Electronic Theses And Dissertations Research Articles

Building datasets to support information extraction and structure parsing from electronic theses and dissertations

AbstractDespite the millions of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) publicly available online, digital library services for ETDs have not evolved past simple search and browse at the metadata level. We need better digital library services that allow users to discover and explore the content buried in these long documents. Recent advances in machine learning have shown promising results for decomposing documents into their constituent parts, but these models and techniques require data for training and evaluation. In this article, we present high-quality datasets to train, evaluate, and compare machine learning methods in tasks that are specifically suited to identify and extract key elements of ETD documents. We explain how we construct the datasets by manual labeling the data or by deriving labeled data through synthetic processes. We demonstrate how our datasets can be used to develop downstream applications and to evaluate, retrain, or fine-tune pre-trained machine learning models. We describe our ongoing work to compile benchmark datasets and exploit machine learning techniques to build intelligent digital libraries for ETDs.

ETDPC: A Multimodality Framework for Classifying Pages in Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) have been proposed, advocated, and generated for more than 25 years. Although ETDs are hosted by commercial or institutional digital library repositories, they are still an understudied type of scholarly big data, partially because they are usually longer than conference and journal papers. Segmenting ETDs will allow researchers to study sectional content. Readers can navigate to particular pages of interest, to discover and explore the content buried in these long documents. Most existing frameworks on document page classification are designed for classifying general documents, and perform poorly on ETDs. In this paper, we propose ETDPC. Its backbone is a two-stream multimodal model with a cross-attention network to classify ETD pages into 13 categories. To overcome the challenge of imbalanced labeled samples, we augmented data for minority categories and employed a hierarchical classifier. ETDPC outperforms the state-of-the-art models in all categories, achieving an F1 of 0.84 -- 0.96 for 9 out of 13 categories. We also demonstrated its data efficiency. The code and data can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/lamps-lab/ETDMiner/tree/master/etd_segmentation).

Metadata matters: evaluating the quality of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) descriptions in Malaysian institutional repositories

This study investigates the quality of metadata records in institutional repositories for Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) in three Malaysian research universities. The study employs metrics derived from Bruce and Hillmann (2004) to evaluate the completeness, accuracy, and consistency of 1138 metadata records from the three institutional repositories, and utilizes quantitative content analysis to identify variants of Dublin Core metadata elements used to describe ETDs. The study uncovers a range of issues with metadata completeness, accuracy, and consistency, emphasizing the need for standardized systems to ensure quality metadata. By highlighting the importance of quality metadata for ETD collections, the study provides valuable insights for academic libraries in designing and describing ETD collections. Overall, this study sheds light on the current metadata practices and elements used in ETD collections, and underscores the significance of effective metadata management for the dissemination and discoverability of scholarly works.

Performance of search engines in harvesting grey literature

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to examine how far search engines have succeeded in retrieving electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) using different search techniques and approaches. This study also compared the search results of search engines to identify the most suitable search engine for searching and retrieving the ETDs.Design/methodology/approachFifty ETDs have been selected using systematic random sampling techniques from Shodhganga (a reservoir of Indian theses). These ETDs have been searched through prominent search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo and Open Access Theses and Dissertation (OATD) using different search approaches and techniques.FindingsThe overall performance of the search engines revealed that Google retrieved most of the ETDs (89%) followed by OATD (88.5%), Yahoo (78%) and Google Scholar (76%), respectively.Originality/valueThe results have brought into light interesting findings regarding search engines in retrieving grey literature.

Innovation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sacramento State’s electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) collection faces a common problem: how to achieve 508 compliance, ensure accessibility for all users, and promote principles of universal design. Providing electronic collections and resources that are accessible to all users is an important part of promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion for our students and end users. In Spring 2020 we launched a new initiative to hire and train a single student employee focused on 508 remediation for approximately 600 previously digitized theses and projects, prior to their ingest in the institutional repository. When our campus closed due to the COVID‐19 pandemic in March 2020 we made the decision to expand this opportunity to more library student employees and provide a project they could work on remotely. By converting this to a remote work project, we were able to keep all student assistants employed who were interested in remote work, from nearly every department in the library. We were able to expand the scope of our remediation efforts, with the original project growing from all retrospectively digitized theses (approximately 1,000 in all) to all ETD content in the institutional repository (an additional 3,500).

