Theses Alive!
FINAL REPORT
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Project Acronym |
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Project ID |
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Project Title |
Theses Alive! |
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Start Date |
Oct 2002 |
End Date |
Oct 2004 |
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Lead
Institution |
The |
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Project
Director |
John MacColl |
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Project Manager
& contact details |
Theo Andrew |
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Partner
Institutions |
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Project Web URL |
http://www.thesesalive.ac.uk/ |
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Programme Name
(and number) |
FAIR |
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Programme
Manager |
Balviar Notay/Rachel Bruce |
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Document Title |
Final Report |
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Reporting Period |
n/a |
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Author(s) &
project role |
Theo Andrew (Project Officer) John MacColl (Project Director) |
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Date |
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Filename |
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URL |
if document is
posted on project web site |
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Access |
o Project and JISC internal |
o General dissemination |
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Version |
Date |
Comments |
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0.1 |
December 2004 |
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Executive
summary |
p.3 |
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Background |
p.4 |
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Aims
and Objectives |
p.4 |
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Methodology |
p.5 |
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Implementation |
p.6 |
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Outputs
and Results |
p.9 |
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Outcomes |
p.9 |
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Conclusions |
p.10 |
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Implications |
p.11 |
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References |
p.11 |
The
Theses Alive! project was supported and funded by the
JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) programme. A number of
organisations were extremely helpful during the course of this project,
particularly those involved in other FAIR projects: The University of Glasgow,
the
The Theses
Alive! project has developed on a pilot basis a
distributed system for the management of electronic theses and dissertations
(ETDs) in the
The project was
based around a core team of three staff at the
Concurrently, a standard metadata schema for ETDs in the
During development
of the software, and afterwards, the Project worked to provide a general
information and user support service on ETDs. This service took the form of a mediated deposit service and
ETD creation support. Practically this consisted of providing guidance for
postgraduate students and supervisors on suitable file format types, scanning
resolutions, conversion and system administration, through web-based
technologies (email/web pages) or telephone support. This user support service
was successfully piloted at
In addition to
these original aims and objectives set out in the project plan it has been
necessary to investigate the effects on intellectual property rights (e.g.
copyright and patents) and other legal implications (e.g. the Freedom of
Information Act 2002) which arise when publishing research material online.
These unforeseen problems proved to be a significant barrier to the progress of
the project and the development of electronic thesis programmes in general. The
solutions delivered by the Theses Alive! project have been
published by the JISC Legal service and have already proved to be extremely
valuable to the HE community. In
conclusion, the E-theses service piloted by the Theses Alive! project has been warmly welcomed in
At
its most mundane an electronic thesis is a digital image of the print
distribution object, being still firmly grounded in the traditions of print.
However, the digital format offers a unique opportunity to create an electronic
document unrestricted by conventional limitations. It is now possible to author
a document that contains both aspects of multimedia and the dynamic
presentation of large data sets that previously were unattainable in print
format. In addition to these benefits, the digital format takes full advantage
of the networked computing environment to deliver the thesis literature, which
has for too long been considered intractable, online to a global audience.
The
practice of making theses and dissertations available online is growing
internationally. Repositories of electronic theses and dissertations are now
common in universities in
In
October 2001 the SELLIC team at Edinburgh University Library (EUL) presented a
report to the UK Theses Online Group on the results of our Edinburgh University
Library Doctoral Theses Digitisation Project. This work was generously funded
by UTOG. This report contained certain recommendations for the future of the
management of 'born digital' theses at
The
Theses Alive! project presents an opportunity at the
present time to promote the adoption of this environment by universities in
order that theses can be provided online for the benefit of international
research and scholarship.
The
Theses Alive! initial objectives as stated in the
project plan were:
A
core group of three staff at the
WP1:
Pilot Administration
An
initial aim within the project plan was to work with a set number of additional
HE institutions to help test and develop the proposed e-theses management
system. It was decided that a dedicated work package should be set aside to
support this aim. It was envisaged that the Project Officer would arrange and
liaise with a number of pilot institutions to take delivery of the Theses Alive
software, to gather feedback about the system and to help provide installation
and end-use support. Primarily these objectives would be achieved during
face-to-face site meetings and interviews by the Project Officer, with follow
up telephone meetings arranged where necessary.
