Are electronic doctoral (PhD) theses being collected digitally and made accessible (publicly/open access) in the UK?
Collected digitally: – yes: 16 – only graduate theses but not yet PhD: 5 – not yet: 3 (but in a start up phase) Made accessible: – yes 14 (12 with author’s permission) – not yet 3* – no 2* • note that Italian law mandates public availability of PhD theses via the National Library Via: – Internet website/OAI repository – only locally on disc/paper Projects: – most universities use (or plan to use) an OAI compliant repository for e-theses – very few universities are planning to digitize paper PhD theses from previous years. The recent availability of the new standard OAI-PMH protocol, and of compliant easy-to-use tools, has triggered the interest regarding the management of electronic materials, among which theses have an important role. 2. How many per year? What percentage of the total of e-theses? An average number is 150 PhD theses per year, but at the moment only a few universities make a mandatory and systematic collection of e-versions and make them available. The legal office of