Role in Contribution to Open Access Repository by the Northeast Universities in India

Every institution needs repositories for storing, organizing, and presenting digital content, as well as maintaining digital resources for long-term digital access. The authors discussed India’s OpenDOAR status, a quality-assured listing of open-access repositories globally, with a particular emphasis on the Shodhganga repository. The focus of this paper is on universities in Northeast India that deposit Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) in the Shodhganga repository. This study depicts repositories in India since their inception. The Northeastern states are given special treatment by the Central Government and INFLIBNET in the form of Planners (Promotion of Library Automation and Networking in North Eastern Region). The study’s main goals are to disclose the knowledge outcome as well as the knowledge gap that exists in this geographical location. The study helps determine the number of universities in Northeast India that follow the “University Grants Commission (UGC) Minimum Standards & Procedure for Award of M.Phil. / Ph.D. Degree, Regulation, 2009,” which mandated that electronic version of Theses be uploaded to the Shodhganga repository for the benefit of scholars across the country.

Challenges and Strategies for Managing Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Public University Libraries of Bangladesh

In the recent years due to the advent of ICT Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) have playing a significant impact on academic community through teaching, research, and learning. This study aims to identify the challenges and present some strategies for the maintenance of ETDs in public university libraries of Bangladesh. In this connection for ensuring representativeness, researcher purposively selected 04 public university libraries out of 49 under the investigation. Data were collected from the selected university libraries and analyzed using SPSS v-20. The result highlighted that ETDs leading towards dynamism among the universities. Some of the major challenges for smooth development of ETDs were common metadata format, standard preservation and dissemination policy, networked central database, ICT infrastructure and adequate skilled manpower.

Adoption of institutional repositories for electronic theses and dissertations projects in Zimbabwe’s public academic libraries

Theses and dissertations (TDs) are an invaluable scholarly literature output of universities’ graduates contributing to the fulfilment of universities’ mandates to impact national development through research. Public universities in Zimbabwe have adopted Open access institutional repositories (IR) to run electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) programs. This study sought to determine the development levels of the ETD collections, establish the software platforms being used and, find out challenges being faced in developing ETD collections in the repositories. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology was adopted while a mixed methods approach was employed. From eight universities, data were collected from Library Directors, assistant/IR librarians, IRs, policy documents and OpenDoar through questionnaires, interviews and bibliometric analysis. Qualitative data was analysed thematically while SPSS was adopted to analyse quantitative data. Findings showed slow development of the ETD collections while DSpace is the software of choice across the universities. Faculty cooperation in depositing electronic theses and dissertations is negligent, thus affecting progress of the initiative. Mandating deposit of electronic copies of theses and dissertations would propagate population of the repositories and increase visibility of the research.

ETDs in ProQuest and the institutional repository: A descriptive study of the current workflows available for dual online submission

The following study used primary and secondary data sources to identify and describe the current workflows available for the dual online submission11In the context of this study, online submission refers to a process that requires network connectivity. of graduate electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) into the institutional repository (IR) and the ProQuest system. The main objective of the study is to provide a comprehensive examination of these workflows and to describe their characteristics and capabilities to manage the different aspects and stages of the ETD submittal cycle, from online deposit to publication and distribution. Workflow aspects discussed in this study include: ETD review process, metadata management, publishing options and access restrictions, consent agreements, embargo control, payments and fees, preservation, options to opt-out from ProQuest submission, and turnaround time for the ETDs to display in the systems, among others. Interoperability aspects between ProQuest and the IR systems, in addition to issues encountered with the workflows, are also discussed. Institutions looking for practical decision-making information on ETD workflows and processes could derive much benefit from this study.

