1. Digital Knowledge Repositories: What the 2015 ETD Survey Reveals
Gail McMillan
Director, Scholarly Communication
Professor, University Libraries, Virginia Tech
Nov. 3, 2015
[slide 1] What the 2015 international ETD survey reveals about Digital Knowledge Repositories
Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts today. I’m excited to tell you what the 2015 international ETD survey reveals about Digital Knowledge Repositories broadly speaking and give some perspective based on the data from Indian institutions the completed the survey, which I thought you might find particularly relevant to this evening’s panel. [13 responded to the survey: 8 have ETD programs, 5 are planning.] Because this evening we are specifically interested in digital repositories, this report and my conference presentation diverge and overlap as I thought would be interesting to the audience.
This is a biennial survey that first gathered data in 2013 from 161 institutions. Last May/June (2015) the 2nd biennial survey gathered data from 298 institutions worldwide, 85% more.
Though the survey reached considerably more institutions in 2015, it was as less successful at reaching more of the ETD community outside of North America. So in order to provide a more balanced perspective, I’ll often report the data in percentages so that each region’s ETD program can be interpreted distinctly yet in comparison with the others.

3. ETD Program Beginnings
Q12
ETD Program Beginnings
[slide 2] While ETDs have been required since 1997, half of the ETD programs did not officially begin until 2009, making 130 programs six years old or younger. What does this tell us? Many ETD programs are quite young so we can assume that these ETDs are probably in their first generation repository. It also tells us that there are many institutions for the younger programs to learn from because there are 67 institutions with ETD programs that are at least 10 years old.
2 of the Indian ETD programs began in 2000, but 5 out of 7 are less than 10 years old. [11 Indian institutions answered Q 12]

4. The Size of ETD Collections
Q18
83% of the reporting institutions’ digital repositories have fewer than 10,000 ETDs. Two of the six reporting Indian institutions have collections larger than 10,000 ETDs.

5. ETD Collections Growth Annually
Q19
But, perhaps more important than size, is how fast ETD collections are growing. 75% of the institutions reporting are adding up to 500 ETDs per year. Three of the five Indian institutions reported adding less than 250 ETDs per year. One is adding up to 500, another is adding up to 1000 a year.

6. ETD Programs Cover
Q13
Coverage of ETDs in Indian repositories is significantly different from the aggregated responses in two regards. They have more collections of digital and print theses and dissertations, 38% compared to 18% of the aggregated responses. Indian institutions also have considerably fewer collections that are comprised of only born-digital ETDs: 8% compared to 40% of the aggregated institutional responses. A slightly larger percentage of Indian institutions are digitizing the theses and dissertations they had prior to implementing their ETD programs.
Digitizing TDs 15% (13%)
Has digital versions of all TDs 8% (5%)

7. ETDs Include a Variety of File Formats
Q23 Of course, we know that standard, non-proprietary formats are best. ETDs are still predominantly submitted as PDF files.
ETD Formats
What forms an ETDs takes has often been a topic of interest on the ETD listserv. [Q23] While PDF is the predominant file format for ETDs worldwide, it declined 9% from 2013 to Other formats gained acceptance; .zip, for example grew by 8%.
There are perhaps several measures of the evolution of ETDs, including changing file formats.
[Q20 ] At 60% of the institutions represented in the 2015 survey authors submit their ETDs in a single file. But 40% accept ETDs whether in multiple or single files. 50% of the Indian institutions reported already accepting multi-file ETDs.
[Q22] 66% of the institutions reported that authors submit “supplemental files such as the data upon which their research was based.” This is true of the Indian institutions reporting also. [Oral Timur’s 1997 ETD is a great example.]
[Q21] ETDs are changing. Prior to completing their ETDs, some authors are publishing articles in journals and papers in conference proceedings. Some universities have a new style ETD, which at Virginia Tech we call manuscript style ETDs. It includes publications—up to three in a dissertation and two in a thesis. These authors have, of course, retained their copyrights. Just over half of all the institutions surveyed reported accepting ETDs that contain publications (55%). But none of the six Indian institutions represented in this survey do.

8. Copyright of the ETD
Q44 A
nother topic of interest is who owns the copyright to an ETD. At 89% of the institutions responding, authors own the copyright. They share copyright at 4% of the institutions and at an equal percentage, the copyright belongs to the institution. Copyright was shared between the author and the institution according to nearly 29% of the comments.
You can see that aggregated responses are quite different when looking across the regions. And in India the practice leans towards the author’s institution owning the copyright, according to 57% of the reporting institutions. At 29% the authors retains copyright and at 14% it is shared between the author and the institution.

