Guide – E-THESES

The Partnership

Dart Crypto
DARTINGTON COLLEGE OF ARTS
DiVA
EThOS
HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
JISC
NDLTD
SHERPA
SURFfoundation
UCL
UNIVERSIDADE TÉCNICA DE LISBOA

E-THESES

Discussions about the potential value and the feasibility of acquiring, storing and making available theses in electronic format began in many countries around the mid 1990s. Since then a considerable amount of developmental work has taken place on technical aspects; pilot projects have highlighted the need for planned and sustained advocacy work; feedback from those involved in the ETD process has indicated that there are concerns over legal aspects and it has become apparent that there is a need for risk management.

When discussing these issues, and related matters, at European level, it is necessary to appreciate that there is no uniform definition of an ‘ETD’ that applies across all countries. Electronic theses and dissertations vary in length, style, format and name. GUIDE is focused on doctoral level theses (called doctoral dissertations in some institutions) which are termed ‘e-theses’ on the GUIDE Web pages.

The definition of an E-Thesis

An e-thesis can take a variety of forms:

  • It may be an electronic version of a recently produced printed thesis. A typical example would be a text-based piece of work produced in Word and converted into PDF.
  • It may be a text-based thesis produced some time ago that has been scanned and converted into PDF.
  • It may be a digital thesis that includes audio or visual material and it may not even be designed to be read in a traditional linear format. A thesis of this type, which incorporates multimedia as an integral part of the work, may not have a paper equivalent.
  • It may be a publication-based thesis which includes only a limited amount of text followed by the bibliographic details of the associated publications (including links to electronic versions of the relevant journal articles etc).

Innovative E-Theses

Individual institutions will have their own regulations regarding what degree of flexibility they are prepared to allow in terms of the inclusion of multimedia and the style in which the e-thesis is presented. There are concerns about the long-term preservation of content and issues relating to the possible migration of material into new formats in future. On the other hand, the use of multimedia allows the creator of the work to express his/her research results in ways that would not be possible using a paper-based format.

The NDLTD’s annual ETD awards provide an opportunity for innovative e-theses to be publicised and for their authors to be recognised internationally. Information about the awards and details of recent prizewinners can be accessed from the NDLTD Web pages http://www.ndltd.org. The prize-winning theses demonstrate the value of being able to incorporate music, video clips, interactive graphs, etc. as an integral part of a thesis.

To date, there has been a dearth of nominations for the NDLTD Innovative ETD award from European Higher Education Institutions. Moreover, there has also been a shortage of nominations of theses in languages other than English. High-quality multimedia e-theses can be showcased in advocacy events to demonstrate the benefits of allowing the submission of theses in electronic format. They can also be used to publicise innovative work that is taking place at particular institutions. GUIDE would therefore like to encourage European institutions to consider submitting applications for the next round of awards.