Notes on Schopfel, adding value to thesis and dissertation

I found this essay fascinating (and difficult) because it talked about so many things I knew nothing about. The first thing I did while reading is to note all the references that I needed to look up (grey literature, OAI Metadata harvesting protocol, OpenDOAR to name just a few). Then I began searching through all the resources Schopfel mentions, leading to even more resources!
I also found the international scope refreshing. While other articles I've read on DL have often included Western countries, this one also include data from places that aren't usually included like Peru. Unfortunately, I didn't find a list of all 54 of the resources they used (did I miss this?). I would have liked to see more broadly where their data came from.

Issue: How can we increase access to ETD's in Institutional repositories. Given the vast differences among the ETD (which includes not only Electronic thesis and dissertations but also "research journal articles, preprints and post-prints, digital versions of theses and dissertations, and administrative documents, course notes or learning objects" (Schopfel, 2013)) and their varied institutional polices regarding their storage, how do we increase "acceptance, access and impact" to the scholarly work produced by members of a scholarly institution and not widely published, beyond simply uploading the ETD's to servers? Schopfel (2013) argues that these documents "are the most important document type in open archives".
Conclusion:
Through research, they found 5 ways institutions can add value to the ETD's and identified two challenges that ETD's must take into account.
5 ways in which institutions can add value to the deposit and dissemination of Electronic theses and dissertations:
  1. Make sure the IR has quality of content including selection criteria with some kind of formal institutional validation and review. Should also include unrestricted access, and copyright clearance
  2. Good, rich metadata that is searchable and standard
  3. Format includes full text and multiple file formats that are searchable, open and reusable and include preservation standards
  4. Interoperability ensuring they can connect and network with other repositories
  5. Services including basics like searching, browsing, downloading, but they should also add upgraded services like social media, statistics, video, print on demand, etc.
2 Ways to do better
  1. future planning
    1. support a variety of types of data
    2. work on open licensing where needed
  2. Connect the IR to the Current Research Information system (CRIS)


Schöpfel, J. (2013). Adding value to electronic theses and dissertations in in

What is "grey literature" csulib.libguides.com/graylit explains that gray literature is what which is not available through usual bibliographic sources such as databases
ETD Electronic thesis and dissertation
OAI Metadata harvesting protocol
IR Institutional Repositories
OpenDOAR--authoritative directory of academic open access repositories that can be searched. Built for analysis, search and data mining. Currently has 2600 listings
CRIS current research information system

 
Investigate the question: "what can be done to improve the quality of content and service provision in an open enviornment, in order to increase impact, traffic and usage"

 
IR are very diverse in how they are constructed and run and what they include

 
He states that "following published journal articles in pre or post print formats, ETD's are the most important document type in open archives" 
Not sure why that is? I guess he is saying it is access to good scientific information

 
Selected 54 different references to review that were primarily case studies (perhaps not the most statistically sound research). Could not find a list of these references?

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