-
Wire services' stories must always carry the embargo time at the head of
each item, and may not be sent out more than 24 hours before that time.
(Blacksburg, VA August 12, 1999) -- Electronic theses and dissertation (ETDs) ? Internet-readable versions of graduate students' final reports on their original research ? may be controversial; but, they are also popular. In an article published in the August 12 electronic version of "Nature," Virginia Tech Computer Science Professor Edward A. Fox reports that, while an average paper document circulates two to six times per year (observed by Virginia Tech Libraries), typical electronic theses are downloaded hundreds or thousands of times, from tens of thousands of sites around the world.
Fox, who is director of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), an international initiative with more than 60 members, including UNESCO, the National Library of Portugal, and national projects in Australia, Germany, and the United States, predicts that "in the not too distant future, all theses and dissertations will be prepared and submitted in electronic form by their authors to their universities over networks." There will be fewer concerns because, "Digital libraries can help to ensure that access to these works is facilitated by powerful tools for searching and browsing, while enforcing any restrictions required by authors, faculty members, publishers, or other institutions involved." For example, access could be limited to the dissertation committee while patent protection is sought.
Since the early days of computing, tools have supported the creation of documents as well as access to ever-growing collections of electronic information. The NDLTD aim is to harness these trends in order to promote education and research and change the future of scholarly publishing, says Fox.
"Databases can keep track of citations and record the large numbers of references from theses to other parts of the scholarly literature. Scholars can explore the findings of recent graduates within weeks of completion of their dissertations... Some data sets, visualizations, programs, videos, and other accompanying materials from research projects can be directly linked to theses, allowing scientific experiments to be replicated, discussed in classes, and extended in new directions."
Not everyone is on board, however. Fox explains that "Although switching from paper to electronic documents for theses and dissertations can save copying charges for students, shelf space in libraries, and shipping and handling expenses in universities, not everyone has been immediately amenable to this innovation." He says that while the greatest barriers to change are often fear, inertia and tradition, some universities have hesitated "primarily because of the real problem of the long-term accessibility of electronic documents." These problems are being addressed, he assures us. "Many university libraries, organizations involved in information processing, and government agencies have programs for the preservation of digital documents, such as automatic copying to new storage media and conversion to new standard formats."
Fox suggest that universities "solve this important requirement on a small scale with ETDs, in preparation for solving the problem on the large scale for their many other electronic documents." He offers reassurance that "The broader problem should become easier to solve as new technologies facilitate the development of complex documents in non-proprietary standard formats such as XML."
Other concerns
Another controversy about ETDs concerns the relation between theses and dissertations and other types of scholarly work.
- Some argue that students and faculty should improve the quality of theses, and use multimedia to make them more expressive. But even without these changes, many believe that ETDs' literature reviews, bibliographies, and rich detail can still make them a unique and important genre.
- Some say that people should read journal papers instead of theses; others argue that we can have both, each with a different type of use, and that the rising costs of journals make theses of particular value, especially internationally.
- Some say that making ETDs available will jeopardize subsequent publication. However, digital library technology, coupled with flexible university policies, allows an ETD to have access limited for a time to the originating campus, so that publishers will not view subsequent journal submissions to have been previously ?published?.
It's a matter of providing needed skills
At Virginia Tech the initiative was viewed as an educational priority,
so that those receiving graduate degrees would be suitably prepared for their
future scholarly and professional activities. Although there is some startup
cost to launching such a program, the training materials, software, automated
workflow system and other support infrastructure (http://etd.vt.edu) provided
through NDLTD makes the actual investment small. Once a requirement is in place,
a fully electronic process is less expensive than the old paper-based system,
Fox reports
"Moving towards ETDs has become feasible as the result of standards, computing and networking infrastructure, and the support of a growing number of organizations. Also, important endorsements have been provided by publishers." The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society (IEEE-CS), the largest computer professional societies, along with American Chemical Society (ACS) have all provided supportive policy statements available at the NDLTD Web site.
For more information, visit: www.ndltd.org
Contact for more information:
Edward A. Fox, 540-231-5113 or fox@vt.edu
Aug. 10-16, use cell phone number 540-230-6266.
Dr. Fox will be out of the country after Aug. 16, but you can call:
John. L. Eaton, Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, Virginia Tech,
540-231-5645 or eaton@vt.edu
Gail M. McMillan, director of the Virginai Tech University Libraries' Scholarly
Communication Project,
540-231-9252 or gailmac@vt.edu
"Nature" press contacts:
For North America - Bronwyn Murray, Nature Washington
Tel: 202-626-2505; Fax: 202-628-1609; E-mail:b.murray@naturedc.com
For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Rinoko Asami, Nature Tokyo
Tel: 81-3-3267-8751; Fax: 81-3-3267-8746; E-mail:r.asami@naturejpn.com
For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above - Jo Webber, Nature London
Tel: 44-171-843-4571; Fax: 44-171-843-4596; E-mail:j.webber@nature.com
Journal
Nature