what to do with my thesis

probably not exactly the correct forum/section, but I'm hoping we have a few feminist scholars around here who might have an advice or two for me.

just finished my thesis, and about to graduate. thesis is about women's sexuality (hence the post here). what do I do with it now? I will submit it (shortened) to journals later on, but first, I'd like to publish it on the web for others to see/search thru/use, but how do I publish it? as a pdf (or text?) in a free web server (geocities -I used to use it in 90s :P)? or is there an online service which doesn't steal the copyright from me while letting me publish online whatever scholarly work I wanna publish?

any advice very much welcome -thanks :)

PS. 140+ pages, 5.5MB as a pdf (have no idea why it's so huge), in case these specs might influence the advice...

You may want to publish it under a Creative Commons license to retain your copyright. For hosting check out archive.org, which will let you host anything you've created under a CC license.

Are you a student? If yes, we could talk about you hosting your thesis for free at my host. I haven't got any clients yet. Probably, because I do not do any advertising and search-engine optimisation.

Anyway, I could probably give you some webspace for free, if your thesis is all you need online. Just contact me through the link in my signature. I was thinking anyway of giving away webspace for free for students, as long as they are students. But will only do this in special cases. But anyway, email me if you need webspace. Maybe people could even share an account for porpouses like this.

I'm also open to new ideas. :-D

You may want to publish it under a Creative Commons license to retain your copyright. For hosting check out archive.org, which will let you host anything you've created under a CC license. Thanks, cc was a very good advice. I'm looking at both cc and archive now. thanks geek.de.nz, but 23meg's advice seems more attractive (and more familiar) :)

In a side question, could one publish text works under gnu? what would be the difference (not being a lawyer is hard sometimes....)?

The GPL is a software license and isn't suited to written work; the GNU Free Documentation License comes close, but it's intended for manuals and other computer related technical text. There may be other common licenses out there but if you're not sure what to choose, it's most probably best to stick with CC.

See this page for more info on GNU licenses.