Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I ran across this request in the "Add Book" folder:

"I'd like my graduation novel of my creative writing studies to be added to goodreads"
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

The "non book items" page doesn't seem to address dissertations and theses. I'm guessing that, since they are not published, they are not eligible to be added to GR. Can someone confirm? And perhaps that can be added to the non book items" page?

Thank you!

Michele wrote: "I ran across this request in the "Add Book" folder:

"I'd like my graduation novel of my creative writing studies to be added to goodreads"
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...-..."

Hi
Years ago Support removed an author's thesis from his list of books after I queried it. I haven't heard that anything has changed.

I've added a couple in the past, but they have to be published. The definition of "published" is a little loose... Here's some selected comments from rivka.

"if it's available in full as an ebook, that counts as published by GR's usual standards."

"Print theses are fine if they were published. Having a handful of print copies in existence would not so qualify, even if some were donated to libraries. But having them as print-on-demand through Proquest should."

Links for reference:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

It looks like the thesis in this particular request is available through a print on demand service, but only if you contact the author directly so not sure if it counts. It's definitely a gray area.

Gray indeed :P Thanks for the additional information!

I'm spamming a bit on this subject, but I have a thesis addition request of my own pending at the moment (someone else wrote the thesis, I just want to get credit for reading it on Goodreads and to make it more findable for other people: I would have loved to find it earlier!) So this is me copy and pasting myself, but maybe you will find it helpful.

"My understanding is that a thesis or dissertation is considered a valid entry under specific circumstances, which seem to come down to published in a valid book format, including ebook format, and reasonably accessible (for example, if it *is* an ebook format, it should not be something that is "only available via subscription to a newsletter or via a website that requires registration.") When I go hunting, this is the thread that people generally cite re: adding a thesis or dissertation on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

When I've gone looking for topics with "thesis" in the title, sometimes they are added but sometimes they are deemed invalid on the basis of being a thesis. I think the problem is that neither "thesis" nor "dissertation" are mentioned on the lists of valid (https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...) OR invalid (https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...) entries in the Manual. They've certainly been around long enough that the clarity would be helpful."

Bumping this up because it would be excellent to get this officially clarified and perhaps added to the Librarians Manual.

This won't help much, but I'll give my opinion.

Here in Portugal, almost all Masters and PhD thesis are published. Almost all universities have a public repository where the thesis in PDF format eventually end up.

Some of the theses (usually PhD) end up published as a book, in physical format, with an ISBN.
Those are the ones I add to GR, everything else I don't add (but is this case it's easy to make a decision).

I agree that this subject should be 'officially' clarified