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Educopia Releases ETD+ Toolkit
 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. The ETD+ Toolkit is the result of a project funded by the Institute of Library and Museum Services. Educopia Institute led the creation of the Toolkit in partnership with the NDLTD, ProQuest, bepress, and 12 U.S. research libraries. What it is: An open set of six modules and evaluation instruments that prepare students to create, store, and maintain their research outputs on durable devices and in durable formats. Each is designed to stand alone; they may also be used as a series. What each module includes: Each module includes Learning Objectives, a one-page Handout, a Guidance Brief, a Slideshow with full presenter notes, and an evaluation Survey. Each module is released under a CC-BY license and all elements are openly editable to make reuse as easy as possible. Who it is for: Anyone may freely adopt and adapt this toolkit. We especially recommend its use by administrators, faculty, and librarians teaching students and by students seeking practical advice about digital content management. Give us feedback (Please) Like the modules? Hate them? Think they’re unique? Redundant? Because these materials have been produced under a grant-funded project, we are requesting feedback that we can share with our funder and that we can use to improve the Toolkit. Please help us to refine the workshops and report back to our funder about how and where they are being used. Contact katherine@educopia.org and sam@educopia.org. |
Submit NDLTD Award Nominations by May 31st!
 We invite all NDLTD members to nominate individuals they feel deserve the recognition! Deadline for Nominations: May 31st, 2017 The NDLTD's ETD Awards recognize and support innovative theses and dissertations and leadership within the ETD community. These awards are presented each year at the annual ETD Symposium. The awards include several categories of appreciation:
The awards will be presented at ETD 2017 "Exploring Global Connections" the 20th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Washington, DC August 7-9, 2017. Award Category Information, Procedures and Requirements:Innovative ETD AwardThe intent of this award is to support current graduate students in the creation of innovative ETDs. We anticipate students will use the award to assist in the purchase of specialized software, computer equipment or other technical support needed in the production or publication of their ETD. Nominations for this award should indicate how the award will support the application and integration of renderings, photos, data sets, software code or other multimedia objects in the student’s ETD.
ETD Leadership AwardThis is open to individuals whose leadership and vision has helped raise awareness of the benefits of ETDs and whose efforts have improved graduate education through the use of ETDs. Nominations should include details about the individual's ETD related activities and how the nominee's leadership has made significant advances in the area of ETDs at the local, regional, national or international levels.
*I.R.S regulations require the NDLTD to report all award amounts distributed; citizens of the United States must provide a valid Social Security number to receive award distributions. Winners must agree to the conditions set forth in the eligibility requirements listed here and NDLTD policy. Winners must also agree to make acceptance/acknowledgments materials available to the NDLTD for the purpose of international promotions. For more information about the ETD Awards program contact James MacDonald, ETD Awards Committee Chair. |
Apply Now for ETD2017 Travel Scholarships
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ETD2017 Symposium Call for Proposals
Deadline: Proposals should be submitted on or before February 28, 2017 to be considered. About the ConferenceETD2017 will provide excellent educational opportunities for professionals from graduate schools, libraries, academic computing and others who work with electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), institutional repositories, graduate students and scholarly communications. Our goal is to offer relevant, practice-oriented content to support ETD productivity improvement, ETD professionals, advance ETD operations and encourage the formation of regional ETD associations and networking communities as well as to provide useful and innovative resources, standards, and technology for the development and support of ETD programs. Conference ThemeThe conference theme "EXPLORING GLOBAL CONNECTIONS" focuses on the impact and implications of connecting scholars and research from across the country and around the world. We examine the present use and availability of ETDs and related initiatives while also exploring new and emerging ETD practices, needs, and influences. Presentation proposals should reflect one or more of the following three subtopics. Presenters are encouraged to use the examples under the subtopics as inspiration, but are not limited to these ideas and can expand upon them or generate new ones based on the subtopic themes. For complete information visit http://www.ocs.usetda.org/index.php/NDLTD/ETD2017/schedConf/cfp. ETD2017, the 20th international symposium on electronic theses and dissertations will be held August 7 – 9, 2017 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Washington, D.C. The conference will be hosted by George Mason University with additional support from the Washington Research Library Consortium and co-organized by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and the United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (USETDA). |
Now Published! Guidance Briefs: Preserving and Curating ETD Research Data and Complex Digital Objects
These open documents are ready to be adopted and adapted for local use by universities/colleges to help students understand how to prepare, manage, and store the research files associated with their ETDs. About the ETD Guidance BriefsThe Guidance Briefs are short (3-4 page) “how-to” oriented briefs designed to help ETD programs build and nurture supportive relationships with student researchers. These briefs are written for a student audience. They are designed to assist student researchers in understanding how their approaches to data and content management impact credibility, replicable research, and general long-term accessibility: knowledge and skills that will impact the health of their careers for years to come. In addition to providing actionable, easy-to-follow advice about how to organize, store, and protect their research files, these Guidance Briefs help students recognize how their own content management practices will impact the credibility, replicability, and long-term accessibility of their findings. This knowledge and skills will impact the health of their careers for years to come. Anyone can download, edit, and use the Guidance Briefs using the links on this page. A forthcoming workshop series featuring these Briefs and geared toward student audiences will also be available to ETD programs in early 2017. Use the Guidance BriefsInterested ETD stakeholders can download copies of the Guidance Briefs (as Word or RTF documents) at the following website, https://educopia.org/deliverables/etdplus-guidance-briefs. The Guidance Briefs cover the following topics:
