diff --git a/src/main/config/run.properties.example b/src/main/config/run.properties.example
index cb0060a..f94ed5c 100644
--- a/src/main/config/run.properties.example
+++ b/src/main/config/run.properties.example
@@ -2,7 +2,8 @@
 # are marked with '!'
 
 directory      = ${HOME}/data/search
-commitSeconds  = 5
+# A value of 0 will disable automatic commits and rely on icat.server to explicitly call commit after creating new documents
+commitSeconds  = 0
 # Lucene limits the max number of documents in an index to Integer.MAX_VALUE - 128
 maxShardSize   = 2147483519
 ip             = 127.0.0.1/32
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/icatproject/lucene/Lucene.java b/src/main/java/org/icatproject/lucene/Lucene.java
index 12a9f93..1068fa0 100755
--- a/src/main/java/org/icatproject/lucene/Lucene.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/icatproject/lucene/Lucene.java
@@ -1041,7 +1041,7 @@ private void init() {
 				throw new Exception(luceneDirectory + " is not a directory");
 			}
 
-			commitSeconds = props.getPositiveInt("commitSeconds");
+			commitSeconds = props.getNonNegativeInt("commitSeconds");
 			luceneCommitMillis = commitSeconds * 1000;
 			luceneMaxShardSize = Math.min(props.getPositiveLong("maxShardSize"), Long.valueOf(Integer.MAX_VALUE - 128));
 			maxSearchTimeSeconds = props.has("maxSearchTimeSeconds") ? props.getPositiveLong("maxSearchTimeSeconds")
@@ -1072,8 +1072,10 @@ private void init() {
 	 * Starts a timer and schedules regular commits of the IndexWriter.
 	 */
 	private void initTimer() {
-		timer = new Timer("LuceneCommitTimer");
-		timer.schedule(new CommitTimerTask(), luceneCommitMillis, luceneCommitMillis);
+		if (luceneCommitMillis > 0) {
+			timer = new Timer("LuceneCommitTimer");
+			timer.schedule(new CommitTimerTask(), luceneCommitMillis, luceneCommitMillis);
+		}
 	}
 
 	class CommitTimerTask extends TimerTask {
diff --git a/src/main/resources/run.properties b/src/main/resources/run.properties
index f1266ab..a907b42 100644
--- a/src/main/resources/run.properties
+++ b/src/main/resources/run.properties
@@ -2,7 +2,8 @@
 # are marked with '!'
 
 directory      = ${HOME}/data/search
-commitSeconds  = 5
+# A value of 0 will disable automatic commits and rely on icat.server to explicitly call commit after creating new documents
+commitSeconds  = 0
 maxShardSize   = 2147483519
 ip             = 127.0.0.1/32
 # A search taking longer than this will be cancelled to avoid blocking other users' searches
diff --git a/src/site/xhtml/installation.xhtml.vm b/src/site/xhtml/installation.xhtml.vm
index 8d997f0..171b7cb 100644
--- a/src/site/xhtml/installation.xhtml.vm
+++ b/src/site/xhtml/installation.xhtml.vm
@@ -54,7 +54,9 @@
 
 		<dt>commitSeconds</dt>
 		<dd>the interval in seconds between committing lucene changes to
-			disk and updating the index.</dd>
+			disk and updating the index. Automatic commits can be disabled by setting to
+			0, in which case icat.server will need to explicitly commit after creating a
+			batch of documents.</dd>
 
 		<dt>maxShardSize</dt>
 		<dd>The maximum number of documents to store in a single index before "sharding"