Digital Preservation, Accessibility, and Use of Electronic Theses and Dissertations in University Libraries in Nigeria

This study examined the concepts and aspects of digitization; digital preservation; digital resources; and access to, use of, and challenges posed by electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) in university libraries in six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. It adopted a documentary research approach to highlight a critical examination of the various aspects of digitization (to provide electronic information services) as practiced by various university libraries and some library schools in Nigeria. Print theses and dissertations (T/Ds) are digitized by document scanning or direct text input (alphanumeric characters) into computer systems. Digital resources include e-books, e-journals, ETDs, and other forms of documents in electronic formats. ETDs are preserved through digitization, archiving, and creation of websites and databases as well as through floating institutional digital repositories (IDRs). ETD access is facilitated by tools such as automated library catalogs and classification schemes, online public access catalog, indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, and mobile devices such as smartphones and personal computers. ETDs are capable of meeting research and publication needs of teaching, information service delivery, and knowledge sharing. Challenges to digital preservation, access, and use of ETDs include inadequate information and communications technology (ICT) facilities, low ICT proficiency, and erratic power supply. Thus, this study recommended that management teams of universities in Nigeria commit adequate funding to procure ICT facilities, thus providing automatic standby generating plants and increasing incentives for library and digital preservation staff. Collaboration among stakeholders such as university libraries and the National Library of Nigeria should be encouraged to create a national union catalog of T/Ds in Nigerian universities and thus enable a platform for a national database. Access to IDRs will further strengthen worldwide university networking. This study will thus add value to the existing studies on ICT application in university libraries and e-resources in university libraries in Nigeria.

Otrouha: A Corpus of Arabic ETDs and a Framework for Automatic Subject Classification

Although the Arabic language is spoken by more than 300 million people and is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (UN), there has been less research done on Arabic text data (compared to English) in the realm of machine learning, especially in text classification. In the past decade, Arabic data such as news, tweets, etc. have begun to receive some attention. Although automatic text classification plays an important role in improving the browsability and accessibility of data, Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) have not received their fair share of attention, in spite of the huge number of benefits they provide to students, universities, and future generations of scholars. There are two main roadblocks to performing automatic subject classification on Arabic ETDs. The first is the unavailability of a public corpus of Arabic ETDs. The second is the linguistic complexity of the Arabic language; that complexity is particularly evident in academic documents such as ETDs. To address these roadblocks, this paper presents Otrouha, a framework for automatic subject classification of Arabic ETDs, which has two main goals. The first is building a Corpus of Arabic ETDs and their key metadata such as abstracts, keywords, and title to pave the way for more exploratory research on this valuable genre of data. The second is to provide a framework for automatic subject classification of Arabic ETDs through different classification models that use classical machine learning as well as deep learning techniques. The first goal is aided by searching the AskZad Digital Library, which is part of the Saudi Digital Library (SDL). AskZad provides other key metadata of Arabic ETDs, such as abstract, title, and keywords. The current search results consist of abstracts of Arabic ETDs. This raw data then undergoes a pre-processing phase that includes stop word removal using the Natural Language Tool Kit (NLTK), and word lemmatization using the Farasa API. To date, abstracts of 518 ETDs across 12 subjects have been collected. For the second goal, the preliminary results show that among the machine learning models, binary classification (one-vs.-all) performed better than multiclass classification. The maximum per subject accuracy is 95%, with an average accuracy of 68% across all subjects. It is noteworthy that the binary classification model performed better for some categories than others. For example, Applied Science and Technology shows 95% accuracy, while the category of Administration shows 36%. Deep learning models resulted in higher accuracy but lower F-measure; their overall performance is lower than machine learning models. This may be due to the small size of the dataset as well as the imbalance in the number of documents per category. Work to collect additional ETDs will be aided by collaborative contributions of data from additional sources.

