Disquisitions

As you look towards graduation, you will likely be focused on completing and defending your disquisition, but you'll also need to prepare your disquisition for publication. As a professional document, your disquisition will be part of your professional portfolio for the rest of your career, and it also needs to meet the high standard of quality set by all previous disquisitions published by NDSU. Therefore, as a penultimate step before graduation, you will need to complete the Graduate School's publication review.

While the outcome of the review is your published disquisition, we also see it as one last opportunity to help you develop and practice a valuable skill: how to produce a professional document. To ensure your success, we maintain a number of resources available for you, including:

Getting Started?

Notice: Policy Changes for the Publication Review

Beginning Spring 2027, all disquisitions will be required to conform to the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. (See also: Digital Accessibility (DQKB))

If you have questions about these policies or how they will affect your publication review, please contact the Disquisition Coordinator.

What is the new policy?

The WCAG Guidelines prescribe a number of requirements for digital content, including PDF structure tags, alt-text for images and equations, table scoping, and color contrast for text. See our DQKB entry on digital accessibility for more information about implementing the WCAG Guidelines in your document.

Why is this policy being adopted?

This policy was introduced in Spring 2026, then subsequently paused for one year pursuant to the IFR issued by the US DOJ. Per this IFR, our digital accessibility requirements for disquisitions published by NDSU will resume Jan 1, 2027.

For more information, see DQKB entry on digital accessibility and the WCAG 2.1 guidelines .

Center for Writers

Email: ndsu.cfw@ndsu.edu Phone: (701) 231-7927 Campus location: Library 16 Contact Page Manager