Australian Critical Care Official journal of the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (ETD): THE CHANGING FACE OF DOCTORAL RESEARCH DISSEMINATION. Gavin D Leslie RN PhD Editor in Chief, Australian Critical Care Director Research Training Professor of Critical Care Nursing Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

Australian Critical Care Official journal of the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses ACC publishes peer-reviewed scholarly papers that report research findings, research-based reviews, discussion papers and commentaries which are of interest to an international readership of critical care practitioners, educators, administrators and researchers. ISSN: Gavin D Leslie RN PhD Editor in Chief, Australian Critical Care

Australian Critical Care (ACC)  First published 1988 as an Association Journal  Moved to a professional print publisher in 1993  Became a journal focused publication 2000  Critical Times Newsletter commenced  Listed with CINAHL  Contracted to publication house in 2006 (Elsevier)  Epub before print 2007  Listed on all major databases  First Impact Factor in 2012  Rejection rate about 65%, Read in 84 countries in 2014; Downloads over100,000/yr

Perth Western Australia

ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (ETD)  Co-Authors  Colin Macduff, PhD, RN, Faculty, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K.  Linda M. Goodfellow, PhD, RN, FAAN & David Nolfi, MLS, AHIP Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A  David Nolfi, MLS, AHIP, Health Sciences Librarian at Gumberg Library, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A  Susan Copeland, MPhil, PhD, DipLib, MCLIP, Information Resource Manager, Library Service Robert Gordon Aberdeen University, Scotland, U.K.  Diana Blackwood, BA, DipLib, ALIA, Faculty Librarian of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

Background  ETDs?  Digital publishing of theses in an open access environment which is a freely available resource.  Why would you do it?  Share your work with a global audience, including researchers, higher degree by research students, industry practitioners and the public.  Have your work indexed by Google Scholar  Make it easy for other researchers to cite your thesis.  Ensure the ongoing preservation of a digital copy of your thesis.  Receive a permanent and citable web link to your thesis.  It is mandated in some countries or by granting bodies

Background (con’t)  Common concerns about ETD  Copyright permission – if a thesis contains copyright material the copyright holder may not allow you to make that material openly accessible.  Intellectual property– if any of the material in the thesis is subject to Intellectual Property obligations, claims or restrictions imposed by external organisations that supported your research (e.g. constraints on publishing, confidentiality agreements, pending patents). A part or time limited embargo is possible

Accessing ETD  Local Institutional Repositories  IR lists e.g. Australian Open Access Support group  SHERPA UK Repositories  National Portals (to name just a few)  China, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, UK  USA -  International Portals (plus others)  academic open access web resources including theses.  CORE – (COnnecting REpositories) aggregates all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public  NDLTD – provides a very useful list of links to theses portals from various countries around the world

Phase 1- Quantitative Study Goodfellow L.M., Macduff C., Leslie G., Copeland S., Nolfi D. & Blackwood D. (2012) Nurse scholars’ knowledge and use of electronic theses and dissertations. International Nursing Review 59, 511–518  Descriptive survey design to ascertain knowledge and use of ETDs in four English-speaking countries  Purposeful sampling used to target schools of nursing that met certain criteria and appeared to be in the vanguard of ETD development  ETD Survey consisted of two parts:  1) 11 Demographic Questions;  2) 14 Questions about participants’ knowledge and use of ETDs and ETD digital libraries

Phase 1 –Results & Conclusions  N=209 [Australia (n=33); New Zealand (n=1); UK (n=103); US (n=66)]  44% knew how to access their university ETD library  18% knew how to access national/international ETD libraries  27% had cited an ETD  Majority of nursing faculty, students and alumni have little knowledge in accessing ETD digital libraries; few have used ETDs to their fullest potential

Phase 2 – Qualitative Inquiry Macduff C., Goodfellow L.M., Leslie G., Copeland S., Nolfi D. & Blackwood D. (2015) Slipping through the net: the paradox of nursing’s electronic theses and dissertations.. International Nursing Review (under review)  Gain deeper insight into the benefits and challenges ETD users face  Semi-structured interviews via phone/skype (N=16)  Confirmed survey results  Rich data yielded several themes  Positive attitude toward ETDs  Several of the student participants used ETDs to better understand application of theoretical frameworks, methods and statistical analyses

Phase 3 – Global Initiative to Promote ETD Engagement and Development  Founded International Network for Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Nursing (INETDIN)  For the purpose of building an innovative global community of users and developers of Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Nursing  Launched INETDIN interactive website for nurse scholars worldwide to share knowledge; raise ETD awareness –

Founding Partners Aberdeen Scotland, Pittsburgh PA USA, Perth Australia

Objectives of INETDIN 1. Raise awareness of nursing's diverse repositories of open access electronic theses and dissertations, advocating for these internationally 2. Act as a conduit to relevant Institutional Repositories, national portals and international portals housing these resources 3. Build a formative, foundational international network of doctoral advisors and students sharing knowledge and usage of ETDs within and across particular cognate areas

Objectives (cont.) 4.Foster relevant skills and knowledge more widely among nurses in clinical practice and academia to enable increased access and use of ETD 5.Foster innovative formatting and content of nursing theses and dissertations, realizing the explanatory benefits of relevant electronic media 6. Undertake relevant national and international research in order to build nursing's knowledge base in this area 7. Raise awareness of the activities of our member institutions and key partner organizations

We Invite You  To access and use the INETDIN website to learn more about ETDs and ETD digital libraries; share your experiences and knowledge; exchange ideas  To spread the word to students and colleagues  To become a partner and advocate for ETD development and engagement

Related Resources  Interagency Council on Information Resources in Nursing (ICIRN)  An example of a US university with Nursing ETDs, look at University of Illinois at Chicago. Repository site is and the Nursing ETD collection is available at: