Janice El-Bayoumi, Manager of Client Services, Integrated Technology Services, University of New Brunswick, Canada. jgb@unb.ca
Lisa Charlong, Assistant Director, Electronic Text Centre, Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick, Canada. lcharlong@unb.ca
In the summer of 2001, the University of New Brunswick's Graduate Student Association (GSA), Fredericton campus requested that UNB investigate the possibility of implementing an Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) program.. An ETD Ad Hoc Committee was formed, with membership from both UNB and the GSA, to research general ETD issues. They also investigated the ETD programs of several other institutions in varying stages of ETD implementation, as well the services offered by the National Library of Canada. Based on what was learned, the Ad Hoc committee developed an ETD pilot program with an electronic submission process and plans to include an on-line editorial office.
An ETD is an electronic document explaining the research of a graduate student. Ideally these documents are submitted electronically, are searchable and freely available over the Internet. In the summer of 2001, the UNB Graduate Student Association (GSA) approached UNB's Integrated Technology Services (ITS) department and asked it to investigate the possibility of introducing an Electronic Dissertation and Thesis (ETD) program on campus. They based their request on George J. Soete's article “Issues and Innovations in Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Soete, 1998) and strong support from graduate students.
The central goals of an ETD program are improved accessibility to theses and dissertations, public access, and empowering students to use hypertext and multimedia technologies as part of their work. Another benefit cited in ETD literature is the development of practical skills for students for electronic submission to journals. These are acquired when students go through a similar process at their own institution. For institutions that do not require paper in addition to electronic submission, costs may also be reduced.
ITS assembled a ETD Ad Hoc Committee with representatives from both UNB and
the UNB Fredericton campus Graduate Student Association. Committee members
from UNB included the Associate Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Dr.
Ed Biden,
The Director and Assistant Director of the Electronic Text Centre, Alan Burk
and Lisa Charlong, and the ITS Manager of Client Services, Janice El-Bayoumi. The
GSA membership was GSA President, Jose Rodrique. The mandate of this committee
was to investigate ETD issues and the feasibility of implementing a local ETD
program. The committee researched the available web literature, and obtained
input from other local campus groups whose members would be affected by the
implementation of an ETD program. As well, several institutions in various
stages of an ETD program were contacted to learn how they handled the issues
surrounding ETDs and to glean from them their lessons learned.
The result of this investigation was a pilot project that started in November of 2002. The program is piloting not only the final submission and publication of theses and dissertation on the web, but, as of this writing, hopes to pilot an on-line editorial office. The on-line editorial office will electronically manage the review process that each candidate's thesis undergoes during development, much like current commercial online publishing peer review software and workflows.
Institutions must address a number of issues before adopting an ETD program: the most important revolve around resources, publication, and copyright. Formats for ETD submission, dissemination and archiving must be decided. Workload shifts or increases must be determined and funding obtained to support them. Finally, where local ETD initiatives fit into national and international strategies should be addressed as well as the role universities play in these strategies.
Universities must determine how to deal with copyright and publication concerns. Questions such as when should a thesis be released and to whom? How should copyright be handled? If a thesis is distributed on the web and then the author wishes to publish a related paper in a journal, will the journal consider the material already published? Will dissemination on the web increase the incidences of plagiarism?
Submission, distribution, and archiving formats must be determined. Should the student be able to submit in any electronic format? How will a submission format affect the work an institution must do to get the document ready for electronic distribution and archiving? If submission formats are to be limited, what should they be limited to? How can data integrity be maintained when converting documents from a word processing format to another format such as PDF? Is providing templates in popular word processing formats an effective workflow in publishing, distributing and archiving files? Should submission, publication and archive formats be the same, or can they be different? For distribution, what formats are most accessible to a online researcher? For archive purposes, proprietary formats such as PDF files may be easy to use, but may be inaccessible in a few years. Other formats, such as XML may be good from a longevity point of view, but might be more difficult to implement as a workflow. Also, at the time of writing, an XML DTD or schema for ETDs has not yet been agreed upon in the ETD community. Finally, should both paper and electronic versions of the work be archived?
