Theses in the UK: PhD research, university repositories and EThOS ETD2014 International Conference 24 July 2014 Sara Gould

2 Boston Spa Leicester London

3 British Library, London St Pancras

4 British Library Reading Rooms

5 British Library Newsroom

6 British Library, Boston Spa

7 5 item breakfast!

8 5 item presentation: EThOS National and funder expectations Metadata Business model and sustainability Novel research use of aggregated theses

9 EThOS -

10 EThOS content - records

11 Access to the full thesis wherever possible

12 EThOS content – full text theses

13 Country of users

14 Usage – annual trend

15 Outline EThOS National and funder expectations Metadata Business model and sustainability Novel research use of aggregated theses

16 Opening up access to research HEFCE Research Excellence Framework (REF) –Mechanism for funding UK HE –Next REF will require all submissions to be OA –Target of 96% of all submissions –Extra credits for going beyond the minimum – e.g. text mining Research Councils –Public funding for research –RCUK Open access policy

17 Open access PhDs? Funder OA policies do not apply to theses No UK national mandate for deposit, reporting, open access or archiving Each institution develops their own policy OA theses embraced by most institutions

18 Research Councils UK Training Grants

19 Research Councils UK Training Grants TGC 12 Publication and Acknowledgement of Support “ … In the case of Ph.D. theses funded by Research Councils, metadata describing the thesis should be lodged in the institution's repository as soon as possible after award and a full text version should be available within a maximum of 12 months following award. It is expected that metadata in institutional repositories will be compatible with the metadata core set recommended by the ETHOS e-thesis online service.”

20 Outline EThOS National and funder expectations Metadata Business model and sustainability Novel research use of aggregated theses

21 Metadata 1 – Author identifiers ISNI Assigned to ‘authors’ 75,000 EThOS authors have an ISNI 50,000 potential matches Orcid Claimed by ‘researchers’ PhD often their first research output Import your EThOS thesis to your Orcid profile ISNI & Orcid are co-operating EThOS development needed to accommodate the data.

22 Metadata 2 – Sponsor body To meet OA expectations Demonstrate impact of funding No single authority list of funder names RIOXX – V2 expected soon:

23 RIOXX Metadata profile Research funder & project IDs

24 Metadata 3 – Thesis identifiers Provide a match key and reduce duplication Easier citation Easier linking, e.g. to underlying datasets held elsewhere Reduce link rot DOIs for theses?

25 Outline EThOS National and funder expectations Metadata Business model and sustainability Novel research use of aggregated theses

26 EThOS business model(s) 1.EThOS development integral to – and dependent on - digitisation funds from institutions Free to users  Too good to be true 2.Membership – institutions paid annual subscriptions Enabled development Focused the mind  Two-tier service; uncertain income 3.British Library core service Free to HE All institutions are equal Sustainable – costs and requirements are known.

27 Outline EThOS National and funder expectations Metadata Business model and sustainability Novel research use of aggregated theses

28 Novel research use of aggregated content “Dramatically under-used” “Sheer potential for research” 1.Metadata –Discipline-specific indexes, e.g…

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33 Novel research uses of the thesis corpus “Dramatically under-used” “Sheer potential for research” 1.Metadata –Discipline-specific indexes –Royal Society of Chemistry – analysis of research trends.

34 Novel research uses of the thesis corpus “Dramatically under-used” “Sheer potential for research” 2.Full texts –Using machines to assign LC subject headings to theses –“Academic English for Law” – training materials for subject- specific language learning using TDM

35 RSC National Compound Collection Royal Society of Chemistry text mining project Presentation at Chemistry/realizing-a-uk-national-compound-collectionhttp:// Chemistry/realizing-a-uk-national-compound-collection Example of extracted compound at BL/EThOS project to understand opportunities, issues, challenges BL facilitating use of UK theses with permission.

36 EThOS – next phase

37 Thank you!