Publishing Your Ph.D. Dissertation: Differences in Sweden, UK, and US

By Anamaria Dutceac Segesten. There was a time when university presses, defined not as enterprises but as simple printing facilities, had as primary function the publication/diffusion of research texts produced at the university with which they were affiliated. One of the primary text forms to be published was the doctoral or magisterial dissertation.
The range of readers and buyers of dissertations and other such academic texts has never been very wide, and that posed a series of problems for these academic labels. Should they be self-sustaining and thus work commercially, or should they be financed by the universities themselves? If the latter, should they only publish works produced at the respective “mother” university, or should they be open to research coming from outside? If the former, how can they find a market that would make the publishing profitable? Read more...