What are the workload and cost implications of running an ETD program? How will the electronic thesis be processed? How will it be sent to the National Library? Should the library try to digitize old theses? Who should verify ETDs: the student, graduate school, the library? Will the initiative require more staff or less staff? Will the program require additional software or training for the student?
Who should be setting the standards? Should each institution be making its own decisions, or should a national or international body be determining standards and identifying best practices in all or some workflow elements?
Below is a summary of responses to these issues by a number of institutions that have ETD programs. The authors apologize for any errors in presenting them. A description of the UNB pilot follows immediately after.
The National Library of Canada embarked on a theses and dissertation program in 1965 when it began providing access to Canadian theses and dissertations at the request of deans of Canadian graduate schools. They wanted a national program to make theses and dissertations that had been accepted by Canadian universities easily accessible to researchers. The service had two main objectives: to preserve theses to facilitate access to them.
Today, with the participation of 55 Canadian universities, the National Library offers the following thesis services:
The National Library of Canada embarked on an ETD program of sorts in 1997 when it began providing, through its contract with UMI Electronic Publication Services a number of ETD services [HREF2]. The ETD Committee was surprised to find that many of its thesis and dissertations submitted after this date were already available in electronic format (Balatti 2002). Information is also available from the UMI site to help students with their digital submissions [HREF3]. The current contract between the National Library of Canada and UMI, effective since September 2002, details the ETD services. Some of these services are:
Most Canadian universities encourage their students to submit their theses and dissertations to the National Library of Canada. Part of this submission is the completion of the copyright form assuring the NLC of all permissions on any included copyrighted materials. While authors maintain copyright of their work, the contractor, UMI, has non-exclusive permission to publish, sell and distribute theses.
Universities that support the submission of ETDS can now upload ETDs at the UMI website, similar to what the NDLTD has in place. A description of the NDLTD initiative is provided later in this document. UMI's electronic publication format is PDF. Acceptable multimedia formats for ETDs are on the UMI website as well required supporting documents required for submission. [HREF4]
The author of the theses is responsible for how his or her ETD appears when it is accessed or printed. UMI makes a number of technical recommendations to assist authors in this area. [HREF5]
Institutional, national, international responsibilities
A number of organizations in Canada such as the National Organization of Graduate Schools, the National Organization of Graduate Student Associations and many university libraries would like to see the National Library of Canada take the lead in setting ETD standards in such areas as submission formats, metadata, and free distribution. In addition, the National Library could identify and promote ETD best practices.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known as Virginia Tech, is a pioneer of the electronic thesis and dissertation initiative, having instituted an ETD program in 1995. Their ETD website offers extensive information for not only Virginia Tech students producing ETDs, but also for any institution that is or has set up an ETD program.
At Virginia Tech, copyright rests with the author of the thesis. Help information is readily available from the Virginia Tech ETD website. The Virginia Tech Graduate School does not require registration of copyright for ETDs. The library controls thesis access based on information provided by the student at the time of submission. Four access levels are available: unrestricted availability to the world, available only to the university community, no access (limited time) and mixed access. Access controls may be applied to individual thesis chapters.
Although Virginia Tech experimented with XML in its original pilot program, all current files are stored as PDFs. The format of choice for most students is PDF, with a very small percentage submitting in either LaTeX or XML format. The PDF files are text based, not image files. At Virginia Tech, although the longevity of the proprietary PDF format is a concern, they believe that tools will be developed to convert PDF files to other formats as required. (McMillan, 2002).
Virginia Tech has fully adopted an ETD program. Students no longer submit paper copies of their theses or dissertations. Resources used to process paper copies have been reallocated to the ETD process. Theses produced prior to the introduction of the ETD program are available only in paper copy. The removal of the requirement for paper submission has contributed to lowering the cost of their ETD program.
Although Virginia Tech offers seminars tutorials for students on Word/WordPerfect,
Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Distiller, and LaTeX, they have found that most students
already have the technical skills needed to create an ETD. An extensive
FAQ answers most student questions in both the technical and process areas of
the ETD program. Students are expected to verify the electronic copy of
their thesis prior to submission. The graduate school reviews the submissions
for formatting errors. In addition, upon submission of their thesis, graduate
students are required to evaluate the submission process, providing valuable
feedback and enabling process improvement. An additional optional evaluation
form is available for those doing research using ETDs.