Building and Using Digital Libraries for ETDs

Despite the high value of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), the global collection has seen limited use. To extend such use, a new approach to building digital libraries (DLs) is needed. Fortunately, recent decades have seen that a vast amount of “gray literature” has become available through a diverse set of institutional repositories as well as regional and national libraries and archives. Most of the works in those collections include ETDs and are often freely available in keeping with the open-access movement, but such access is limited by the services of supporting information systems. As explained through a set of scenarios, ETDs can better meet the needs of diverse stakeholders if customer discovery methods are used to identify personas and user roles as well as their goals and tasks. Hence, DLs, with a rich collection of services, as well as newer, more advanced ones, can be organized so that those services, and expanded workflows building on them, can be adapted to meet personalized goals as well as traditional ones, such as discovery and exploration.

Six Steps Toward Improving Discoverability of Ph.D. Dissertations

This study proposes six steps that scientific institutions should undertake to increase the visibility and accessibility of their dissertations; these steps were implemented in the digital library of the University of Novi Sad. An analysis was conducted thereafter to evaluate the success, and it was found that the six steps and associated strategies were successful, with 400,000 downloads having been performed since the digital library was operational. Although this study presents six steps for improving electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) discoverability in the digital library at the University of Novi Sad, these steps can easily be customized and implemented for ETD digital libraries at any scientific institution.

The Role of Institutional Repositories in Advancing Open Scholarship: A Case Study from the United Arab Emirates University

The digitization of theses and dissertations at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) began five years ago with the Digital Commons institutional repository (IR) platform, Scholarworks, employed for the purpose. The project, initiated by the University Library, exemplifies how academic libraries can take the lead in advocating for digital preservation and open access publishing of institutional research materials. This case study describes how the library’s Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) initiative has provided an excellent model to the UAEU for it to start disseminating its research output and how the library’s copyright and open access policies have been crucial for the project’s success. We summarize the UAEU’s IR objectives, including future expansion of publication types beyond the current ETD and journal collections. We identified opportunities for improvements to the repository, such as enhanced workflows, librarians’ capabilities, system performance, and increased discoverability and metadata. Our study highlights the successes and technical challenges of developing the UAEU IR and its central role in supporting open scholarship at the university.

ETDplus Toolkit [Tool Review

Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) have traditionally taken the form of PDFs and ETD programs and their submission and curation procedures have been built around this format. However, graduate students are increasingly creating non-PDF files during their research, and in some cases these files are just as or more important than the PDFs that must be submitted to satisfy degree requirements. As a result, both graduate students and ETD administrators need training and resources to support the handling of a wide variety of complex digital objects. The Educopia Institute's ETDplus Toolkit provides a highly usable set of modules to address this need, openly licensed to allow for reuse and adaption to a variety of potential use cases.

Literature Review in Institutional Repositories of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: Literature Review or reviewing intellectual production on the subject of institutional repositories of Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) is an attempt to identify, define and compile completed research reports, articles of scientific periodicals, books, theses and other materials on specific aspects of the topic. During the last twenty years during which the topic of our current study began to emerge and grow, surrounding what has been written and published on the topic of our research helps to gain familiarity with it, proposes new approaches to planning the study and helps us develop a stronger understanding of theoretical implications, in order to benefit from those theses and scientific papers and make bibliographic control on them And access to and benefit from its contents, so it does not remain confined to the drawers and shelves, and enables the community to maximize its returns and activate its results. The study aims to gain familiarity and knowledge of what has been published from sources and references in this field, to help Egyptian libraries and other academic institutions in planning to build and develop an institutional repository for their university theses production in view of the urgent necessity and urgent need it represents, answering most questions and posing all the problems and challenges that Confront these institutions when initiating and thinking about starting or planning to build such a project.

