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The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of ETD (electronic thesis and dissertation) collection development trends to date, with an emphasis on the comparative merits of different national models of digital thesis provision.

A brief historical narrative combined with commentary from the point of view of the library practitioner.

The paper finds that the case for the superior benefits of digital thesis services as opposed to print‐only thesis provision has undoubtedly been made. However, the relative merits of different levels of public versus private sector involvement in the national digital thesis system are open to debate, which means that ETD information systems can be structured very differently from one country to another. The US and UK systems are particularly different from each other and form a focus of discussion.

A rich research area in future will lie in the comparison of the performance of the US and the UK systems. This research should elicit opinions from librarians engaged with thesis provision while also compiling objective evidence about which approach provides the better service to end users and which approach more successfully boosts the knowledge economy of each country.

Evidence cited about the strengths and weaknesses of the two digital thesis systems analysed demonstrates the benefits of open access at the immediate level of library service delivery.

This paper attempts to combine insights into national policy making with straightforward recommendations relevant to everyday library practice.

Many universities require students enrolling in masters programmes to submit a thesis for the completion of the programme, and the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) is no exception. This study investigates and identifies research trends of the MLIS students’ theses for the past nine years at IIUM. The study also investigated features and characteristics of MLIS students’ theses. A total of 20 theses approved from 1994 to 2000, by the university, were analyzed. Findings showed that, information technology (OPAC, CD‐ROM and the Internet) was the most popular research area (50 per cent) among MLIS students. Other areas such as information needs, library management, library use, and publishers/publishing only received one research each, while none of the students explored the history of libraries, cataloguing and classification, indexing and abstracting, cooperation or documentation. On the other hand, a majority of the theses targeted universities or academic libraries, faculty members, job design and reference services, while a small number of the students targeted other areas such as Islamic economy, biomedical scientists, copyright, etc.

The number of universities offering Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) in China has increased to 316 in 15 years. This paper aims to take a closer look at the production patterns of experimental report theses in terms of total number, distribution across universities, supervision model and research content, reflects on the problems and suggests improvements, provides a reference for MTI education in China and beyond.

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the published final theses of experimental reports for the MTI in China between the years 2012 and 2022, the period during which this type of thesis was produced, to identify the production patterns of these theses.

The number of experimental reports published by the nine leading universities accounts for 80% of the total 296 papers. The uneven development is also reflected in the supervision model and research content. Most universities can structure the main content of theses according to the suggestions of the MTI Guidance Training Outline. However, there are still deficiencies in the areas of experimental design, experimental validity, research questions and academic standards.

This paper reflects on the problems of MTI theses of experimental reports. Also, suggestions are made for linking top-level design and university education, for joint progress in faculty development and talent training and for integrating industrial aspects and international visions, to provide a reference for MTI education in China and beyond.

Developing graduate students' academic writing has been a major concern for many scholars over the past few years. Existing literature on the challenges of thesis writing has not focused on master's students in English language teaching (ELT). Data on the challenges have been mainly gathered from the theses and focused on the structure and genre requirements. Few available studies have investigated such challenges through the lens of supervisors in an international context. Knowledge about the factors hindering the thesis writing process of non-native MA students in English from the supervisors' perspectives is scarce. This study attempts to fill these gaps by answering this question: From supervisors' perspectives, what factors hinder the thesis writing process of non-native MA students?

Thirty supervisors from state and private universities across Iran voluntarily participated in this qualitative study. Drawing upon teachers' diaries and semi-structured interviews, the authors identified major factors negatively influencing the thesis work of master's students. Data were transferred into NVivo 10 and analyzed thematically following Colaizzi's method.

The study found that factors constraining students' writing were (1) students' lack of effort, (2) students' lack of a strategy for writing, (3) students' lack of autonomy and (4) students' absence of voice.

The authors discuss the practical implications of these factors for different stakeholders. There is a growing interest in postgraduate students' thesis writing processes. Surprisingly, no research exists on supervisors' perceptions of factors that constrain the thesis writing process of non-native English master's students.

The purpose of this study is to present the academic pattern of project-based studies on the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach in a comparative manner in the context of Turkey.

Focusing on the context of Turkey, a detailed search was conducted at the National Thesis Center of Turkey, and on Google Scholar between November 28 and December 15, 2021, using the keywords “Lean Six Sigma” and “Lean 6 Sigma” in both Turkish and English. As a result of this search, no conference proceedings on the subject were found. However, 25 postgraduate theses and 19 articles were accessed. It was determined that ten of the 19 articles were produced from these theses. It was observed that nine of the 25 postgraduate theses contained conceptual analyses. At this point, it was concluded that the project-based theses conducted in the context of Turkey provided the necessary representation on the subject. Therefore, the 16 postgraduate theses that had been accessed constituted the sample of the study. These 16 theses were subjected to a comprehensive evaluation with the systematic analysis design, with descriptive content analysis being used as the data analysis tool of the research. In this context, the theses were examined using parameters such as type, number, year, university, institute, department, discipline, original language and title of advisor. Other parameters used were purpose, industry, duration, team, results, tools and techniques of the LSS projects mentioned in the theses.

It was determined that the number of postgraduate theses on LSS was low in number, with only one study having been performed at the doctoral level, and most studies having been produced in 2019. In addition, it was observed that the subject had been studied by different universities, institutes, disciplines and departments with the LSS spreading to different academic disciplines. Most of the relevant theses were written in Turkish, and it has been determined that these theses were mostly carried out under the supervision of academicians with the title of assistant professor. It was also found that the purposes of the theses, the tools used throughout the process and the results obtained were per the LSS spirit. On the other hand, it was determined that the duration of the project and the composition of the team members would vary due to the diversity of features that make the internal dynamics of the projects clear.