In the late 1980's Virginia Tech was one of the original members of a group interested in a national initiative for ETDs. This group participated in the development of the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). Organizations participating in NDLTD may have their ETDs freely available and searchable through the NDLTD OAI based Union Catalog web site, through a federated search site and through a locally installed open source ETD database.
At Virginia Tech, the ETD program has been very well received by both students and the graduate school. (McMillan 2002). A study of circulation statistics demonstrates the ETDs are accessed much more frequently than paper theses, filling the promise of improved accessibility. Graduate students have gained additional skills, both in electronic submission and in using electronic resources.
If they had to do it over again, Virginia Tech would have more actively involved their budget office. Graduate School involvement at an early stage in a project is also important, not only in adapting regulation, but in getting information out to departments, faculty and graduate students. It should also be noted that many departments still require paper copies of theses for review purposes.
The University of Waterloo began its ETD pilot program in 1999. Information for students on the pilot is available through their ETD website. Students presently have the choice to submit paper or electronic versions of their theses. Although they are still working out some challenges in their process, University of Waterloo hopes to make electronic submission mandatory sometime during the next two to four years. (Jewell 2002).
The University of Waterloo is using the Canadian National Library's form for non-exclusive right to reproduce thesis [HREF8]. Thesis submission requires completion of this form. All ETDs submitted at the University of Waterloo are made publicly available on the Internet. Students are pointed the to NDLTD's web page discussing publication issues. If the student is considering publishing they are advised to familiarize themselves with the prospective publishers policies before submitting their thesis electronically. In addition students applying for thesis circulation restrictions, whether in whole or partial, are advised not to submit their work electronically. A common reason cited for restriction circulation is because patents are pending.
Students can use whatever software they wish when creating their thesis, however they must use a postscript file as their submission format. The University of Waterloo archives its ETDs locally, in postscript format with metadata in XML. The postscript format is also submitted electronically to the Canadian National Library for microfiching. Theses with multimedia content are archived locally, but access to them is not guaranteed. When submitting ETDs, students are required to sign a form acknowledging they know that their thesis will be made publicly available over the web. PDF is the publication format.
Students are responsible for the production of the postscript file used in electronic submission. The School of Graduate Studies assumes the responsibility for producing a searchable PDF from the student submission. For student wishing to submit an ETD, the University of Waterloo provides one ETD training session per term, plus one-on-one assistance when requested. When an ETD is submitted, photocopies of the thesis are not required. This has resulted in some cost savings.
University of Waterloo's theses are publicly available, researchers may access them directly from the university ETD website, or locate them through NDLTD. Purchased copies are available from UMI electronic theses collections
Graduate students were an important part in the development of Waterloo's ETD pilot. The students have been enthusiastic about the benefits of ETD and were particularly appreciative about the ability to submit their work remotely. They feel that access to assistance is important (Jewel, 2002).
The Université de Montréal was one of the first Canadian universities to explore electronic theses and dissertations. It ran an ETD pilot program for two years, 1998 – 2000, and now has solid ETD processes and support in place. The Université de Montréal partnered with the Université de Lyon to create a portal ETD site, Cybertheses.
Similar to other institutions, all authors of ETDs own copyright on their work. An interesting feature at Montreal was their desire to circumvent a commercial service provider such as UMI. Montreal reported that it has spent approximately one half million per year on its UMI process. (Beaudry 2002) ETDs at the university would be an open access alternative to this commercial route. In terms of publication concerns, it was noted that electronic versions made plagiarism easier to identify.
Students in the pilot project at Université de Montréal, submitted their files in Word or WordPerfect using provided templates. Files were converted from Word to RTF and were then converted to SGML in compliance with the TEI Lite DTD. Omnimark was used for the mapping of RTF to SGML structures. SGML was delivered to the web as was XML, HTML and PDF. If students wished an archived version of their ETD they were required to use the templates to create XML versions. Otherwise a PDF version and associated metadata were created and archived.
For the pilot project period, one full time analyst position was created as well as five technical staff positions. Students were (and are) offered a series of training workshops throughout the school year in the use of word processor templates, and in Endnote for creating bibliographies. Indeed training was seen as a crucial component of the process.