WP2:
Building the System
Initially,
this study needed to consider which of the popular open source institutional
repository software packages would be suitable for providing the infrastructure
for an e-thesis management system. It was felt that a formal evaluation of the
most commonly used repository platforms would provide us with the most robust approach
and would eventually yield the most comprehensive and meaningful results. These
evaluation results would then feedback into the design process for developing a
system suitable for use in the
Throughout
development we were aware of the need to comply with international standards, especially
with regards to software development and metadata. In the absence of
appropriate standards, e.g. a
WP3:
Advocacy and WP4: User Support
Due
to related content, these two work packages shared similar methodologies, thus
they are described together for brevity. Both these project strands comprised
working with, sharing or gathering information from end-users. This involved
meeting research students, supervisors, administrators, and library staff,
initially from the
To
ensure that we developed and tested high-quality user support methods, the
project needed to systematically gather a critical mass of current content from
postgraduate students. Embarking from the project plan, which provided no
strategies for gathering content, we felt that a well-planned pilot study
within the UoE would be the most logical starting
point for content collection. Initially this would require collaboration with
the targeted academic units to set up the framework for the pilot study.
Subsequently, as the content was being deposited a web- and telephone-based
user support service would be required to aid the submitters.
Additionally,
both these work packages are heavily involved with wider communication, to the
general public and other interested researchers from the worldwide library and
information science community. The most effective way to do this would be to
take a multi-functional approach, targeting precise dissemination through a
variety of forums, for example international conferences and publications, including
both traditional (print journals) and contemporary journals (open access).
Integral to this would be the establishment of the Theses Alive! website. It was a primary aim from the start of the project
to make the website functional, dynamic and well-used, through regular updates
and management, good presentation and abundant content which users would find
beneficial.
Software
evaluation to choose an appropriate platform began early on in the project
lifetime. This extensive study looked
at the major open-source digital repository software packages available to the
HE community at the time (early 2003), which included DSpace, ETD-db and
ePrints.org. This comparison looked at some of the common elements between
these packages and drew conclusions on which is the best in each field. In
addition, it looked at how difficult it would be to modify each of the packages
to provide an E-theses service for the
After installing the major repository platforms and
testing/evaluating them for a number of months the
decision was made to use DSpace as our software platform of choice. With this decision
made it was necessary to begin determining the necessary specifications for
developing the extra functionality an e-thesis management system would require.
In the first instance, these evaluation results fed back directly into this
design process. To
further identify the system and user requirements the project staff sought
advice, in the form of individual face-to-face interviews, with stakeholders at
the
With
a comprehensive design specification it was possible to begin the actual
software development. The software itself formed a modular add-on to the DSpace
core code, and has been distributed under an open source software license, from
the Theses Alive website and the SourceForge Open Source Software repository. Following
a lightweight iterative process, the Theses Alive add-on software is currently
on release version 0.4 (beta 1). From version 0.3 we adopted the name Tapir, which stands for Theses Alive
Plug-in for Institutional Repositories.
The
current version of Tapir provides the
ability within DSpace to operate a supervised authoring facility, allowing
Thesis and Dissertation Supervisors to observe the ongoing work by their
student on their project, to comment and to even make changes. This comes with
an addition to the DSpace administration area to manage the supervising groups
and their access policies to the student's work. It is envisaged that although
developed specifically with ETDs in mind, that this software may also find
other applications. In addition, two submission interfaces (one for E-prints
and other documents, and one for E-theses) are now supported, with the option
to choose between them. Each of these submission interfaces provides custom
metadata collection and licencing options for
submissions (Jones 2004b).
Meanwhile,
during the development of the Tapir we
felt it would be beneficial to perform a baseline survey of research material
already held on departmental and personal Web pages in the ed.ac.uk domain.
Such a survey would be constructive on a number of levels; i)
it would provide a qualitative view of Web usage across different subject
areas, something that at the present time was poorly understood, ii) it would
aid the initial population of the repositories by identifying ready material
and willing scholarly contributors, and iii) such a survey would provide an
invaluable baseline upon which progress of the project could be measured during
evaluation (Andrew, 2003). The main benefit of the baseline study for the
Theses Alive project was the identification of willing academic departments
willing to take part in pilot electronic theses projects.
With initial contact made in suitable academic
departments, the project arranged and embarked upon a six-month pilot e-theses
service for two schools within the
The
The second school in the
Prior
to the system launch, a second round of interviews occurred. A group of pilot
universities were approached with the aim to take delivery of the Theses Alive!
software for use in their institutions. The Theses
Alive! project initially liaised with five other HE
institutions, consisting of The University of Cambridge,
As
the project progressed it became apparent that a national e-theses support
service was not entirely appropriate. Although it is necessary to help
institutions build repositories and appropriate policies, it was felt that
other types of support, for example student support or mediated deposit, would
be best offered by the home institution where embedded staff would have
detailed knowledge of current working practices and procedures. Certainly this
was a common opinion voiced by the partner institutions during site visits. Further
user feedback, product evaluation and testing was
gained from a larger community of institutions as part of the worldwide DSpace development
and user group. From June–November 2004, the Tapir was downloaded 31 times by a number of institutions
worldwide. From this worldwide user group many feature requests and programming
bugs were identified, which facilitated new version releases of the Tapir.
