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Dear all, I'd like to know what you do when a student request a "provisional" embargo of 3 years on the grounds that [company X] 'is currently studying whether they want to make the PhD thesis confidential and for what period of time. [Such company] indirectly funded some minor parts of [student's] research through the initial funding of the CubeSail mission.' Some things of this request concern me: 1. The company only indirectly funded the doctoral research. 2. The student didn't ask the company before his viva whether the contents of the thesis should be confidential or not. Surely this has an impact on the statement of confidentiality that external supervisors should sign before examining the thesis. 3. The student requests this "provisional" embargo period of 3 years on the basis that someone advised him that it was simpler to reduce this period than to increase it. 4. According to the student " there is a good chance that the company does not really place any restrictions to the thesis". Thus why to bother with such a long embargo? Finally, I think, I should mention that at Surrey we recently move to Electronic Theses Deposit Model and hard-bound copies are no longer required. The Procedure to restrict access to theses was reviewed, and as a consequence the principal supervisor must sign the PhD student's request form to show the supervisory panel's agreement with the PhD student decision. And for this case, the supervisor signed the form. Thus, am I reading too much into the request? Should I just put the embargo and forget about it? Thanks for any comments or advice. Montserrat Dr Maria de Montserrat Rodriguez-Marquez Digital Collections Officer - Open access advisor Surrey Research Insight<http://www.surrey.ac.uk/library/research/sri/>