libraries. Publishers are not interested in the benefit of science, they are thinking about their profits."

Such discontent with the traditional business model for scholarly journals has led to the proposal of a new business model, the open-access.  This new business model for scholarly journals has gained attention from scholars, universities, and funding agencies in recent years and is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. It has triggered the most successful scholarly publishing reform movement in modern history. Although traditional publishers have demonstrated hostility and skepticism at the initial phase of the movement, many of them are overcoming their initial resistance, and have begun experimenting with the open-access model.

In the traditional subscription model of publishing, the journal is exclusively available to subscribers for a fee.  In open-access model, the article is freely available for all immediately upon publication. Open-access model has allowed greater access, improving the circulation of knowledge, and expanding its value by enhancing participation in a global exchange of ideas.  Open-access makes knowledge freely available to all, regardless of whether the researcher or scholar is at Oxford or Yale, or at a small college in India, China or South Africa.

To a large extent, open-access movement is a reaction to the dysfunctional practices in the conventional scholarly communication system. Many leaders and advocates of the open-access movement are prominent scholars and librarians who are interested in developing new and more effective scholarly communication strategies for the changing environment of the new millennium.

In explaining the inadequacies of the conventional scholarly communication system, Peter Suber, a leading voice in the open-access movement stated “It doesn't matter whether we blame unaffordable journals on excessive publisher prices or inadequate library budgets. If we focus on publishers, it doesn't matter whether we blame greed or innocent market forces (rising costs and new services). Blame is irrelevant and distracting. The volume of published knowledge is growing exponentially and will always grow faster than library budgets. In that sense, Open-access scales with the growth of knowledge and toll access does not. We've already (long since) reached the point at which even affluent research institutions cannot afford access to the full range of research literature. Priced access to journal articles would not scale with the continuing, explosive growth of knowledge even if prices were low today and guaranteed to remain low forever” (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm).

Many scholars consider the traditional publishing system obsolete and believe that the future of scholarly publishing lies in the open-access model. Richard Roberts, a Nobel Laureate and Editor of NAR stated "Open access is the future of scientific publication and one that we should all work hard to make successful" (http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/news/?issue=19).

Recently, Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, has announced an open access initiative, Oxford Open, an author-pays model for authors of accepted papers in participating Oxford Journals titles.

An increasing number of funding agencies now allow direct use of their grants by researchers to cover article-processing fees. The following is a partial list.

National Institutes of Health (US)
National Science Foundation (US)
Natural Environment Research Council (UK)
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Canada)
Rockefeller Foundation (US)
Wellcome Trust (UK)
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (US)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain)
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy)
Danmarks Grundforskningsfond (Denmark)
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany)
FAPESP (Brazil)
Fondazione Telethon (Italy)
Fonds zur Forderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Austria)
Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Belgium)
Health Research Board (Ireland)
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
Indian Council of Medical Research (India)
INSERM (France)
International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (International)
Israel Science Foundation (Israel)
Max Planck Society (Germany)
Medical Research Council (UK)
National Health Service (UK)
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands)
South African Medical Research Council (South Africa)
Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Sweden)
Swedish Research Council (Sweden)
Swiss National Science Foundation (Switzerland)
Academy of Finland (Finland)
BIOTEC (Thailand)