Requesting an Embargo

As part of the Clemson OPEN account setup, you’ll be given the option to embargo — to delay the publication of your thesis or dissertation without impacting your graduation status. A variety of situations warrant an embargo, including:

• You are pursuing a patent (or plan to pursue one).
• Your research includes sensitive or proprietary content, e.g., collaborative work with a military or governmental entity or a public or private corporation.
• You’ve signed an agreement with a research sponsor that requires an embargo for a specified period of time, or a research partner has reserved the right to review your manuscript in full before it is published, as a condition for funding.
• You have submitted or intend to submit part or all of your graduate research to a peer-reviewed journal or other publication in your field whose editorial board requires first publication rights because they only accept previously unpublished content.
• You intend eventually to publish your thesis or dissertation as a book with a commercial publisher or a university press.

The Graduate School permits the student to enact an embargo of one year with no approval required.

The student can select the embargo when they upload their document for Graduate School review (or afterward, by revising their submission). The embargo will expire one year from the last day of the month in which the student graduates (so May 31, August 31, or December 31). Any extension beyond the first year does require approval from the Graduate School. If the student needs to extend the embargo as the one-year anniversary approaches, they can email Robert Freeman at rjfreem@clemson.edu with a short explanation (patent still pending, publications in the works, etc.). The student will be notified whether the embargo is approved.

Exceptions to current policy around embargo limits may be considered by the Graduate School dean. Please contact the Graduate School Graduation Standards Coordinator if you need a longer or open-ended embargo period.

Embargoes cannot be requested after your ETD has been published by the Clemson Libraries (Clemson OPEN). You may, however, contact the Institutional Repository Coordinator to request that the full text of your ETD be removed from public view and download access for up to one year from your graduation. Please note that we cannot control content from your ETD that may have been accessed or downloaded prior to your request for retraction.

When you submit your thesis or dissertation, you will see

1. A checkbox (1) for requesting an embargo.
2. A date field (2) (showing today’s date by default) for entering your embargo period — up to one year as outlined by current Graduate School policy. The embargo date should be changed to the last day of the month of your graduation in the following year; thus, it will be May 31, August 31, or December 31, and the year will be the year following your graduation. If you enter any other date, it will be changed to the last day of the month of your graduation in the following year. At the end of your embargo period, your manuscript will automatically be electronically published and entered into the Clemson OPEN repository unless you have requested an extension as described above.
   
   

Under embargo, your ETD metadata will be published a few weeks after graduation, but the full text of your manuscript will not be available to view or download.

You are responsible for keeping track of your embargo end date, so please add it to your calendar. You will not receive a notification from the Graduate School or Clemson OPEN about an upcoming embargo expiration date.

Also, you are encouraged to request (by emailing the Clemson OPEN Repository Coordinator) that your embargo be lifted before its expiration date if it is no longer needed.

For complete details about what an embargo is, when you should request one and what a delay of publication can and cannot do, please read the Embargoes (delays of publication) topic in the Graduate School’s PDF Reference, Step 4: Submit Your Manuscript for Format Review and Publishing (PDF).