9. Managing ETDs ETD Management
Who manages these ETDs files, and how? [Q24 slide 8] ETDs were predominantly managed in locally hosted digital knowledge repositories, but this was down 12% to 54% in On the rise are vendor hosted ETDs, up from 13% in 2013 to 29% in 2015.
Indian institutions are operating somewhat differently in that 85% reported managing their ETDs in locally hosted IRs. One-third of these are also using the external state-operated repository (Shodhganga?).

10. ETD Repository Software
[Q25)
From a global perspective, those local repositories were largely using DSpace software, though usage dropped to 36% from 43% in However, 5 out of 6 Indian institutions reported using DSpace (83%).

11. Digital Preservation
Systematic management of digital works over an indefinite period of time
Processes and activities that ensure the continued access to works in digital formats
Requires ongoing attention--constant input of resources: effort, time, money
MetaArchive Cooperative
Q17
I’d like to take a side step here and look at ETD preservation. How can we preserve our ETD Collections and protect them from neglect--the “sands of time”, protect them from catastrophic events like fires and hurricanes, or hardware and software failures, or simple human error? We can implement pragmatic and affordable preservation strategies that exist today.
I use the definition of PRESERVATION that means consciously and systematically managing digital works over an indefinite period of time. I consider backups as strategic operations, rather than a preservation strategy.
Unfortunately, preservation of ETDs took a considerable downturn (11%) since 2013 when 69% of the institutions reported having a preservation plan. In % of the reporting ETD programs were unprotected by a preservation strategy.
The NDLTD recommends the MetaArchive Cooperative, which offers a preservation strategy and it is both affordable and easy to implement and maintain.

12. Publically Available ETDs
[Q31
Availability of ETDs
[Q31 slide 11] A source of general curiosity is the level of access institutions give their ETDs. The survey responses showed that nearly one-third of the institutions make all of their ETDs publicly available while 64% make only some publicly available. Only 4% reported that none of their ETDs are publicly available. The responses describing practices at Indian institutions were distributed equally in each category: (some, none, and all).

13. ETD Access Limited to Author’s Institution
[Q32 slide ] The percentage of institutions limiting ETD access to their local communities grew slightly to 51% in 2015.
However, 43% of the Indian institutions reported there institutions did not have such limitations and an equal percentage (43%) limit all their ETDs to institution-only access. One limits some.
Q32 (2015)
No, none have limited access Yes, some are limited to university-only access Yes, all are limited to university-only access
49% % %

14. Duration of Institution-only Access
2015 data only
[Q33
The duration of these restrictions vary. A surprisingly large percentage of institutions reported permanent restriction to university-only access--46%, followed by restrictions of 1-3 years by 39% of the institutions reporting. 60% of the Indian institutions reported permanently limiting access to institution-only access.

15. ETD Access Embargoed [Q35
Another form of restriction is the embargo, or withholding all access to an ETD. 11% of the institutions reported that no ETDs are embargoed, very slightly up from 8% reported in Indian institutions reported no embargoes at 43% of the institutions. 29% embargo some, and 29% embargo all.
Q38:79% of the embargoed ETDs still have their metadata is available (aggregated for 2015 survey).

16. Duration of Embargo
[Q36
Looking at the duration of the embargoes, there was no change from the first to the second survey. 86% of institutional embargoes reported were of less than one year. Unfortunately, in 2015 the percentage of institutions that reported embargoing ETDs permanently quadrupled, growing to 8%. The percentage of ETDs embargoed for less than one year dropped from 12% to 6% in 2015.

17. Digital Knowledge Repositories: What the 2015 ETD Survey Reveals
Gail McMillan
Director, Scholarly Communication
Professor, University Libraries, Virginia Tech
Conclusion
What can we conclude from this data? Many ETD programs are young, <10 years old, and they are housed in locally hosted repositories. These are probably in a first generation repositories and we know from the data that most are using DSpace software. Will this continue, or will they become part of the growing number of vendor-supported repositories?
Many Indian institutions are accepting both print and electronic theses and dissertations. Will the number of print theses and dissertations decline?
Will ETD formats continue to change, such as the declining percentage of PDFs and more alternate formats?
Will the availability of ETDs improve?
We’ll test our theories in 2017 with the next international ETD survey.