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Abstract
This paper examines the developments in ETD repositories, in particular PhD thesis repositories, in India. The purpose is to perform a preliminary study and explore the possibilities for creating a national repository for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment. The author looks at the current state of deployment of ETD repositories in the academic sector and discusses the subject coverage, number of items, access policy, browse/search option, and value added services. This study raises questions about policies and strategies that national higher education, research funding and policy-making bodies, as well as individual institutional communities within the higher education sector will want to consider. In spite of the great interest in e-theses development and the fact that the majority of doctoral theses in India are being produced electronically, no wide scale activity has been initiated by the government in terms of the storage and dissemination of these materials. Adoption of national level policies on institutional repository development is also lacking in India. To date, very few institutes request students to electronically submit their theses and dissertations. This article proposes the construction of a reservoir of extensive doctoral research and an Indian portal to enable preserving of scientific and technological research materials in the country and a global view of Indian institutional research assets. A few national level institutes such as the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Technologies have established ETD repositories and a few are currently in the planning stage. The survey reveals that digital preservation of theses and dissertations is already in progress, though some of them are still in a preliminary stage. The major problems and concerns reported by respondents are summarized and findings are discussed.
Acknowledgements
The author is thankful to Professor Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, and Professor Somenath Biswas, Dean of Faculty Affairs, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur for their continual support, encouragement and permission to attend ETD symposium 2007 at Uppsala library, Sweden and present a paper.
The author would like to express appreciation to the following persons for providing data/information in writing this article: Mr. Mahendra Jadhav, Assistant Librarian, IIT Bombay, Mr. Ajay Kumar Sharma, Central Library, IIT Delhi, Rajesh Chandrakar INFLIBNET, Ahmedabad, Mr. Murari P Tapaswi, librarian, NICMAS at NIO, Goa, Mr. P. Prabahar, IIA, Bangalore