Literature Review in Institutional Repositories of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Literature Review or reviewing intellectual production on the subject ofinstitutional repositories of Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) is anattempt to identify, define and compile completed research reports, articles ofscientific periodicals, books, theses and other materials on specific aspects of thetopic.During the last twenty years during which the topic of our current studybegan to emerge and grow, surrounding what has been written and published onthe topic of our research helps to gain familiarity with it, proposes newapproaches to planning the study and helps us develop a stronger understandingof theoretical implications, in order to benefit from those theses and scientificpapers and make bibliographic control on them And access to and benefit fromits contents, so it does not remain confined to the drawers and shelves, andenables the community to maximize its returns and activate its results. The studyaims to gain familiarity and knowledge of what has been published from sourcesand references in this field, to help Egyptian libraries and other academicinstitutions in planning to build and develop an institutional repository for theiruniversity theses production in view of the urgent necessity and urgent need itrepresents, answering most questions and posing all the problems andchallenges that Confront these institutions when initiating and thinking aboutstarting or planning to build such a project

Usability effectiveness of a federated search system for electronic theses and dissertations in Nigerian institutional repositories

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the usability effectiveness of a webware for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) in Nigerian repositories. The webware (etdsearch.com.ng) is a web application system that curates ETDs from three sampled Federal government-owned universities. The system also links users to the repositories where the theses and dissertations are hosted.Design/methodology/approachThe case study research strategy was adopted for the study. Sixty postgraduate students from three universities were randomly selected. A usability evaluation questionnaire based on the ISO 9241-11 framework was used to collect data after performing pre-defined queries/tasks based on the informational and transactional query models. The research questions were analysed using the median of the performance score (fx) of the three universities for each item evaluated, while the Kruskall–Wallis test by ranks was used to test the null hypothesis at a 5% level of significance.FindingsThe study answered two research questions and tested two null hypotheses on the usability effectiveness of the webware based on the informational and transactional queries. The participants found the ETD search system effectively useable. In addition, there was no significant difference in the opinions of the participants.Research limitations/implicationsThe webware used simulated repositories as a feed bed for the ETDs in order to have control over the workability of the repositories. Thus, the results may differ slightly when “live” repositories are used.Practical implicationsThe effectiveness of a webware that aggregates ETDs in Nigerian repositories will present libraries in Nigeria with evidence on how these systems work and can be improved upon.Originality/valueThere is a dearth of literature on practical usability studies of digital information systems in Nigerian libraries.

An analysis of use and performance data aggregated from 35 institutional repositories

PurposeThis study demonstrates that aggregated data from the Repository Analytics and Metrics Portal (RAMP) have significant potential to analyze visibility and use of institutional repositories (IR) as well as potential factors affecting their use, including repository size, platform, content, device and global location. The RAMP dataset is unique and public.Design/methodology/approachThe webometrics methodology was followed to aggregate and analyze use and performance data from 35 institutional repositories in seven countries that were registered with the RAMP for a five-month period in 2019. The RAMP aggregates Google Search Console (GSC) data to show IR items that surfaced in search results from all Google properties.FindingsThe analyses demonstrate large performance variances across IR as well as low overall use. The findings also show that device use affects search behavior, that different content types such as electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) may affect use and that searches originating in the Global South show much higher use of mobile devices than in the Global North.Research limitations/implicationsThe RAMP relies on GSC as its sole data source, resulting in somewhat conservative overall numbers. However, the data are also expected to be as robot free as can be hoped.Originality/valueThis may be the first analysis of aggregate use and performance data derived from a global set of IR, using an openly published dataset. RAMP data offer significant research potential with regard to quantifying and characterizing variances in the discoverability and use of IR content.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2020-0328

Global electronic thesis and dissertation repositories – collection diversity and management issues

This article discovers the collection diversity of electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) repositories based on key parameters such as regional distribution, subject classification, language diversity, etc. and identifies the critical management issues of the ETD repositories related to collection management, software management, content management and metadata policies. The ETD repositories were identified in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). The required data were manually collected from the OpenDOAR and websites of repositories to achieve the prescribed objectives of the study. The data were later tabulated, analysed and interpreted using simple arithmetic techniques. The study was limited to the ETD repositories available in the OpenDOAR, and findings cannot be generalized across repositories and directories. It provides insights about ETD repositories worldwide, highlights their critical management issues and suggests mechanisms for their sustainable growth and development. This article is purely based on research and its findings are valid for scholars, faculty members, institutions – as well as administrators and managers of the ETD repositories.