The Future of the Doctoral Dissertation

The CGS Future of the PhD Dissertation workshop, held in January 2016, convened top leaders in graduate education, publishing, library science, professional associations, and other experts to discuss the forces changing doctoral dissertations and how they might affect the future. Our goal was to identify key areas in need of further study and places where universities are in need of further guidance.

The papers prepared and circulated ahead of the workshop invited attendees to focus on big-picture questions affecting the enterprises of scholarly communication and graduate education, including:

• What is a dissertation? What is its purpose? Who are its audiences?
• What skills are or should be gained as a result of writing a dissertation?
• What new dissertation formats should be considered?
• How should dissertation research be archived, accessed, and disseminated?
• What is the role of the dissertation in the employment marketplace?

The Future of the Doctoral Dissertation workshop was generously sponsored by