http://unllib.unl.edu/LPP/

Library Philosophy and Practice 2012

ISSN 1522-0222

Status of E-Theses Repositories with Special Reference to India

Miss Shantashree Sengupta
Librarian & Head, Department of Library & Information Science
C.T.Bora College, Shirur, District
Pune, Maharashtra, India

Introduction

In the past, researchers were not able to access all the scholarly literature published across the world due to lack of proper communication technologies. With the advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), this problem is solved to a major extent and the results of the research going throughout the world is made available to the public without any restriction. The researchers adopted Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2002 and with the help of Open Access (OA) made the research literature available to the world wide user community.

The Open Access Movement

In the last few years, the Open Access movement has gained a lot of importance and popularity among the academic and scientific institutions.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) defines Open Access as 'free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute and/or print, with the possibility to search or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."

Institutional Repositories (IR)

Purpose

Higher education institutions all over the world are experiencing the necessity of managing their education, research and resources in a more effective way. Alma Swan lists the following benefits that repositories bring to institutions-

1. Opens up the outputs of the university to the world

2. Maximises the visibility and impact of these outputs as a result

3. Showcases the university to interested constituencies – prospective staff, prospective students and other stakeholders

4. Collects and curates digital outputs

5. Manages and measures research and teaching activities

6. Provides a workspace for work-in-progress, and for collaborative or large-scale projects

7. Enables and encourages interdisciplinary approaches to research

8. Facilitates the development and sharing of digital teaching materials and aids

9. Supports student endeavours, providing access to theses and dissertations and a location for the development of e-portfolios

What is an Institutional Repository?

According to the Online Dictionary for Library & Information Science (ODLIS) Institutional Repository is "A set of services offered by a university or group of universities to members of its community for the management and dissemination of scholarly materials in digital format created by the institution and its community members, such as e-prints, technical reports, theses and dissertations, data sets, and teaching materials. Stewardship of such materials entails their organization in a cumulative, openly accessible database and a commitment to long-term preservation when appropriate. Some IRs are also used as electronic presses to publish e-journals and e-books. An institutional repository is distinguished from a subject-based repository by its institutionally defined scope. IRs are part of a growing effort to reform scholarly communication and break the monopoly of journal publishers by reasserting institutional control over the results of scholarship. An IR may also serve as an indicator of the scope and extent of the university's research activities."

The Harrod's Librarians Glossary and Reference Book (10^th Ed.) explains Repository as "A network- accessible server used as a store for digital content, e.g. in self-archiving or for an Eprint archive, and which can disseminate those contents by exposing metadata to harvesters such as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Where the server holds the eprints for a whole university or similar institution, the phrase institutional repository is frequently used."

How Many IRs Are There and Where Can They Be Found?

At the time of data collection, more than 2,600 repositories are found listed in Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR: http://roar.eprints.org) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR: http://opendoar.org).

Software used for constructing IRs

A variety of software are used for constructing IR like DSpace, EPrints, Fedora, ARNO, DoKS, Greenstone, HAL, ETD-db, Bepress, DIGIBIB, EDOC, DiVA, OPUS (Open Publications System), MyCoRe, PMB Services, Keystone DLS etc. Out of this, more than 1000 IRs are using DSpace, next to it is EPrints (more than 400 IRs are using it).

What Do Institutional Repositories Contain?

1. Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings

2. Research data

3. Monographs and books

4. Other content types-theses, dissertations and other research related outputs such as demonstrations, learning and teaching objects

5. Institutional or departmental research

6. Databases

Theses and dissertations are known to be the rich and unique source of information, often the only source for research work that does not find its way into various publication channels. Due to the various benefits of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), they are gaining importance over their traditional formats.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

History of ETD activities

The first planning for ETDs started at a meeting in 1987 between UMI, Virginia Tech, Arbor Text, SoftQuad and University of Michigan. Participants discussed the latest approaches to electronic publishing and whether or not they could be applied to the preparation of dissertations.

In 1996, the United States funded a three year effort to spread the concept of ETDs around the US. A pilot project at Virginia Tech led to a mandatory requirement for post 1997 theses and dissertations to be submitted only electronically. The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) was formed and first ETD Conference was held in 1998. By 2000, the ETD movement had spread internationally to include thousands of university members.

Definition

The Online Dictionary for Library & Information Science (ODLIS) defines Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) as "The Master's theses and Ph.D. dissertations submitted in digital form rather than in print on paper, as opposed to those submitted in hard copy and subsequently converted to machine-readable format, usually by

Benefits of electronic submission and archiving of theses and dissertations include

1. The results of research presented in theses and dissertations are more accessible to scholars all over the world via the World Wide Web.

2. The message of a theses or dissertation may be better conveyed electronically than in a paper document. Advanced software programs can be introduced by like allowing color diagrams and images, hyperlinks, audios, animations, videos, spreadsheets, databases etc. into an electronic document.

3. The university is able to fulfill its responsibilities of recording and archiving theses and dissertations and save money. Also, ETDs reduce the need for library storage space.

4. The researcher can save on printing and copying costs through electronic publishing and information exchange.

How are ETDs created?

ETDs may be prepared using any word processor or document preparation system and may include multimedia objects. Some universities began their ETD by instituting and electronic copy requirement along with the paper version during submission of the theses or dissertation. The theses or dissertation are submitted as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file.

Of the various Open Access software available like DSpace, Eprints, Fedora etc., DSpace software has the broadest application in terms of being able to handle any educational material in digital format such as lecture notes, visualizations, simulations, graphics, datasets, images, thereby enabling users to make full use of the repository.

