Open Access to Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Status Report 2007

Peter Suber:

"More countries and institutions saw the logic of open access for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK announced a working demo of the European e-Theses portal, which harvests its contents from local, interoperable OA repositories in the participating countries. Sweden, which already had an OA portal of theses and dissertations, launched an OA collection of the English-language theses. Italy's Conference of University Rectors adopted guidelines for the deposit of ETDs in OA repositories. The Australian Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project released a Copyright Guide for Research Students, introducing OA and Creative Commons (CC) licenses for authors of theses and dissertations. ProQuest began giving universities open access to all of their own PQ-hosted ETDs. The University of Florida began digitizing past dissertations for open access. Ohio University's Russ College of Engineering and Technology and Center for International Studies decided to require electronic submission of theses and dissertations. Canada's University of Victoria streamlined its process for the electronic submission of ETDs. Students at Harvard College Free Culture launched an OA Thesis Repository for undergraduate senior theses." (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0011.110)