The research revealed the academic pattern of the project-based studies on the LSS in the Turkish context. The use of systematic review design and descriptive content analysis as data analysis tools in the research is an important initiative. While the uniqueness of the studies carried out on such a practical subject cannot be discussed, the holistic approach of these studies increases the contribution value of the research. At this point, this study is considered to be especially valuable for an understanding of LSS research in country-specific conditions. In this aspect, it is an aim of the aforementioned research to become a resource for researchers and practitioners interested in LSS, with this research providing a basis for making contextual comparisons in the future.

To describe the issues involved in the introduction of mandatory submission of electronic theses at Cranfield University.

Background information on how the availability of e‐theses has developed at Cranfield University is provided along with discussions and advice on issues such as the choice of software, thesis submission workflow and timeframes, particularly in relation to the publication of thesis‐related articles. It also looks at metadata issues as well as both retrieval and usage of electronic theses. Finally it describes how the service has expanded from e‐theses to other types of material and to the development and expansion of an institutional repository for Cranfield.

It is shown that there are a number of issues that will need to be addressed from the points of view of librarians, academic staff and registry staff and that one effective method of managing the process is to set up a working group with all stakeholders in the process. There is a clear need for administrative procedures to be discussed in detail and a recognition that the time involved in changing regulations may be significant.

It is clear that most of the issues that have arisen at Cranfield as outlined in the paper will be mirrored at other institutions that are considering the same changes, and so those institutions looking at the area of e‐thesis submission may gain some useful insights.

This paper provides useful advice on the issues that will arise as institutions go through the process of introducing the mandatory submission of electronic theses.

This article is about the assessment of the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degrees that were developed in the UK in the 1990s. The article is based on a content analysis of the 16 DBA programmes in the UK at the end of 1999. It evaluates the assessment methods found against: the assessment of students’ achievement on traditional Doctor of Philosophy degrees (PhDs); the guidelines on the assessment of DBA candidates produced by the Association of British Business Schools; and the espoused intended learning outcomes of the DBA programmes themselves. The main conclusion is that there is a tension in the assessment methods employed by DBAs through their relationship with the traditional PhD. The tension is captured in the question: should programme developers follow the assessment methods of the “gold standard” PhD or should they use assessment methods that assess the learning outcomes of the DBA that distinguish it from the traditional PhD?

To examine how the synergy of open access and open source have been used at Edinburgh University Library to design and implement an e‐thesis service, and to offer a comfortable theoretical framework to aid others.

The concepts of open access and open source are introduced and compared to show the conceptual relationship between them and the natural partnering of these approaches to information freedom. The development of the open access repository (Edinburgh Research Archive, ERA) and the related open source software (Tapir for DSpace) are then examined as an opportunity for other implementers and developers to gain insight, both technical and non‐technical.

That open access and open source are a natural and forward looking way to develop e‐theses and other research material repositories. The discussion of developing open source and the brief study of the creation of ERA show us that this approach is both warranted and useful.

It shows how institutions can leverage open source technology successfully, and further consideration must be given to this development methodology.

Software and documentation outcomes available for the community have been produced should aid the further research in this area and provide a good starting point for institutions.

We discuss for the first time both the theoretical aspects and the practical considerations surrounding an e‐theses archive which is of value to any group of information professionals considering similar activities.

The purpose of this paper is to report the benefits of scientific communication model of open access (OA) repositories to e-theses. Specifically, the study focusses on the benefits of accessibility, dissemination, visibility and impact of PhD e-theses deposited in repositories.

The study analysed a random sample of 125 PhD e-theses deposited in an OA repository, specifically in the institutional repository (IR) of the University of Salamanca (Gredos). It tracked the sample for analysing on one side the visits and downloads of the e-theses, whose data are obtained from the statistics module of the repository, and on the other side the data citation provided by Google Scholar Citation on these e-theses. To analyse the differences between the indicators (visits, downloads and citations) in different knowledge areas, the Kurskall-Wallis test has been used.

The results indicate that OA IRs become an advantageous channel of scientific communication to grey literature like dissertations and PhD theses, because it increases visibility and use and also produces a significant citation rate.

The paper uses metrics that are used in IR to measure the visibility and impact of a type of grey literature that is very difficult to track because it is unpublished. The dissemination of the grey literature through OA repositories makes it possible. The value of the work lies in the empirical evidence obtained from the analysed PhD e-theses of Gredos repository.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the postgraduate disciplinary trends in architecture in Jordan. It highlights current research topics in master theses of architecture programs, to enhance the selection of postgraduate thesis topics that are more responsive and adaptive to the raised research demands of communities and the profession.

The paper analyzed 254 master's theses published from 2009 to 2019 in three Jordanian universities. The paper employed a descriptive and content analysis for theses' titles and abstracts.

The principal results identify unique geographical, temporal and disciplinary trends in the mapped theses. The findings illustrate an interest in disciplines of design studies, building technology, housing and community and urban design among postgraduate students. The findings also highlight a centralization of theses' number and geographical location within Amman governorate. Many theses also focused on residential spaces as a scale of analysis.

The proposed suggestions include collaborative efforts and practical mechanisms by higher education institutions, practitioners and decision-makers for advancing rigorous, diverse and relevant research topics in postgraduate theses.

The paper provides a comprehensive mapping of the topics of postgraduate theses in the field of architecture. It highlights how they have evolved or have been influenced by community needs. It also draws attention toward specific disciplines that have been the focus of major architectural programs in Jordan. Finally, it highlights the coexistence of interdisciplinarity within the field of architecture.