Category: Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

“Streamlining Electronic Theses and Dissertations Processing Procedures at the University of Alabama Libraries”


This article provides a brief history of the ETD processing procedures at The University of Alabama from 2010 to 2021, a detailed description of the revised workflow, and a discussion of the improvements made. The workflow utilizes Python scripts and MarcEdit mapping and task files. All scripts and files are available in a GitHub repository for anyone to use and modify at https://github.com/bpclark2/UA_ETD.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2025.2467571

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| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
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| Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "From Stacks to Screens: Improving Access to Theses and Dissertations with Digitization and Automation"


The purpose of this case study is to share reproducible workflows for digitization, enhanced with automation, that can be adopted by other institutions who aim to increase accessibility and discoverability of their unique institutional research. Few studies have shared their workflows in a detailed, transparent way that can be reproduced by others who are interested in taking on digitization projects to improve access and discoverability via an institutional repository.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2023.2226433

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"Analyzing and Navigating Electronic Theses and Dissertations"


This research is aimed at building tools and techniques for discovering and accessing the knowledge buried in ETDs, as well as to support end-user services for digital libraries, such as document browsing and long document navigation. First, we review several machine learning models that can be used to support such services. Next, to support a comprehensive evaluation of different models, as well as to train models that are tailored to the ETD data, we introduce several new datasets from the ETD domain. To minimize the resources required to develop high quality training datasets required for supervised training, a novel AI-aided annotation method is also discussed. Finally, we propose techniques and frameworks to support the various digital library services such as search, browsing, and recommendation.

https://tinyurl.com/33ay562h

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| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"The Status of Open Access Repositories in the Field of Technology: Insights from OpenDOAR"


The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was "research articles" and "electronic thesis and dissertations."

https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-11-2022-0119

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"The State of the Field: An Excerpt From the 2023 Library Publishing Directory"


The most common material types reported in 2023 were journals (89%), conference papers and proceedings (80%), theses and dissertations (75%), educational resources (66%), and monographs (60%). Under half of respondents (46%) reported publishing datasets. Other material types reported include gray literature, newsletters, multimedia, expansive digital publications, and databases. . . . Over 80% of respondents provide copyright support and DOI assignment. Over half provide metadata services (71%), author advisory services (66%), training (66%), ISSN registry (64%), hosting of supplemental content (60%), cataloging (56%), and analytics (55%). The decline in the number of library publishers providing digitization services holds steady with 49% of respondents in 2023 identifying it as one of their services.

https://tinyurl.com/yhwp4pph

Access the entire directory.

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 7

The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 7 includes over 150 selected English-language articles and books that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations. Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2020; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography has links to included works. Where possible, it uses Digital Object Identifier System (DOI) URLs. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work.

Digital Scholarship has also published the following works this year:

  • Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography: This selective bibliography includes over 175 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the digital scholarly publishing activities of academic libraries since the late 1980’s, especially their open access book and journal publishing activities. The bibliography covers the following subtopics: pioneering academic library publishing projects in the 1980’s and 1990’s, early digital journals and serials published by librarians (as distinct from libraries), library-based scholarly publishing since the Budapest Open Access Initiative, technical publishing infrastructure, and library and university press mergers/partnerships and other relevant works.
  • Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography: This selective bibliography includes over 800 selected English-language articles and books that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions. It is available as an open access 250-page PDF file and an open access website. It covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, provenance, repositories, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, open access, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation. Most sources were published from 2009 through 2019.

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    "Electronic Theses and Dissertations Workflows: Interdepartmental Collaboration at the University of Arkansas Libraries"

    Rachel Paul and Cedar C. Middleton have published "Electronic Theses and Dissertations Workflows: Interdepartmental Collaboration at the University of Arkansas Libraries" in Collaborative Librarianship.

    Here's an excerpt:

    This paper describes and evaluates the redesign of an interdepartmental workflow for the dissemination of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) at a mid-sized academic library. The paper outlines the collaborative planning process within the library as well as the eventual outreach to additional stakeholders on campus, addressing the challenges of tackling such communication between the library and other ETD stakeholders

    Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual"

    Jill Cirasella and Polly Thistlethwaite have self-archived "Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual. "

    Here's an excerpt:

    Now that dissertations are deposited and distributed electronically, students must perform yet another anxiety-inducing task: deciding whether they want to make their dissertations immediately open access (OA) or, at universities that require OA, coming to terms with openness. For some students, mostly in the humanities and some of the social sciences, who hope to transform their dissertations into books, OA has become a bogeyman, a supposed saboteur of book contracts and destroyer of careers.

    Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "ETDs in the 21st Century"

    Gail McMillan has published "ETDs in the 21st Century" in EDUCAUSE Review.

    Here's an excerpt:

    Electronic theses/dissertations (ETDs) have been required at higher education institutions for twenty years. Although numerous goals have been realized, the majority of ETDs have not been transformed into new media.

    Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2105, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories"

    Anna Marie Johnson et al. have published "Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2105, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

    Here's an excerpt:

    Only a small percentage of books published as dissertations were found in ProQuest and then subsequently in IRs. The number of libraries holding book titles with corresponding dissertations in IRs dropped between 2014 and 2015.

    Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    ETD+ Toolkit

    The Educopia Institute’ has released the ETD+ Toolkit .

    Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

    The ETD+ Toolkit provides free introductory training resources on crucial data curation and digital longevity techniques. It has been designed as a training series to help students and faculty identify and offset risks and threats to their digital research footprints.

    Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual"

    Jill Cirasella and Polly Thistlethwaite have self-archived "Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual."

    Here's an excerpt:

    Now that dissertations are deposited and distributed electronically, students must perform yet another anxiety-inducing task: deciding whether they want to make their dissertations immediately open access (OA) or, at universities that require OA, coming to terms with openness. For some students, mostly in the humanities and some of the social sciences, who hope to transform their dissertations into books, OA has become a bogeyman, a supposed saboteur of book contracts and destroyer of careers.

    This chapter examines the various access-related anxieties that plague graduate students. It is a kind of diagnostic and statistical manual of dissertation anxieties—a "Dissertation Anxiety Manual," if you will—describing anxieties surrounding book contracts, book sales, plagiarism, juvenilia, the ambiguity of the term online, and changes in scholarly research and production.

    Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "From Digital Commons to OCLC: A Tailored Approach for Harvesting and Transforming ETD Metadata into High-Quality Records"

    Marielle Veve has published "From Digital Commons to OCLC: A Tailored Approach for Harvesting and Transforming ETD Metadata into High-Quality Records" in Code4Lib Journal.

    Here's an excerpt:

    The library literature contains many examples of automated and semi-automated approaches to harvest electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) metadata from institutional repositories (IR) to the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). However, most of these approaches could not be implemented with the institutional repository software Digital Commons because of various reasons including proprietary schema incompatibilities and high level programming expertise requirements our institution did not want to pursue. Only one semi-automated approach was found in the library literature which met our requirements for implementation, and even though it catered to the particular needs of the DSpace IR, it could be implemented to other IR software if further customizations were applied.

    The following paper presents an extension of this semi-automated approach originally created by Deng and Reese, but customized and adapted to address the particular needs of the Digital Commons community and updated to integrate the latest Resource Description & Access (RDA) content standards for ETDs. Advantages and disadvantages of this workflow are discussed and presented as well.

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    "Measuring the Impact of Digitized Theses: A Case Study from the London School of Economics"

    Linda Bennett and Dimity Flanagan have published "Measuring the Impact of Digitized Theses: A Case Study from the London School of Economics" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

    Here's an excerpt:

    This study tests the assertion that the online dissemination of theses has a positive impact on the research profile of the institution and sets out to gain a greater understanding of how digital theses fit into the scholarly resources landscape. The year-long study combined primary and secondary research and was undertaken with the London School of Economics, based on its programme of theses digitization. The paper outlines the types of metrics an institution may use to measure the impact of its corpus of digitized dissertations and examines how these metrics may be generated. Findings included: a higher volume of theses attracts more traffic; Google's strong indexing capabilities make it the most frequently used tool for discovery of digital theses; primary conclusions are that there is little correlation between downloads and citations of digitized theses; having a digital thesis collection enhances the reputation of the institution; although they recognize that digital theses are a valuable research tool, postgraduates and academics widely believe that making them available affects future publication opportunities; building and maintaining a digital thesis collection makes considerable 'hidden' work for librarians in terms of training about copyright and permissions. Some conclusions: better statistics are needed, especially of citations; institutions need to promote digital thesis collections better; more work needs to be done on whether digitizing theses impairs authors' chances of traditional publication and on how digital theses affect and are affected by the open access movement.

    Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "An Analysis of Evolving Metadata Influences, Standards, and Practices in Electronic Theses and Dissertations"

    Sarah Potvin and Santi Thompson have published "An Analysis of Evolving Metadata Influences, Standards, and Practices in Electronic Theses and Dissertations" in Library Resources & Technical Services.

    Here's an excerpt:

    This study seeks to raise awareness of divergences between current practices and metadata standards and guidelines for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). We use a multifaceted approach to consider the philosophies that have guided the design of several metadata standards, offering a close case study focused on efforts by the Texas Digital Library to forge a common standard. Analysis is rooted in literatures on metadata quality, shareable or federated metadata, and interoperability, with attention to the impact of systems, tools, and practices on ETD date metadata. This examination of semantic interoperability issues serves as an articulation of the need for a more robust ideal moving forward, rooted in lifecycle models of metadata and concerned with the long-term curation and preservation of ETDs.

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    "Dissertations and Data"

    Joachim Schöpfel et al. have self-archived "Dissertations and Data."

    Here's an excerpt:

    The keynote provides an overview on the field of research data produced by PhD students, in the context of open science, open access to research results, e-Science and the handling of electronic theses and dissertations. The keynote includes recent empirical results and recommendations for good practice and further research. In particular, the paper is based on an assessment of 864 print and electronic dissertations in sciences, social sciences and humanities from the Universities of Lille (France) and Ljubljana (Slovenia), submitted between 1987 and 2015, and on a survey on data management with 270 scientists in social sciences and humanities of the University of Lille

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    NDLTD Launches Global Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Search

    NDLTD has launched Global ETD Search.

    Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

    Global ETD Search—developed in partnership with the University of Cape Town, South Africa—is a free service that allows researchers to find ETDs based on keyword, date, institution, language and subject. Researchers may submit queries and view results using the familiar style of popular Web search engines. This new search service will allow researchers to locate relevant theses and dissertations far more effectively than current tools.

    Global ETD Search is based on a growing collection of approximately 4 million ETDs from more than 200 universities on all continents. Metadata records are automatically collected daily from individual institutions and consortia. These records form the basis of the search service. Once researchers have located the ETDs of interest, they are able to access the original documents from the originating institutions.

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