Search results

Electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) symposium is one of the major international activities of Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), and its objectives provide a platform for the exchange of knowledge and skills relevant to ETD students, professors and information professionals. This symposium offers an opportunity to put forward innovative plans, debate on ideas and promote closer cooperation internationally. This report is a summary of selected events held during ETD international symposium 2016 on the theme “Data and Dissertations”, with a focus on the handling of research data.

It is a concise review of selected presentations during 19th electronic theses and dissertation annual symposium in University of Lille, France.

ETD 2016 meeting held in Lille was attended by nearly 100 attendees from 28 countries. This report includes a summary of selected presentations on research data, open-access and embargo policies, augmented ETDs and French system for ETDs. It is useful to managers of organizations, teachers and educators, librarians, open-access protagonists and members of information provider communities. The personal interaction with the participants from different countries enriched the author’s ideas about the ETD development.

The author, who was also a speaker, provides an overview of the selected presentations on the initiatives, namely, research data development, copyright laws, augmented digital theses, plagiarism, etc. The important events such as sight-seeing tours to a national museum, informal get-together are covered which may be useful to the audience who are not able to attend but interested to know about ETD 2016.

Print theses and dissertations have regularly been submitted together with complementary material, such as maps, tables, speech samples, photos or videos, in various formats and on different supports. In the digital environment of open repositories and open data, these research results could become a rich source of research results and data sets, for reuse and other exploitation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

After introducing electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) into the context of eScience, the paper investigates some aspects that impact the availability and openness of data sets and other supplemental files related to ETD (system architecture, metadata and data retrieval, legal aspects).

These items are part of the so-called “small data” of eScience, with a wide range of contents and formats. Their heterogeneity and their link to ETD need specific approaches to data curation and management, with specific metadata and identifiers and with specific services, workflows and systems. One size may not fit for all but it seems appropriate to separate text and data files. Regarding copyright and licensing, data sets must be evaluated carefully but should not be processed and disseminated under the same conditions as the related PhD theses. Some examples are presented.

The paper concludes with recommendations for further investigation and development to foster open access to research results produced along with PhD theses.

ETDs are an important part of the content of open repositories. Yet, their potential as a gateway to underlying research results has not really been explored so far.

Implementing and maintaining Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) program at a national level encounters numerous difficulties in particular from technical, legal, business, and financial perspective. Business model (BM) is a tool to help to address business-driven challenges, such as business feasibility and viability, as one of the important aspects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the BM practiced by different national Electronic Theses and Dissertations (NETDs) cases.

BM of seven NETDs programs have been studied through an online questionnaire; besides, programs’ websites were observed and related documents were examined. Business model canvas (BMC) was used to describe the business rationale behind the selected cases.

Most of the NETDs programs lack a documented BM. The main value of these programs is sharing ETDs which is offered to academics through online channels; skillful staff and proper hardware/software are their main resources to do so. Furthermore, their key activities are developing hardware/software and negotiating with ETDs owners as their key partners. All these activities required huge cost which is generally covered by public funding.

This study pioneers in applying BM concept into field of NETDs. Therefore, the major contribution of this study is to provide an analysis of NETDs programs’ BM through BMC. Furthermore, the paper provides recommendations on how ETDs could be implemented in a cost effective, sustainable, and viable way.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from research that explored the influence of contextual factors on the adoption and development of Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) programmes in the Arab Gulf States.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of five groups of stakeholders with an interest in the implementation of ETD programmes. The groups were postgraduate students, academic staff, library managers, system administrators, and postgraduate officers from five Gulf States universities. In addition, an online survey was conducted with 309 participants in order to test and explore, in a larger sample, the issues identified in the interviews.

Research participants identified three levels of factors; contextual, institutional, and personal. In addition, they highlighted that contextual factors have an influence on institutional factors. These contextual factors include misunderstanding of plagiarism, strong economy, recencey of research programmes, and younger societies. For example, due to the recencey of postgraduate programmes in the Arab Gulf States, some of the theses and dissertations are low in quality and quantity. The Arab Gulf States have strong economies and this helped to provide the necessary technological infrastructure needed for adopting ETD programmes. Since the Gulf societies are quite young they are more likely to adopt new technologies. In addition, people at these states appear to have a weak understanding of plagiarism issues and thus they have more concerns about these issues.

