The DART-Europe E-theses Portal and ETDs from the Czech Republic

Martin MoyleDigital Curation Manager UCL Library Services, UK

m.moyle@ucl.ac.uk

4th Seminar on Accessing ETDs, Brno University of Technology, 21 October 2009

Contents

• DART-Europe: background• DART-Europe E-theses Portal

– overview– usage and feedback– benefits– how to contribute

DART-Europe: background

• Began in 2005 • Supporting the management, discoverability, re-

usability and preservation of Europe’s electronic research theses

• Working primarily with consortia and national libraries• Governed by Board of partners; resourced through

partner contributions• European Working Group of the NDLTD• Working closely with LIBER

The DART-Europe E-theses Portal

• A discovery service for open access, research-level electronic theses

• User focused• Easy for contributors to supply metadata• Low maintenance

Open access e-theses: why?

• Make the very latest research available to others• Highlight the work of early-career researchers• Showcase research groups and universities

– increase the impact of academic institutions– stimulate academic and industrial collaborations

• Public visibility helps to detect (and discourage) plagiarism

• Can include supplementary data sets,

models, multimedia, etc.

Impact of open access e-theses

• Two examples from the UCL Eprints repository:– Thomson, Catherine Claire (2003)

Danmarkshistorier: National imagination and novel in late twentieth-century Denmark

– 1309 downloads since January 2008– Wang, H. (2009)

New strategies for low noise, agile PLL frequency synthesis

– 214 downloads since deposit, June 2009

• Open access e-theses showcase your researchers and your institution

• The DART-Europe Portal helps to increase

this exposure

Aggregator

OAI-PMH HARVESTER

STANDARDISATION

User Interface

Local and national e-theses platforms

Consortial repositories Institutional repositories National repositories

Metadata harvesting

Researchers

http://www.dart-europe.eu

Metadata Metadata Metadata

DART-Europe E-theses Portal

Portal architecture: overview

DART-Europe E-theses Portal: facts and figures

As of 10 October 2009:

• 117,045 theses• 195 Universities• 15 European countries • ~80 new e-theses added daily

Simple search

Awarding University

Click a title to see full record…

Consortia and other providers are also credited

Link tosource record..

Search author, title, abstract, all

Various ways to limit search

Various browsing options...

Create marked lists for download

Search history

View new records

New records also via RSS feed

Feedback form

Portal usage

• Usage is gradually increasing...

• Last 6 months:

• 46,423 visits

• 40,676 visitors

• from 172 countries

Recent feedback

• Congratulations to all staff that operate the site (Brazil)• I must say that I really appreciate this projet, it is very nice

to be able to have access to so many documents. (France)• I'm a librarian from Thailand...It's very very useful for my

users. Thank you very much for everything from your site. (Thailand)

• I would like to ask you if it is possible for me to added my thesis on the website of European eThesis.

I just finished my university. (Slovakia)

DART-Europe Portal: benefits

• For contributors– raised visibility for Universities and consortia– low-cost participation

• For authors– added exposure for work– helps to introduce early-career academics to open

access and to copyright issues

• For researchers– aggregation aids discovery: benefits of

quantity, convenience, consistency– discovery leads straight to delivery

Portal: contributing countries

• Belgium• Estonia• Finland• France• Germany• Hungary• Ireland• Lithuania

• Netherlands• Norway• Portugal• Spain• Sweden• Switzerland• UK

Work in progress

with:• Austria• Denmark• Greece• Italy

How to contribute

• OAI-PMH is used• Metadata is collected in simple Dublin Core• DART-Europe needs:

– OAI Base URL– OAI set(s), if necessary, to identify theses that are

• open access• doctoral or research masters level

• DART can harvest direct from Universities• Or from theses.cz, if possible...

Aggregator

OAI-PMH HARVESTER

STANDARDISATION

User Interface

Czech Republic e-theses platforms

Theses.cz Institutional repositoriesMetadata harvesting

Researchers

http://www.dart-europe.eu

Metadata Metadata

DART-Europe E-theses Portal

Metadata

Harvesting models (1)(2)

Could restrictOAI-PMH access to DART-Europe IP, if needed

Summary

• Portal is simple, but a useful discovery tool• It is good for researchers and good for research• Participation is very simple• Participation helps to showcase the work of

researchers, Universities, and consortia• How can DART-Europe best work with the Czech

Republic Universities?

Further information

• Portal– http://www.dart-europe.eu

• DART-Europe– http://www.dart-europe.eu/About

• Email– m.moyle@ucl.ac.uk

• Thank you