Whatever software a repository chooses, all adhere to standards of interoperability and metadata harvesting laid down in 1999 at the Santa Fe convention as the Open Archives Initiative. Today the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is an interoperability framework based on HTTP which facilitates the transfer of metadata among networked systems.

Interoperability requires repositories to use standardized metadata tags such as SGML/XML and other mark up languages that assign unique identifiers to identify items within a repository.

Methodology for Data Collection

The information on E-Theses repositories in World was mainly collected from the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). At the time of data collection, there were 245 E-theses repositories across the world with 25 of them from India. Other than these 25 Indian E-theses repositories, there might be some more but since they are not yet registered under ROAR or OpenDOAR, they are not included for the present study.

Data Collection

Global Status

There are 247 E-theses repositories across the world related to various disciplines. (Appendix 1). The most recent one recorded in ROAR is Bienvenue sur le dépôt institutionnel, recorded on 5^th December 2011. The oldest one is prior to 1993. Increase in the number of E-theses repositories is seen after the BOAI in 2002, with the maximum being recorded in 2010. (Fig.1)

Fig 1: Growth of records per year from 1990 to 2011 retrieved from ROAR

Maximum number of E-theses repositories has been recorded by the USA (more than 30). D-Space software is used by more than 45 Institutes for creating E-theses repository.

Scenario in India

From the ROAR and OpenDOAR directories, the researcher found that 25 E-theses repositories are in India. The oldest E-theses repository registered in ROAR is ETD@IISc in 2005.

In 2007, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) in India recommended development of web based common open resources and encouraged open access for all material research papers, books, periodicals etc. The NKC Libraries Brochure recommended setting up of a National Repository of Bibliographic Records and a centralized collaborative virtual enquiry handling system using the latest ICT. Peer-reviewed research papers resulting from publicly funded research should also be made available through open access channels, subject to copyright regulations. It also recommended that all academic institutions must set up institutional repositories of ETD. This should be made mandatory for accreditation and such repositories should offer open access. All public academic and research institutes should be encouraged to set up freely accessible institutional repositories of their full-text articles and publications subject to copyright restrictions.

The UGC Notification (Minimum Standards & Procedure for Award of M.Phil./ Ph.D Degree, Regulation, 2009) dated 1st June 2009 provides for submission of electronic version of theses and dissertations with an aim to facilitate open access to Indian theses and dissertation to the academic community world-wide. Online availability of electronic theses through centrally-maintained digital repositories will not only ensure easy access and archiving of Indian doctoral theses but will also help in raising the standard and quality of research.

All these events have significantly contributed for establishment of E-theses repositories and OA movement in India.

It was found that DSpace is the most popularly used repository software followed by EPrints and other software like Nitya. Majority of the E-theses repositories were dedicated to science and technology. DRTC's Librarians' Digital Library covers only Library & Information Science. Along with ETDs, these repositories also contain articles, conference proceedings, books, patents, multimedia objects etc.

However, at the time of research, some of the URLs were not working properly or had shifted their base like National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India (http://dspace.ncl.res.in/) and DSpace @ GGSIPU. The subject-wise analysis of the Indian E-theses repositories is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Subject-wise Analysis of E-theses Repositories in India

Conclusion

The present paper has attempted to overview the current status of E-theses repositories in the world with special reference to India. Out of the various types of institutional repositories, E-theses repositories help in enhancing education and research. Even in the absence of any National Open Access policy in India on the lines of National Institute of Health (NIH) Policy of the United States, various institutions, academies and scholars are making their research output open access. The ETD repositories should be properly updated and maintained in order to showcase the current research work done.

However, key issues such as Intellectual Property Rights and Plagiarism need to be discussed globally to stop misuse of the scholarly literature available through open access.

References

Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002). Available: http://www.soros.org/openaccess  

Electronic theses and dissertations. Available: http://etd.byu.edu

ETD Guide: Introduction: History of ETD activities. Available:
http://curric.dlib.vt.edu/wiki/index.php?title=ETD_Guide:Introduction_-_History_of_ETD_Activities.

Guidelines for the creation of institutional repositories at universities and higher education institutions. Available: www.sisbi.uba.ar/institucional/proyectos/internacionales/Guidelines_IR_english.pdf 

 Gutam, S. (2010). Status of open access repositories in India. Available:
http://works.bepress.com/sridhar_gutam/8

Lynch, C.A. (20030. Institutional repositories: Essential infrastructure for scholarship in
the digital age. ARL 226 (February): 1-7. Available: http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml 

National Knowledge Commission libraries brochure. Available:
http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/NKC_Library.pdf  

OpenDOAR (2011). The directory of open access repositories. Available:
http://www.opendoar.org/

ODLIS: Online dictionary for library & information science. Available:
www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_A.aspx

Prytherch, R. (Comp.) (2005). Harrod's librarians' glossary and reference book.
10th ed. (pp. 594). England: Ashgate.

ROAR (2011). the registry of open access repositories. Available: http://roar.eprints.org/ .

Shodhganga: A reservoir of Indian theses (2011). Available:
http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/moredetails/about.html

Swan, A. (2009). Open access institutional repositories: A briefing paper. Available:
http://www.openscholarship.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2009-01/open_access_institutional_repositories.pdf

Yiotis, K. (2008). Electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) repositories: What are they? Where do they come from? How do they work? OCLC Systems & Services, 24: 101-115. doi: 10.1108/10650750810875458

Appendix 1: List of E-Theses Repositories in the World