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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.

To demonstrate the value of formal process modelling languages for the description of legal constraints and their verification in public and private business processes.

A highly regulated governmental process in Germany – applying for premium rate service numbers at the German Federal Network Agency – is taken as an example to demonstrate that laws and rules define processes for those who want to use them. A novel formal process language is used to verify whether applicants' processes fulfil these constraints or not.

With the presented approach, contradictions between business processes of private organisations and the given laws could precisely be identified.

The results are currently restricted to the use of formal process languages as the one suggested in the paper. It would be helpful to extend the work on conceptual process models.

The paper motivates a process‐oriented analysis of laws and rules. The approach can be used for both, verification after the event and as a normative guideline for the development of new workflows.

This paper identifies a need for formal process definitions as a medium to understand legal constraints and to behave in accordance with them.

This paper aims to examine some of the digitization projects at the library of the University of Jordan. As the library acts as the deposit centre for theses from the Arab world universities, an effective management policy for deposit, management and access is required. The paper illustrates some of the existing workflows and considers the challenges and possible improvements.

Interviews (n = 8) with library staff in the Information Division provided details about the methods used for the collection and management of print and electronic theses in the University of Jordan, in addition to some digitization projects. In addition, very recent unpublished brochure was collected from one member of staff in the computer applications and databases section to learn about theses deposit statistics from various countries in the Arab world. A business process modelling technique (Riva) (Ould, 2005) using role activity diagram illustrated some of the existing workflows, the challenges and possible improvements.

Some Arab universities do not send theses on regular basis; some do not collaborate at all. Workflows vary according to the format of the thesis. The number of digitized print theses has reached 77,885 titles, out of total of 84,043, but it is a slow process. All newly submitted theses from Jordanian universities come in print and on a CD, but other external institutions may use different methods (CD only by mail, or direct uploading to the webpage provided by the University of Jordan). The current online system for uploading theses was last updated in 2017. Deposit rates through the system are very low. Access to theses is relatively limited; print theses can be accessed within the library premises. The online theses repository provides full text and all academic staff; students and researchers can access these from any workstation within the university campus. Only registered users may access theses databases (read only) outside the network. Resourcing for digitization is limited, and the digitization itself is currently outsourced although other processes are done in-house.

The paper encourages the use of a practical online theses’ repository to deposit theses from the higher education within the Arab world.

Establishing theses repository and ensuring proper and smooth deposit process by Arab universities libraries, would enhance communication and collaboration amongst them.

The paper supports the theme of the primacy of global access to information for learning and scholarship. The paper adds value in the context of theses access amongst Arab universities. As the library acts as the deposit centre for theses from the Arab world universities, an effective management policy for deposit, management, access and preservation is required. The paper provides a set of recommendations that would contribute to raise the visibility of research produced by Arab higher education, through a single source of access to theses.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the multi-tiered framework supported by the NDLTD-Taiwan systems to achieve the collaboration and cooperation with universities and colleges in building electronic theses collection in Taiwan.

The paper describes the outcomes of multi-tiered framework, its user roles, tasks, and thesis-specific workflow, as well as the function for simulating user roles.

The framework is the result of supporting both the two-tiered and the three-tiered frameworks on the NDLTD-Taiwan systems platform. The design guidelines emerged out of the outcomes of task analysis.

The multi-tiered design not only accommodates graduation procedures for member universities and colleges, but also supports bibliographic control and collections building.

The paper shows that the multi-tiered design, which emerged out of the existing theses processes of member institutions, is inclusive. The framework allows member universities and colleges to choose an appropriate framework, either two-tiered or three-tiered, for managing their e-theses processes. In addition, role simulation allows the NCL administrator to reproduce problems encountered by the users to help troubleshooting.

The purpose of this paper is to present methods for customized mapping and metadata transfer from DSpace to Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), which aims to improve Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) work flow at libraries using DSpace to store theses and dissertations by automating the process of generating MARC records from Dublin Core (DC) metadata in DSpace and exporting them to OCLC.

This paper discusses how the Shocker Open Access Repository (SOAR) at Wichita State University (WSU) Libraries and ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries harvest theses data from the DSpace platform using the Metadata Harvester in MarcEdit developed by Terry Reese at OSU Libraries. It analyzes certain challenges in transformation of harvested data including handling of authorized data, dealing with data ambiguity and string processing. It addresses how these two institutions customize Library of Congress's XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) mapping to transfer DC metadata to MarcXML metadata and how they export MARC data to OCLC and Voyager.

The customized mapping and data transformation for ETD data can be standardized while also requiring a case‐by‐case analysis. By offering two institutions' experiences, it provides information on the benefits and limitations for those institutions that are interested in using MarcEdit and customized XSLT to transform their ETDs from DSpace to OCLC and Voyager.

The new method described in the paper can eliminate the need for double entry in DSpace and OCLC, meet local needs and significantly improve ETD work flow. It offers perspectives on repurposing and managing metadata in a standard and customizable way.

The paper aims to describe recent moves to establish a UK electronic thesis service. The existing arrangements for access to UK doctoral theses are not seen as ideal or sustainable. A range of stakeholders have come together in recent years to invest in an alternative. The resulting service model is one that is relevant to higher education across the UK and beyond.

