ETDs in the UK Progress and Challenges Maja Maricevic Head of Higher Education October

2 The British Library

3 The British Library 150m+ items in multiple formats Annual growth - physical: approx 3 million new items (12 kilometres) Annual growth – digital: approx 80 terabytes Over 2bn pages of UK web content 6.5m audio items 60 million patents Over 260,000 journal titles

4 Scholarly communication environment Fast paced changes present challenge for the Library’s systems and budgets All UK research funders are implementing Open Access policies, mostly favouring ‘gold’ OA model Focus has been on journal articles and data – but there has also been a lot of discussion about Open Access for academic books ETDs are not included in the UK Open Access policies to date, but they are often part of open access policies issued by individual universities

5 Scholarly communication environment Latest developments - Journals Journals:Data: Academic Books: Journals: Universities UK Open Access Co-ordination Group report: Monitoring Transitions to Open Access, August 2015 (available on the Research Information Network website) two-thirds of the world’s journals offer an OA option of some kind The great majority of hybrid journals charge APCs of between £1,000 and £2,000 journals with an immediate OA model accounted for just under 17% of global articles in 2014 (compared to 14% in 2012) UK average for immediate OA 18.2%

6 Scholarly communication environment Latest developments - Data Journals:Data: Academic Books: Theses: Data: Research Councils UK are finalising a consultation on Open Research Data - Principles and good practice agreed by all UK stakeholders The Alan Turing Institute starts with operations UK national institute for data science Collaboration between the EPSRC, University of Oxford, University of Edinburgh, UCL, University of Warwick and University of Cambridge Based at the British Library

7 Scholarly communication environment Latest developments Journals:Data: Theses: Academic Books: Geoffrey Crossick’s study for HEFCE – Monographs and Open Access National monograph strategy – Jisc, British Library and academic libraries Academic Book of the Future project Academic Book Week – 9-16 November 2015

8 Scholarly communication environment ETDs Journals:Data: Academic Books: ETDs: When we talk about ETDs, we exclude Masters theses Not covered by the UK Open Access policies or any national policies Focused around EThOS – UK aggregation of PhD these run by the British Library RCUK requests that metadata follows EThOS format Covered by the non-print legal deposit, but we choose to implement it through an open collaborative project with the UK universities in order to maximise access Constant cycle of change and dialogue with UK universities Fully funded by the British Library

9 Serviced launched in 2010 Single point of access to all UK doctoral theses via an Open Access model Support HEIs in the transition from print to e-theses Help UK HEIs expand available content by digitising paper theses Demonstrate the quality of UK research and help attract students and research investment into UK HE.

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11 Where have we got to?

12 Records in EThOS

13 Full theses available via EThOS

14 Annual usage, by month

15 Usage – downloads v. clickthroughs

16 Digitisation on demand

17 Access to the full texts

18 Current objectives and priorities

19 EThOS objectives 2015 Make doctoral theses more visible Uncover top research by UK’s universities Support authors and funders of PhDs A record of all UK theses Free access to the full text of as many as possible

20 Full national record and access to full text

21 Full national record and access to full text

22 Metadata De-duplication Aggregation from multiple sources – and multiple formats (Marc, Dublin Core …) Inclusion of funders information and link with funders systems Re-use of the aggregated set – harvestable by institution; by subject; full-text only Advice on repository set-up and metadata export New initiatives – ORCiD, ISNI, DOI identifiers

23 Open Access & institutional repositories

24 How does EThOS help your research? “… helped me fill gaps in my research where published secondary material was unable to” “ … gave me a specific idea about my research topic and its design” “I look regularly to find out if a thesis has been written on a particular topic” “” … in the US international dissertations are difficult to get in a timely manner. EThOS is wonderful!” “It's allowed me to find and contact other researchers in allied areas.” “To get used to the size of argument required at doctoral level" User and author engagement

25 User and author engagement Increased use of EThOS data Looking into research trends over time – e.g. RAND study for the Alzheimer's Society about trends in dementia research workforce Discussion about specific needs of different subject groups – e.g. creative writing and art PhDs Doctoral student training and information – Open Access, early publication, plagiarism, new publication formats

26 What next?

27 Consulting on future direction Usefulness and ways of achieving a comprehensive national collection? Ensuring long-term preservation or focusing on a connect only model? Does e-Legal Deposit have a role? What is the value of EThOS to universities, funders, authors, non-HE users? Can we make our model simpler? Is there any appetite for research funders to mandate OA for PhD theses?

28 Unlocking Thesis Data project Jisc Research Data Spring project with Universities of Southampton and East London Examining thesis supplementary files and data Connecting core thesis to hidden files DOIs - DataCite ORCiDs

29 Technology and the future Continuous technology enhancement New types of PhD & thesis formats Research data & supplementary files Monograph publication & OA theses

30 Thank you Maja