Digital Thesis & Project Room

Availability

Athabasca University is dedicated to open access and digital publishing in order to serve the needs of a global community of adult learners. Thus, the DTPR allows worldwide web access to research projects and theses. However, collections from the Faculty of Business and School of Computing and Information Systems have specific restriction needs. To accommodate these collections the DTPR provides the following levels of access:

Faculty of Business Collection

1. Open access - worldwide public access.
2. Restrict to AU campus only - available only to AU faculty & students via library proxy authentication.
3. Restrict all access for a period of three years.
4. Restrict all access for an indefinite period of time for reasons of content confidentiality or proprietary interests. Only if consent is provided by the author can documents be accessible from either AU campus or worldwide.

School of Computing and Information Systems Collection

1. Open access - worldwide public access.
2. Restrict to AU campus only - available only to AU faculty & students via library proxy authentication.
3. Restrict all access for a period of one year.
4. Restrict all access for a period of three years.
5. Restrict all access for a period of five years.

In other words, research projects and theses restricted at level three or higher are not available to AU students or the public. Records of these documents will clearly state this restriction and neither AU library nor the relevant Centres take responsibility for filling requests for full-text materials. However, when the restricted period of one, three, or five years has elapsed access will be changed to either AU campus only or worldwide unless a student wishes to extend the restriction. It is the student's responsibility to inform the AU Library and request an additional restriction period.