U of Tasmania mandates electronic submission for theses and dissertations

Effective today, the University of Tasmania will mandate electronic submission of theses and dissertations.  The new policy is simplicity itself: in addition to submitting two bound, printed copies (as before), candidates must submit one electronic copy.

Comment. Kudos to Tasmania and congratulations to Arthur Sale, the mover behind the new policy. This little change can have big consequences because (as I argued in a July 2006 article), for theses and dissertations, achieving mandatory electronic submission is the hardest part of achieving OA:

In principle, universities could require electronic submission of the dissertation without requiring deposit in the institutional repository.  They could also require deposit in the repository without requiring OA.  But in practice, most universities don't draw these distinctions.  Most universities that encourage or require electronic submission also encourage or require OA.  What's remarkable is that for theses and dissertations, OA is not the hard step.  The hard step is encouraging or requiring electronic submission. For dissertations that are born digital and submitted in digital form, OA is pretty much the default.  I needn't tell you that this is not at all the case with journal literature.