Category: Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

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.

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

    "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.

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

    "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.

    | New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

    "Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns"

    David Stern has published "Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

    Here's an excerpt:

    Libraries encourage students to utilize Institutional Repositories (IRs) to house e-portfolios that demonstrate their skills and experiences. This is especially important for students when applying for jobs and admission into graduate schools. However, within the academic sphere there are legitimate reasons why some faculty-student collaboration efforts should not be documented and openly shared in institutional repositories. The need for the protection of ideas and processes prior to faculty publication can be in direct conflict with the intention for institutional repositories to promote the excellent efforts of students. This is certainly true in laboratory situations where details of experiments and research areas are guarded for the lifetime of the exploration process. Librarians must work with others to develop guidelines and educational programs that prepare all stakeholders for these new information release considerations. One outcome of such deliberations could be the development of mutually beneficial publication guidelines which protect sensitive details of research yet allow students to submit selective research documentation into an IR. The other extreme, with no agreed upon partial embargo scenarios, could result in the removal of students from sensitive collaborations. Given the need for scientific laboratories to utilize student workers, and the benefit of real research experiences for students, the academy must find a balanced solution to this inherent conflict situation.

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    "Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia"

    Denise Troll Covey has published "Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia" in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society.

    Here's an excerpt:

    This article places the struggle to open access to the dissertation in the context of the crisis in doctoral education and the transition from print to digital literacy. It explores the underlying cultural calcification and agoraphobia that deter engagement with openness. Solving the problems will require overhauling the curriculum and conventions of doctoral education. Opening access to dissertations is an important first step, but insufficient to end the crisis. Only opening other dimensions of the dissertation — the structure, media, notion of authorship, and methods of assessment — can foster the digital literacy needed to save PhD programs from extinction. If higher education institutions invested heavily in remedying obsolete practices, the remedies would reverberate throughout the academy, accelerate advancement in the disciplines, and revolutionize scholarly publishing. The article ends with a discussion of the significant role librarians could play in facilitating needed changes given appropriate institutional commitment.

    Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

    "American ETD Dissemination in the Age of Open Access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or Allowing Student Choice"

    Gail P. Clement has published "American ETD Dissemination in the Age of Open Access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or Allowing Student Choice" in College & Research Libraries News.

    Here's an excerpt:

    A stark incongruity in the treatment of academic scholarship persists on many U.S. campuses today. Faculty authors are generally free to publish in whatever vehicle suits their needs and goals, while also expected (or mandated) to deposit their works in the open access university repository. By contrast, graduate students typically must send their scholarship to a single commercial publisher for toll-access, while also required to submit their works to the university repository.

    Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

    "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?"

    College & Research Libraries has released a preprint of "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?"

    Here's an excerpt:

    In academia, there is a growing acceptance of sharing the final electronic version of graduate work, such as a thesis or dissertation, in an online university repository. Though previous studies have shown that journal editors are willing to consider manuscripts derived from electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), faculty advisors and graduate students continue to raise concerns that online discoverability of ETDs negatively impact future opportunities to publish those findings. The current study investigated science journal policies on open access ETDs and found that more than half of the science journals contacted (51.4%) reported that manuscripts derived from openly accessible ETDs are welcome for submission and an additional 29.1% would accept revised ETDs under certain conditions.

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    "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers"

    Marisa L. Ramirez et al. have published "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries.

    Here's an excerpt:

    An increasing number of higher education institutions worldwide are requiring submission of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) by graduate students and are subsequently providing open access to these works in online repositories. Faculty advisors and graduate students are concerned that such unfettered access to their work could diminish future publishing opportunities. This study investigated social sciences, arts, and humanities journal editors' and university press directors' attitudes toward ETDs. The findings indicate that manuscripts that are revisions of openly accessible ETDs are always welcome for submission or considered on a case-by-case basis by 82.8 percent of journal editors and 53.7 percent of university press directors polled.

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