Analytical study of the ETD repositories and government initiatives for depositing ETDs in India

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) repository creation efforts by various institutions in India and also analyse whether the guidelines issued for depositing ETDs by various government bodies in India are sufficient to implement the ETD submission nationwide.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is the result of the analytical evaluation of the Indian digital repositories especially ETD repositories and the guidelines issued by various government bodies for acceptance of ETDs. To obtain a complete picture of the Indian ETD repositories literature review was conducted, browsed the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), since these do not include all the Indian ETD repositories snowball technique was followed. Many of the sites were inaccessible during the study, they are discussed either on the basis of the earlier accessed record or the available literature.

Findings

Though in India University Grants Commission (UGC, 2005) and other government bodies have issued guidelines for ETD submission and UGC (in 2009) made it mandatory for all the universities to deposit a copy of the thesis submitted, in the National ETD repository, i.e. Shodhganga, yet the universities do not seem very serious about this issue so far. The study of the ETD repositories of most of the Indian universities and higher level institutions reveals that most of them are busy with the government-funded projects of retro-conversion of the PhD theses piled up in their libraries and have not taken sufficient steps for accepting the current ETD and ETD creating facilities for the researchers.

Practical implications

The Indian universities may expedite the process of accepting the current ETDs and plan training and workshops for the researchers, faculty, theses evaluators and librarians to make them aware about their respective responsibilities.

Social implications

The Indian researches will be accessible globally resulting in the acceptability and implementation of the research findings for the society and will help in avoiding duplication of research, which means judicial utilization of the public funds, as mostly the research in India is funded by the government.

Originality/value

The literature survey about the ETDs in Indian libraries revealed that almost every article describes the availability of the ETDs and define the ETDs decoratively. All the existing repositories are not exhaustive and contain only retro theses, which neither anybody has tried to evaluate nor stressed on the need of starting accepting the current ETDs. This paper analyses the available collections in ETD repositories and policy provisions for ETD acceptance and also tries to identify the unclear issue before the Indian universities regarding accepting current ETDs.

Citation

K. Gupta, D. and Gupta, N. (2014), "Analytical study of the ETD repositories and government initiatives for depositing ETDs in India", Library Management, Vol. 35 No. 4/5, pp. 308-319. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-09-2013-0092