In 2003, ProQuest Dissertation Publishing introduced an online system for submission of dissertations and theses. Close to a hundred of our university publishing partners are actively using it, and dozens more are currently running pilot projects to test the new system. Online submission is a significant improvement over paper submission, and we encourage all our university publishing partners – new and old – to migrate their submission process online. Online submission is easier, faster, and results in the highest quality version of the published graduate work. In particular, online submission offers the following benefits:

 

• A shorter publishing process: on average, 2 to 4 weeks shorter than paper submissions
• No printing or shipping requirement: all submission work occurs online, so no copies to print and no boxes to pack and ship
• No paper forms to complete and mail: all forms can be completed online
• Preservation of the graduate work as submitted: with the "born digital" version of a graduate work, we can capture all color images, graphs, etc., exactly as the author intended.
• True accessibility for the vision-impaired: scanned images of paper submissions cannot be interpreted by screen readers; only PDFs created from the original electronic document are readable.