This paper provides insights about the factors influencing the adoption and development of ETD programmes in the Arab Gulf States.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss issues associated with open access (OA) to electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) and to describe the University of Waterloo E‐thesis Project and its partnerships with Theses Canada and the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.

UW E‐thesis Project decisions on issues associated with electronic submission and OA are presented. Partnerships with Theses Canada and the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations are described and the goals and activities of these organizations are outlined.

Author‐created metadata form the UW E‐theses searchable database of records that link to theses in full text. The metadata are OAI compliant and are harvested by Theses Canada and the ETD Union Catalog. The E‐theses Project supports authors' rights while minimizing access restrictions and encourages innovations while respecting the value of gradually evolving thesis standards and traditions. The success of the UW E‐thesis Project illustrates that progress can be made toward the OA paradigm for theses and dissertations while upholding perennial values. Collaborations with like‐minded organizations support and advance these goals.

Academic librarians and graduate studies officers will find this e‐thesis project description and this discussion of issues relevant to planning and maintaining electronic thesis submission and access systems at their own universities. The descriptions of the benefits of the partnerships may prompt readers to make similar connections themselves.

While distribution channels of theses and dissertations have changed significantly in the digital age, they are generally still considered grey literature. This paper aims to argue the applicability of the concept of grey to electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).

The paper is presented as a debate between two contradictory opinions on the application of the grey literature concept to ETDs.

The paper provides a definition of grey literature and then discusses its application to electronic dissertations and theses. In particular, it assesses the aspects of acquisition, quality, access and preservation. Some arguments highlight the “grey nature” of ETDs, such as the limited access via institutional and other repositories. Other arguments (e.g. the development of ETD infrastructures and the quality of ETDs) question this grey approach to ETDs. The paper concludes that “greyness” remains a challenge for ETDs, a problem waiting for solution on the way to open science through the application of the FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability reusability) principles.

Library and information science (LIS) professionals and scientists should be careful about using the concept of grey literature. The debate will help academic librarians and LIS researchers to better understand the nature of grey literature and its coverage, here in the field of ETDs.

Some definitions from the print age may not be applicable to the digital age. The contradictory character of the debate helps clarify the similitudes and differences of grey literature and ETDs and highlights the challenge of ETDs, in particular, their accessibility and findability.

This paper aims to describe work at Kent State University Libraries and Media Services to promote and devise electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) storage at OhioLINK's ETD Center, to find efficient methods to represent these unique scholarly materials within the library's catalog, and to foster the establishment of state‐wide library catalog standards for ETDs.

A semi‐automated process has been devised that extracts student‐supplied metadata already available in the OhioLINK ETD Center to provide almost instantaneous access to unique resources through the library catalog. A Perl program uses the OAI‐PMH protocol to extract metadata, modifies and enhances the data, and inserts it into the Innovative Interfaces, Inc. catalog. Significant effort was made to map the data from ETD‐MS to MARC. Catalogers retrieve records for completion and contribute full bibliographic records to OCLC WorldCat in addition to the local and consortium catalogs.

The process successfully produces a provisional bibliographic record that is useful immediately for resource discovery and that can serve as the basis for full cataloging.

This research provides libraries with a method they can adapt locally to provide provisional level access, full level access, or both, to unique scholarly research.

This research broke new ground regarding the use of a software agent to repurpose metadata in library catalogs. It also impacted national cataloging standards for ETDs.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) as important and unique collections that facilitate open access.

