ETDs in Agriculture: Status and Way Forward with Case Studies from India and Bangladesh

Abstract

The ICT led agricultural development has opened up an opportunity for accelerating knowledge dissemination. The Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) in Agriculture are the valuable research documents that are generated from the various experiments by the research scholars and scientists of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) of the respective countries. As it is rightly said by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that, ‘anything can wait, but not agriculture’, the knowledge generated from the agricultural research should be openly available for the prosperous agricultural growth and public good. Owing to the importance of ETDs, there is a need to create more awareness among the researchers and the research managers in making ETDs publicly available. Therefore, we prepared this paper by undertaking a study on ETDs in Agriculture in India and Bangladesh. It was found that due to growing global awareness and interests about free and open accessibility and knowledge sharing (Open Access) among the researchers and research managers, till date about 100 research repositories have been established in India and 10 in Bangladesh respectively. However, when compared to the amount of research taking place in agriculture, very few online ETDs have been established in India and Bangladesh. The only popular ETDs in agriculture in India is KrishiPrabha (now part of KrishiKosh) and in Bangladesh, Digital Archive on Agricultural Theses and Journal (DAATJ). These repositories are now primarily being made available online for the academicians and research community. This paper discusses and presents the status of the ETDs in Agriculture in the NARS of India and Bangladesh and tries to suggest a way forward for making them openly available for the public to use, re-use and build upon. The paper also presents the results of a survey undertaken regarding ETDs awareness and usage among the NARS of India and Bangladesh.