JISC

Neil Jacobs (JISC programme manager) introduced the session by saying that the importance of intellectual property transfer could be strongly supported by work in the area of e-theses and through the work of repositories in general.

R John Robertson, repositories research officer at JISC-CETIS, said that an ecology is a complex system, with elements interacting and depending on each other. It provides a useful metaphor for the work of repositories, he said, and represents a way of thinking about information systems and the relationships between systems and services.

Key features of an information ecology include diversity, evolution and a sense of locality. Infrastructure and people were ‘keynote species’, he claimed, in the development of a repository ecology. If a repository wanted to articulate whom it is useful for, such an approach provided a means of specifying specific benefits, such as the possibility of richer multifaceted and personalised approaches for end users and for more specific views, such as those of researchers, for example. Such benefits would be interconnected, he said, and would differ from the technical perspective on the repository ecology.

What sort of thing is this? What other services does it relate to? What helps it to thrive? These are the questions to be asked of the repository which an ecological approach could bring to the fore.

Susan Copeland, senior information adviser at RobertGordonUniversity, spoke about the CURL- and JISC-funded EThOS project which began in 2005 over a period of 18 months to establish a test-bed for a national e-theses service.

Building on earlier projects which had explored the possibility of a central hub providing access to e-theses, EThOS identified various relationships which would have to be taken into account in the creation of a ‘live’ service, such as those with institutional repositories, the role of national libraries and the international Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NTLTD).

Critical success factors included cultural and administrative issues, such as advocacy and changes to institutional policy; legal issues, including copyright and plagiarism concerns; technical issues, and financial issues, including set up and running costs. EThOS central hub is a one-stop shop giving access to all UK theses to researchers all over the world

Institutional have different requirements of a national service, Susan Copeland said, such as connections to institutional repositories, software compatibility, different procedures as far as the deposit of theses are concerned, and so on, requirements for flexibility which were very much part of the emerging service.

Anthony Troman from the British Library said that the EThOS central hub is a one-stop shop giving access to all UK theses to researchers all over the world. It respects the rights of authors and institutions by appropriating licensing of the theses it supplies and recording to whom a thesis has been supplied. It also offers a sustainable model based on cost-recovery with every penny generated by the service going back into the service.

The major costs of the service are for digitisation. These represent some £0.5m per year. With the requirement for open access, subscription models were not considered appropriate. The concept of ’sponsorship’ was devised through which sponsors put forward funding to digitise a number of theses per year. ‘Associate sponsorship’ is available to smaller institutions, while those who do not want to be involved can simply submit details of theses so that end users can be informed about where to access their theses. Diversity, therefore, is a cornerstone of the system.

Discussion towards the end of the session focussed on the issues of intellectual property, advocacy and integration with institutional processes and procedures.