We are releasing these Briefs as openly editable documents. We want institutions to use and reuse these in whatever ways work best for their local audiences. Each Brief includes generally applicable information about its topic, and also includes a “Local Practices” section that an institution should use to call attention to what’s happening on its own campus. If you have any further questions about the Guidance Briefs or about the ETDplus project, don't hesitate to reach out to us: About the ETDplus Project The ETDplus project is helping institutions ensure the longevity and availability of ETD research data and complex digital objects (e.g., software, multimedia files) that comprise an integral component of student theses and dissertations. The project is generously funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and led by the Educopia Institute, in collaboration with the NDLTD, HBCU Alliance, bepress, ProQuest, and the libraries of Carnegie Mellon, Indiana State, Morehouse, Oregon State, Penn State, Purdue, University of Louisville, University of Tennessee, the University of North Texas, and Virginia Tech. |
Announcement: ETD 2017 Symposium – Exploring Global Connections
ETD2017, the 20th international symposium on electronic theses and dissertations will be held August 7 – 9, 2017 in Washington, D.C. The conference will be hosted by George Mason University with additional support from the Washington Research Library Consortium and co-organized by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and the United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (USETDA). ETD 2017 will provide excellent educational opportunities for professionals from graduate schools, libraries, academic computing and others who work with electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), institutional repositories, graduate students and scholarly communications. Our goal is to offer relevant, practice-oriented content to support ETD productivity improvement, ETD professionals, advance ETD operations and encourage the formation of regional ETD associations and networking communities as well as to to provide useful and innovative resources, standards, and technology for the development and support of ETD programs. Complete conference information is available online at http://www.usetda.org/usetda-conferences/etd2017/. |
Country Report: ETDs in France
 General situationLike in 2015, the French Higher Education is still in transition. The national ETD infrastructure has been created in 2006 and is fully operational but not obligatory – in fact, each university decide when to abandon the former print workflow. In 2016, most universities have a mandatory ETD policy while other universities continue to accept print dissertations that are processed via the former centralized print and microform workflow, with the ANRT Lille as operating agent. This situation will change. Since 2015, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research prepares a new decree on the doctorate degree. This decree has been published recently. It contains a section on the dissemination and preservation of doctoral dissertations, based on the actual ETD infrastructure with the two main public institutions ABES (network coordination, global system management, academic union catalogue SUDOC, portal Theses.fr) and CINES (long term preservation of ETDs). It prohibits the deposit of print copies after a final transitional period of two other years. This means that from 2018 on French universities will no longer accept print dissertations. The responsibility for the ETD management is shared between academic libraries (deposit, metadata, conservation of a print copy) and the national agency ABES (union catalogue, dissertation portal, infrastructure maintenance and development) which manage also the link with the national IT center CINES for the digital archiving. Legal situationThe same decree allows the secured dissemination of non-confidential ETDs through the Higher Education ILL network (but not outside), without formal authorization by the author. Yet, the decision is not taken yet how exactly this will work. Actually, a significant part of French ETDs are embargoed or restricted to on-campus access. In spite of the opposition of the French Government (Ministry of Culture) the two chambers of the French parliament recently voted in favor of an exception for text and data mining of copyrighted materials for non-commercial research (as in the UK) but at the moment of writing this country report it is uncertain if and how this new exception will become part of the French Intellectual Property law. At the same time, the parliament prepares a law on secondary exploitation of copyrighted publications, such as the Netherlands and Germany. But this will have no direct impact on dissertations. Portal statistics (Theses.fr, 2 May 2016)
HAL/TEL repository statistics
TEL on the national HAL repository is the most important ETD repository but not the only one, and it is not mandatory. One part of the deposits is due to self-archiving, another part comes from institutional workflows (via the STAR system). |
Country Report: ETDs in India
 The Shodhganga@INFLIBNET Centre provides a platform for research students to deposit their Ph.D. theses and make them available to the entire scholarly community in open access. Shodhganga e-Theses
Anti-plagiarism support
Read more about University Grants Commission Policy regarding ETDs and Shodhganga repository in last year's India Country Report. Watch Dr. Ramesh C.Gaur's presentation at ETD 2016, titled ETD Publishing, Open Access and Embargo: Experiences in Indian Universities. |
Country Report: ETDs in the UK
Here are some UK ETD highlights for 2016: EThOS (e-theses online service) http://ethos.bl.uk now contains 437,000 theses, around 90% of all UK theses. There are links to open access copies of the full texts for around 187,000. Most of the remaining 250,000 EThOS records can be ordered for digitisation on demand. Proquest continues to offer thesis digitisation projects to UK research institutions, scanning theses at very good rates in return for permission to include them in Proquest subscription databases. Digitised copies are also returned to the institutions for adding to their open access repositories, and EThOS can also harvest the full works, so there are benefits to all concerned. Open access mandates for publicly funded theses continues to be implemented gradually. EThOS data is included in the outputs reporting system Research Fish which is used by all public research funders – this makes it easy for people to report their thesis in their ResearchFish submission. An API is now being built to support this further. Content mining, non-traditional doctoral theses, and ORCiD and DOI identifiers are other areas in which we’re making progress through various projects. |
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