The EThOS service model is a partnership between the British Library as the service provider and UK universities, and includes technical, legal, business and operational aspects. It has been achieved by a series of development projects undertaken since 2002, culminating now in the impending transition from prototype to live service.

The EThOS service model includes a range of partnership options to suit the varied requirements of UK higher education institutions. The main ambition of the model is to make electronic theses available open access via a financially viable and sustainable model. The core of the model is a “central hub”, offering discovery, digitisation and preservation functions, working with institutions, in part via their institutional repositories.

It is hoped that most UK higher education institutions will sign up for EThOS and benefit from this shift to both electronic theses and open access. Many have already indicated that they will do so.

The value of the EThOS service is likely to be considerable. Where theses are available open access, their use escalates. EThOS will enable UK theses to be more widely accessed, read, used and cited worldwide. Authors, institutions and the UK all benefit from this.

The paper describes how Charles Darwin University (CDU) used a three-pronged approach to better serve its researchers: it developed a single interface for improved accessibility and discoverability of its research outputs, consolidated its corresponding policies and procedures and implemented training programs to support the new portal. This in turn made its suite of research outputs more openly accessible and better discoverable. The intention was to make CDU research compliant with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) policy statement, affirming the need to make Australia's research more visible, thereby enabling better access, better collaboration locally and internationally and researchers more accountable to their community.

This paper uses case study methodology and a qualitative approach.

CDU Library collaborated with the University’s Research Office in undertaking a series of strategies towards reframing access to its research. The partners migrated their research collections into a single, new, integrated interface; developed new policies and consolidated existing ones; and to this end, rolled out a training and educational program for the research community. The intention of the program was to introduce the Pure repository to new researchers and to train all staff to self archive and curate their own research outputs. This new streamlined approach ensured a more comprehensive and timely availability and accessibility of the University's research outputs.

A single source of truth was established through the migration of iCDU’s research collections, ensuring data quality was maintained. At the start of this project, there were few institutions in Australia using the Pure system, and even fewer using it as their sole repository for displaying research outputs.

Many universities and libraries throughout the world are now making digitized versions of traditional (print) dissertations available online. Some of these institutions have even gone so far as to completely eliminate printed copies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) in Iran and elsewhere.

The paper notes that many theses and dissertations are now sitting on shelves, unread, in our libraries. Electronic publication can make these works accessible to students, researchers, and others who perhaps lack time, search capabilities, or finances. The paper looks at what universities are doing about the problem, and summarizes the current position in Iran university libraries.

A growing realization has emerged among those working on ETDs in Iran that it is critically important that libraries remain not just involved, but centrally positioned in the development of the national information infrastructure.

The paper shows that the future of E‐theses and of archiving and searching in general depends on institutions being able to deliver top quality services, with a high degree of interoperability. This means, among other things, that systems must continue to be developed and they must be able to handle many different types of digital objects.

The paper claims that as we prepare students for scholarship in the twenty‐first century, Iran 1400, for example, it is imperative that librarians consider how to manage these important new forms of writing.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on assessing individuals’ problems in learning groups/teams and should lead to the assessment of the group/team itself as a learning entity.

In this paper, an extension of the IMS-Learning Design (IMS-LD) meta-model is proposed in order to support the assessment of collaborative activities in e-learning. Besides, the software architecture which consists of a set of components forming a web wizard to create, track and assess the collaborative assessment processes is described as to support that extension of the IMS-LD meta-model.

With the proposed solution we can: make assessment fairer using individual and collective assessment indicators to assign final scores to learners; make an assessment step by step for better individual and collective monitoring activities; and divide the assessment into lighter phases for the correctors. Consequently, the evaluator will have more detailed information about his/her students and the quality of judgment will be better. This could also be useful for the evaluator in order to plan further examinations.

Further experimentations are necessary to test the effectiveness of the proposed system in order to analyze its performances under a massive usage. In addition, the authors plan to use a survey to collect learners’ opinions to know the effectiveness of the proposal in terms of fairness in the assessment of collaborative activities in an online community.

This paper addresses important issues in the educational area, especially assessment of collaborative activities. In fact, to reduce subjectivity and increase fairness in assessing learners in collaborative work, for example, using the peer assessment, in order to try reducing subjectivity and fairly assessing learners. However, while assessing group work, the same mark is attributed for all group members and authors have concluded that it is not the right approach to make a fair and more objective assessment.

This paper aims to propose a scheduling technique for parameter sweep workflows, which are used in parametric study and optimization. When executed in multiple parallel instances in the grid environment, it is necessary to address bottleneck and load balancing to achieve an efficient execution.

A bottleneck detection approach is based on commonly known performance metrics of grid resources. To address load balancing, a resource requirement similarity metric is introduced to determine the likelihood of the distribution of tasks across available grid resources, which is referred to as an execution context. The presence of a bottleneck and the execution context are used in the main algorithm, named ABeC, to schedule tasks selectively at run-time to achieve a better overall execution time or makespan.

According to the results of the simulations against four existing algorithms using several scenarios, the proposed technique performs, at least, similarly to the existing four algorithms in most cases and achieves better performance when scheduling workflows have a parallel structure.

The bottleneck detection and the load balancing proposed in this paper require only common resource and task information, rendering it applicable to most workflow systems. The proposed scheduling technique, through such selective behaviour, may help reduce the time required for the execution of multiple instances of a grid workflow that is to be executed in parallel.