The paper presents a brief introduction of the importance of ETD as materials for open access. This is with emphasis on the Kenya Information Preservation Society (KIPS) project which has, since 1993, been digitizing theses from a number of participating institutions across the country. This paper relies heavily on literature derived from existing documentation, online searches and website exploration, and the KIPS's union list of theses and dissertations CD‐ROM. A number of contracted employees (scanning and input) were also interviewed in order to provide statistics about the contributing institutions. Findings – The paper finds that the necessity of showcasing the intellectual research of higher education institutions within Kenya is reason enough to justify making the move towards creating electronic thesis services. The benefits making ETD available outweighs that of print‐only thesis provision due to the potential for enormous dissemination and open access. Research limitations/implications –ETD is a renowned research area for consideration. Librarians should be engaged in digitization of electronic collections that will provide desirable services to end users. Such approaches boost the knowledge economy of any country.

Evidence cited from the strengths of KIPS indicates that its major objective was to compile a national comprehensive database of research on Kenya, and by Kenyans. From available statistics, theses undertaken at postgraduate university levels meet the needs of Kenyan scholars. Originality/value – This paper attempts to give insights for emulating the ETD initiative by KIPS as a way to showcase the unique materials of open access, thereby making them relevant for the modern day library.

Institutional repositories constitute an integral part of present day digital libraries allowing global access to scholarly publications and provides an opportunity for future research enhancement and long term preservation of information. Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) represent a growing segment of available content in institutional repositories where they contribute to the impact and ranking of their institutions. The present study traces the growth and development of online e-theses repositories in Asia within the broader framework of open access.

The present study tries to discover the composition of ETD repositories in Asia based on the seven key parameters, i.e. country, types, language, disciplines, software, content types and repository policies. To achieve the stated objectives, the ETD repositories developed by Asian countries were identified by selecting the database of OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) and the retrieved data were thoroughly analyzed for the necessary information.

Theses and dissertations are considered an important part of information resources in any institution. They are often the only source of research work. Unfortunately, access to these valuable unpublished resources is often restricted to parent institution only. The authors found that ETD repositories are addressing this problem by making institutional knowledge available online and thereby not only increasing its visibility and use, but also making them contribute to the impact and ranking of their institutions. Asian countries are beginning to embrace the idea of digitizing, archiving and making their theses and dissertations available online. The study found that more than half of all IRs listed in the directory of OpenDOAR contain ETDs. ETD system is growing fast in some Asian countries. However, the number of universities having e-theses repositories is meager considering the large number of quality academic and research institutions across Asian countries.

The paper argues that ETD repositories not only benefit students and institutions by enhancing education and expanding research, but also by increasing a university’s visibility and use and thereby contributing to the impact and ranking of its parent institutions.

The study hopes to heighten awareness of research being conducted in Asia and its contribution to a global knowledge base. Some of the suggestions to improve the existing conditions and strengthen the growth rate of ETDs in Asia are also presented.

This study aims to determine the technical requirements for copyright protection of theses and dissertations for proposing a model for applying in Iran’s National System for Theses and Dissertations (INSTD).

This study used a mixed research methodology. The grounded theory was used in the qualitative phase, and a researcher-made checklist was applied in the quantitative phase for surveying the status of the INSTD. Research population included INSTD as well as six information specialists and copyright experts. Data were analysed by using open, axial and selective coding.

Based on data extracted from the completed checklists, some technical requirements had been provided in the system. The technical requirements that interviewees pointed out included the following two main classes: technical components and technical-software infrastructures, explored in the phase of the grounded theory. The individual categories included access control, copy control, technical-software challenges, protecting standards, hypertext transfer protocol secure, certificate authority, documentation of thesis and dissertation information, the use of digital object identifiers, copy detection systems, thesis and dissertation integrated systems, digital rights management systems and electronic copyright management systems.

Considering the subject of this study, only the technical aspect was investigated, and other aspects were not included. In addition, electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) providers were not well aware of copyright issues.

Using the technical requirements with high security is effective in the INSTD to gain the trust of the authors and encourage them to deposit their ETDs.

The increased use of the system encourages the authors to be more innovative in conducting their research.

Considering the continued violation of copyright in electronic databases, applying technical requirements for copyright protection and regulating users’ access to the information of theses and dissertations are needed in the INSTD.