The group at Université de Montréal who launched the pilot ETD program has since developed into an organization called érudit. Part of érudit's mandate is to offer a gateway and free access to the ETDs from l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval, NDLTD and Cyberthèses. l'Université de Montréal and érudit continue to offer guidance and leadership to Canadian institutions in the area of ETDs and general scholarly communication.
The most important component of an ETD initiative, in addition to student training, is communication amongst all stakeholders in theses and dissertations. At present no DTD or XML schema has been identified to fit the needs of an ETD.
At UNB the original ETD Ad Hoc Committee, responsible for investigating ETD issues, is now designing and carrying out an ETD pilot program. UNB processes about 250 Master's theses and 50 PhD dissertations each year. Over the course of the two-year ETD pilot twelve or thirteen Master's and PhD candidates will test the process. The students are charged with providing feedback as they work their way through the thesis creation, review and submission processes.
In addition to personal interviews the ETD committee relied on the UNESCO Guide to Electronic Theses and Dissertations [HREF11] and the resources and information provided by NDLTD [HREF12] for guidance in setting up its ETD pilot.
In order to receive broad university community support for the ETD pilot, and ensure that student and faculty concerns regarding ETDs would be addressed, the ETD committee consulted with a number of university committees and requested financial support from the Vice President Academic. University committees consulted included:
It is the intent of the ETD committee to keep these groups informed as the pilot progresses.
A $36,000 budget supports the ETD pilot. Funding sources and projected expenditures are as follows.
|
Funding Source |
Funding Amount |
Payment to whom |
Expected Expenditures |
|
Graduate Student Association |
$18,000 |
Stipends to participating graduate students. $1,500 each |
$18,000 |
|
VP Academic |
$14,000 |
Electronic Text Centre staff time - development of XML stream |
$14,090 |
|
UNB Saint John campus |
$4,000 |
Graduate School staff time for procedures development |
$2,910 |
|
|
|
Integrated Technology Services, development of version tracking module |
$1,000 |
UNB has biannual graduation points, one in May and the other in October. The two tracks of the ETD pilot build their timelines around these graduation points.
The ETD pilot consists of 2 tracks.
The first track (Track A) focuses on setting up a workflow to support the submission of ETDs in PDF and XML formats. Microsoft Word templates are to be used by each student with their work. The purpose of the template is to facilitate translation of the document into XML format. In addition the first track will supply critical input on the usability of the ETD submission process using the NDLTD software installed locally. Participants are expected to have their works substantially complete.
The second track (Track B) focuses on further enhancement of the templates and submission process tested by Track A participants. Track B participants may submit in formats other than Microsoft Word, and may have mathematical formulae and multimedia components to their works. In addition Track B participants will be piloting the on-line editorial office, in which electronic versions of their thesis will be submitted to the thesis review team. Track B participants should be just starting to write their thesis when they begin the pilot.
|
Goals |
|
|
Track A |
Track B |
|
Develop and test MS Word template |
Test MS Word template for use during initial writing of thesis |
|
Develop and test submission process |
Improve submission process |
|
Develop and test template handbook |
Improve template handbook |
|
Produce ETDs in XML and PDF formats |
Process ETDs produced in other formats (LaTeX, Corel Word Perfect) |
|
|
Process ETDs incorporating complex equations and multimedia content |
|
|
Develop and test on-line editorial office |
|
Participation requirements |
|
|
Track A |
Track B |
|
Expected graduation date May 2003 or Oct. 2003 |
Expected graduation date May 2004 or Oct 2004 |
|
Thesis substantially complete |
Just beginning to write thesis |
|
No complex graphics or multimedia content |
Complex equations or multimedia content accepted |
|
Thesis produced in MS Word |
Alternate formats accepted |
|
Supervisor approval for participation |
Supervisor approval for participation |
|
Student Activities |
|
|
Track A |
Track B |
|
Maintenance of questions/comments log |
Maintenance of questions/comments log |
|
Work with ETC on implementation/usability of templates |
Evaluate ease of use of templates |
|
Comparison of standard word processor methods of thesis preparation vs template method |
|
|
Create PDF |
|
|
Submit thesis electronic |
|
|
Provide feedback on all parts of process |
|
|
Supervisor Activities |
|
|
Track A |
Track B |
|
Track how student share electronic files |
|
|
Evaluate ease of reviewing electronic thesis |
|
|
Evaluate ease of providing feedback to student |
|
|
Comment on practicality of adopting electronic thesis for review process |
|
|
Student Pay Schedule |
|
|
Track A |
Track B |
|
$500 - After submission of substantially completed work for application of templates |
$100 - Sign up payment |
|
$500 - After template application |
$400 - After substantial portion of thesis has had template applied, feedback provided to ETC |
|
$500 - After electronic submission of thesis and feedback to ETC. |
$500 - After electronic and paper versions of thesis have been reviewed by Academic unit prior to thesis defense |
|
|
$500 - After final submission of ETD and feedback provided to ETC |
Paper copies of thesis and dissertations will continue to be submitted to the UNB library as well as to National Library of Canada applying the copyright procedures currently in place. Access to electronic theses stored at UNB will be controlled by the library based on information provided by the student at the time of submission. Four access levels are to be available. These are: unrestricted availability to the world, available only to the university community, no access (limited time) and mixed access. Access levels may be applied to individual thesis chapters.
