[LIS-Forum] Open access to electronic theses soon to be commonplace-JISC

Shalini Urs shalini at isim.ac.in
Tue Feb 21 08:29:35 IST 2012


Open access to electronic theses soon to be commonplace
Doctoral theses can attract significant attention when made openly
accessible in electronic form according to the respondents of a sector-wide
survey of information professionals.

The JISC-funded survey gives a clearer picture of progress toward electronic
thesis deposit in the UK, and how universities are achieving it.
Open access to electronic theses soon to be commonplace : JISC
<http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jisc.ac.uk%2Fnews%2Fstorie
s%2F2012%2F02%2Ftheses.aspx%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26
utm_campaign%3DFeed%253A%2Bac%252FuabG%2B%2528JISC%2BNews%2BWeb%2BFeed%2529&
h=KAQFmMMOiAQGycYjP42ihY_GFbH7G6TPj7DJQb35hCb7JWg>

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Abstract of the Report :

Sharing knowledge and research outputs is critical to the progress of
science and human development, and a central tenet of academia. The Internet
itself is a product of the academic community, and opening access to that
community¹s most important body of research, doctoral theses, is both a
logical and an inevitable development. Progress toward open access to
electronic theses has been slow in the UK. Much has been written on the
perceived barriers and practical/infrastructural considerations that might
explain this, but a comprehensive picture of that progress, and obstacles to
it, was lacking. In 2010, a survey of policy and practice in UK HEIs was
conducted by UCL (University College London) Library Services (commissioned
by the Joint Information Systems Committee, JISC) to address this very
issue. Incorporating inputs from 144 institutions currently awarding
doctoral degrees, the work provides the first clear and detailed picture of
the status of open access to doctoral research in the UK. The mission of the
UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) is to promote and support the
interests of graduate education, and this it does through dissemination of
best practice and intelligence on emergent trends; helping to shape policy
and practice for the benefit of the UK HEI sector. This report contributes
to that mission by bringing to the membership¹s attention the results of
this important work by UCL Library Services; a collaboration between UKCGE
and the authors of the original work, it sets out the policies and practices
that emerged from the survey and also considers what has been learned about
the perceived barriers to the implementation of open access to electronic
theses. The 2010 survey has enabled, for the first time, a differentiation
to be made between barriers that are ³real² and those which are unfounded
and/or yet to be properly validated. At the same time, the work highlights
the progress made in certain critical areas, as well as those that require
our greater attention. A positive picture emerges for the UK on the adoption
of the electronic thesis, with the majority of HEIs surveyed expected to be
providing open access to their theses in five years¹ time. A more detailed
picture also emerges regarding the primary reasons for requests to restrict
access to theses, some of which, notably, apply only to electronic (not
print) theses. This has necessarily given rise to new policy developments.
There is positive evidence also of collaboration among HEIs to provide an
efficient and robust service for accessing electronic theses; pooling their
resources and expertise either in the development of their institutional
repositories or in operating a joint service. The key driver of open access
to electronic theses is the opportunity for UK HEIs to ³showcase² their
research outputs to the widest possible audience and enhance their impact.
There are no reliable means as yet to measure this impact, but there are
encouraging early indications that electronic doctoral theses attract
significant attention when made openly accessible. Open access to electronic
theses may therefore indeed accelerate the sharing of knowledge and the
progress of scientific discovery and human development.

Read the full report : Read the report <http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1339905/>

 <http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1339905/>
---
Dr. Shalini R.Urs
Executive Director and Professor
International School of Information Management
University of Mysore
Manasagangotri
Mysore - 570006
Phone :  + 91 821 2514699
Fax      :  +  91 821 2519209
www.isim.ac.in
ISiM - Management School of IT. Technology School for IM



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