During
the course of Theses Alive, the project staff attended a number of
international conferences on electronic theses and dissertations. These
conferences allowed researchers from all over the world to share common
experiences. Early on it became apparent that many institutions had achieved
successful electronic theses and dissertation programmes by mandating at a top
level the electronic submission of postgraduate degrees. In another departure
from the project plan we have investigated and are in the process of
implementing revised thesis rules and regulations for the
For
the interested reader, the project timeline giving a detailed work breakdown is
available from the Theses Alive website (at
http://www.thesesalive.ac.uk/ta_timeline.shtml)
For
institutions worldwide the most recognisable output from the project is the development
of the Thesis Alive Plug-in for Institutional Repositories (Tapir). During the project lifetime a
number of institutions have downloaded and installed the Tapir to enable supervised authoring of dissertations and theses,
and general submission to their archive of e-prints and e-theses. To illustrate the diversity of institutions
who have found the Tapir useful,
organizations such as the
Through
involvement with another JISC FAIR-programme funded project (SHERPA), we were
able to develop and launch the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA)-
A
primary aim of the Theses Alive project was to work with other e-theses
developments internationally, and in particular to
assist the research aims of other e-theses projects funded within the JISC FAIR
Programme. As part of this objective we participated in the creation of the
recommended
The
technical and cultural expertise we have garnered through developing and
implementing
The
major impact, not directly implicit in the project plan, that this project has
delivered to the research community is the provision of Open Access status to
selected research and thesis literature from
Above
and beyond the project expectations a number of exciting opportunities and
outcomes have arisen. Primarily, the Theses Alive! Systems Developer, as a
result of work carried out during the project, has become highly regarded
internationally in the open source software community such that he has been
given the prestigious role of ‘committer’
for the DSpace federation. A number of
individuals have administrative control over the product development, and these
administrators are referred to as committers; their role is to action any
changes to the core code. Only a handful of trusted developers are given this
access. This role of committer means
that Edinburgh University Library has a direct significant involvement in the future
development of DSpace. This is not only a prestigious role, but highly
functional in that we can ensure that the needs and requirements of the
In summary, the electronic-theses service was warmly
welcomed in
The model which we are promoting, and to which the
Postgraduate Studies Committee appears to be receptive, gives the electronic
version of the thesis the status of being the authoritative version, or ‘golden
copy’. Printed copies are then made from it by the Library. If this is
accepted, then procedures will change within the University such that
electronic theses become the default submission route, even before electronic
deposit is mandated by University regulations.
Through meeting postgraduate supervisors and
examiners it is clear that restrictions to thesis access will be needed if ETDs
are to be generally accepted and used within the academic community. This has
implications for institutions if they wish to comply with the newly introduced
Freedom of Information Act. Further complications and implications need to be
considered by the host institution when delivering thesis literature content online,
especially in terms of copyright and other intellectual property rights. These
problems are being looked into and advice is available from sources such as the
JISC Legal Information service.
Finally,
it is clear from our experiences that when a project is working with other partner
institutions, the responsibilities, aims and objectives of each institution
should be made clear at the start of the project and formalised in some
capacity, otherwise the final project outcomes could suffer as a result.
The
Theses Alive project showed, by building a proof-of-concept service, that an
electronic theses programme is an extremely worthwhile endeavour, and
critically, is a viable proposition for most UK HE institutions. The findings
of this project are being carried forwards by the recent JISC-funded EThOS project, in which Edinburgh University Library is a
developmental partner.
Andrew, Theo. 2003. Trends in Self-Posting of Research Material Online by Academic Staff.
Ariadne Issue 37. (Originating URL: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue37/andrew/intro.html)
Andrew, Theo. 2004. Intellectual Property and Electronic
Theses.
JISC Legal commissioned report. (Originating URL:
http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/ethesesandrew.htm)
Jones,
Richard. D. 2004a. DSpace
vs. ETD-db: Choosing software to manage electronic theses and dissertations. Ariadne
Issue 38 (Originating URL: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue38/jones/intro.html)
Jones,
Richard. D. 2004b.The Tapir: Adding
E-Theses Functionality to DSpace. Ariadne
Issue 41
(Originating URL: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue41/jones/intro.html)