If an ETD program is adopted the ETD committee hopes to accept multiple submissions formats. The pilot will concentrate on submission of works in XML through conversion from MS Word using Word templates. ETDs will be distributed via the WWW in XML and PDF formats. Some exceptions may apply. The National Library of Canada will continue to archive and distribute UNB theses through UMI and its own catalogs.
PDF and/or XML are undoubtedly the de facto archiving formats for ETDs both in Canada and abroad. XML is of course noted as a non-proprietary data format, robust and interoperable. The Electronic Text Centre at UNB Libraries has been implementing SGML and, more recently, XML applications in the humanities for several years. The Centre's experience in and support of open data standards such as XML directed the UNB ETD Committees exploration of XML as an ETD application.
During the course of its research, the UNB Committee learned that the National Library had been exploring a national XML ETD initiative based on the Université de Montréal's model of ETD production and workflow. This document and the recommendations it outlined, including a national adoption of XML as an archiving format, has not moved to publication as far as the authors are aware. With the recent signing of its contract with UMI, the National Library simply states that it supports the electronic submission of theses and dissertations. It is therefore left to individual institutions to decide on the format(s) it chooses to use.
PDF is perhaps the most common document delivery format. While some would argue that PDF is not an archiving format, that it is dependent on the availability of a proprietary reader, others have faith in the ability to construct a reader should the current one discontinue.
Workload and on-going cost implications for an ETD program will become clearer as the pilot progresses. It is worth noting that every group consulted with at UNB had reservations on removing the requirement for paper copies of theses. If UNB requires students to produce both electronic and paper copies, it will require increases in the workload of students producing the thesis, as well as staff processing the finished product.
UNB continues to be a participant in the National Library's Canadian Theses Service including the latter's services with UMI. While the NLC supports Canadian universities in their setup of electronic submission processes, it has not yet set a national standard of best practices. The Electronic Text Centre at UNB is currently partnering with the Université de Montréal's érudit team [HREF13] and will no doubt adopt their processes in the near future. It should be noted that the same team, led by Guylaine Beaudry, was one of the first groups in Canada to implement an ETD program. UNB may also partner with érudit to develop a suitable XML schema for ETDs.
At present the ETD pilot is using the NDLTD developed open source ETD database. Also under investigation is the possibility of working with UMI to customize to the ETD environment a bePress product for journal online submission and review software.
The improving technology of the Internet and the desire for rapid access to information is driving universities, students and providers of access to graduate student research to meet the demand for electronic access to theses and dissertations. As more universities begin ETD programs, national standards will need to be identified. Meanwhile the gap is filled by initiatives such as the Networked Library of Digital Theses and Dissertations (NLDTD) [HREF14] that has taken the lead by providing information, a forum for discussion, as well as software that when installed, allows a free, central, seamless access point to digital collections residing at participating universities. The ETD committee hopes that its' own pilot program, and participation in national and international initiatives, will provide the basis for adopting an ETD service that meets the needs of researchers, students, faculty and administration.