Today ProQuest distributed an email to its graduate school partners noting a radical shift in publication fees beginning September for institutions submitting electronic theses and dissertations. According to the email,
Over the last seven years, many of our new and long-standing partners have made the transition from paper delivery of dissertations and theses to electronic delivery by using the ProQuest ETD Administrator. The shift to electronic submissions delivers important benefits to both ProQuest and partner institutions. Improved workflow processes, reduced costs and enhanced editorial processing are examples of the advantages of electronic submissions. These advantages reinforce our motivation and commitment to having partners adopt this delivery mode. By year’s end, we will have built an additional 50 ETD Administrator sites for our publishing partners, bringing the total number of sites to over 350. With over 60% of current manuscripts being delivered electronically to ProQuest, we have experienced significant cost savings and workflow efficiencies while providing the same high quality editorial services. As a result, we are very happy to announce a major change in our publishing fees, and we are even more excited about passing these savings on to you and your graduate students.
Traditional publication fees for institutions using the ProQuest ETD Administrator will reduce to zero, while those using FTP or another electronic deliver method will be reduced to $25. Institutions using paper delivery will remain the same as the previous year: $65, and those using the Open Access publishing option will continue to pay $95.
It will be interesting to see how this update will impact the adoption of ETDs and use of the ETD Administrator Tool. See the ProQuest press release.
Also, see the post from Scholarly Communication at Texas A&M: http://blogs.tdl.org/tamu-scholarly-communication/2010/08/31/seismic-shift-in-dissertation-publishing-proquest-drops-fees-for-publishing-to-their-system/