Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?

The title of this post is the title of a recently published paper, and a topic that HDR staff often ask the librarians. Questions we are asked include:

• I want to publish journal article(s) from my thesis. Will making my thesis available in ResearchOnline@JCU affect my chances of getting published?
• Can I publish my chapter as a journal article even though my entire thesis is already available in ResearchOnline@JCU?

The study found that many high impact journals will accept revised versions of thesis chapters, and are not concerned if the thesis is available as Open Access. A quote from the paper states:

ETDs and found that more than half of the science journals responding (51.4%) reported that manuscripts derived from openly accessible ETDs are welcome for submission and an additional 29.1 percent would accept revised ETDs under certain conditions.

The paper can be downloaded at http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/6/808.full.pdf+html.

The full reference to the paper is:

Ramírez, M. L., McMillan, G., Dalton, J. T., Hanlon, A., Smith, H. S., & Kern, C. (2014). Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences? College & Research Libraries, 75(6), 808-821. doi: 10.5860/crl.75.6.808