ETDs in India: Towards a national repository

with value added e-theses service

Maitrayee Ghosh, PhD

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

ETD initiatives in India

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

E-theses and academia

There are nearly three hundred universities and one hundred R&D

institutions in India are granting PhD and masters degrees. It is reported

that nearly 10,000 PhD theses are accepted by Universities.

IITK maintains a bibliographic database (with abstract) named as Theses

(old database) in addition to DSpace full text repository.

IIT Delhi, Central Library has bibliographical list of PhD theses since 1966

to current, which includes nearly 2000 records accessible through web.

The bibliographical database of IITB has nearly four thousand records

Vidyanidhi’s multilingual database having 15,000 records in Hindi and 600

records in Kannada, more than 50,000 metadata of PhD, M.Phil, MA, M.Sc,

M Tech, ME, MD, M Com., MBA, MCA, MLIS, M.Ed., theses and

dissertations.

INFLIBNET’s national union catalogue of doctoral theses includes 1,50000

bibliographical records of PhD theses accepted by nearly two hundred

universities

ETD initiatives in India

Scope and objectives

Although there is sizeable number of ETD digital libraries in India and

maintaining a steady growth but there is no single study undertaken which looks

into how digital libraries of ETDs is functioning, what are the constraints in the

process, and how it can be improved. It’s an attempt to do a comparative study of

prominent digital libraries of ETDs with high level description of key aspects and

proposed a model for national repository.

The following two major points are discussed:

A seamless ETD system for all universities/research institutions, which are

already member of national networks or consortia viz. INDEST, INFLIBNET as

well as libraries attached with colleges or small organizations with underdeveloped

ICT infrastructure, can join either as a data provider or simply access the e-theses

by paying membership fees.

A model for national e-theses repository

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Methodology and selection of sample

The research method used in this study is the triangulation of three

different methods (1) e-mail questionnaire (2) face to face interview

(3)content analysis of ETD websites

Some of the points used as a basis for the selection of digital

libraries for the evaluation are:

The importance, relevance, credibility of the organization

hosting the digital library

Type of collection and users

The access facilities, submission policies and user interface

The Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)/ Directory of Open

Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) were consulted but they do not

represent a complete picture of Indian ETD repositories as the

registration is not mandatory.

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Data analysis and discussion

Age of ETD repositories in India

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

IIT B

omba

y

Vidya

nidh

iIIS

cIIA

P

IIT K

anpu

r

IIT D

elhi

NIO

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Data analysis and discussion

State of ETD Submission policy

Mandatory, 4,

45%

, , 0%Not

mandatory, 3,

33%

, , 0%

Not known, 2,

22%

ETD Release policies:

•Campus access full text-3

•Open access Bibliography

& abstract- 1

•Open access only

bibliography-3

•Open access full text-4

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Submission of TDs in IIT Kanpur

2006

2005

20042003

2002

2001

306

368

364295

321

318

Total number of theses-9333

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

351

22

551

47

461

74

511

81

645

113 113

250

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Dissertations

Theses

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Vidyanidhi Digital library

Subject wise distribution of ETDs in

Vidyanidhi

542 1718 1987

38798

7840

Pur

e

Sci

ence

App

lied

Sci

ence

Eng

inee

ring

and

Tech

nolo

gy

Soc

ial a

nd

Beh

avio

ural

Sci

ence

Arts

and

Hum

aniti

es

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

INFLIBNET’s national online Union catalogue of Doctoral

Theses

10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Uppsala, Sweden.

Thank You