OPEN ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC THESES AT CUHK: THE ROADMAP AND THE WAY FORWARD

Louisa LAM Head of Information Technology and Planning University Library System The Chinese University of Hong Kong September 24, 2013

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OPEN ACCESS (OA) DEFINITION Budapest Open Access Initiative (February 2002)

(http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read) free availability on the public internet permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or

link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

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OPEN ACCESS (OA) DEFINITION Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (June 2003)

(http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm)

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge (October 2005) (http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/) The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free,

irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.

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CHARACTERISTICS OF OA LITERATURE Digital Available online or on the Internet Free of charge Free of copyright and licensing restrictions Accessible publicly by anybody from anywhere Immediate Permanent Full-text In any format from texts and data to software,

audio, video and multimedia files

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DELIVERY OF OA LITERATURE Gold OA

Publication of OA Journals e.g. PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine Green OA

OA Repositories “A digital archive created and maintained to provide

universal and free access to information … in … electronic format as a means of facilitating research and scholarship” (Reitz, n.d)

Include preprints and postprints of journal articles, theses and dissertations, course materials, departmental databases, data files, audio and video files, institutional records, or digitized special collections from the library.

Comply with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) protocol for metadata harvesting and interoperability

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OA EXPERIMENTS AT CUHK Attempts to establish OA repository

2003: a pilot project on e-prints 2004: CUHK Scholarly Information Repository (SIR)

An index to the publications of faculty and researchers based on the records collected by and submitted to Research Administration Office’s Online Publication Input System

Currently it has a total of 95,027 records, but no full text or full text links

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Category Content Records Scholarly works Books, book chapters 9,053 Journal articles 44,784 Conference papers 33,926

Research Reports, case studies, working papers, preprints, postprints, creative and literary works 884

Patents 470 Presentations 678

Multi-media works Images, videos, musical scores, software, design 407

Unclassified Works Others, awards, book reviews, plays, translation, learning objects, school textbooks 4,825

Total 95,027

OA EXPERIMENTS AT CUHK Other initiatives on open access

1995 – present: developed over 22 digitization projects, some of the collections allow open access to some extent

As at June 2013, CUHK University Library System (ULS) has digitized 4,463,277 images and 59,703 minutes of audio files.

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•Images available at standalone computers in ULS: 3,117,504 •Images available on the web: 752,647 (16.8%)

BARRIERS TO OA AT CUHK (1) Copyright / Intellectual Property Issues

publishers’ willingness to grant permission to authors to self-archive their published works on their universities’ IRs depending on OA’s impact on their income

Lack of a supportive institutional-wide OA Policy to mandate the deposit / archive of faculty’s research outputs At its June 2007 meeting, the Hong Kong Research Grants

Council (RGC) decided not to mandate OA for RGC-funded research. However, it did encourage publicly-funded Hong Kong universities to encourage OA. (Suber, 2007)

Faculty’s apathy to and lack of understanding of the value and benefits of OA

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BARRIERS TO OA AT CUHK (2) Inadequate advocacy of OA from Faculty,

researchers, students and other stakeholders Critical mass of digital content are not accessible

online to have any real impact on research and be seen as a competitive channel for scientific content

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Is ETD the right direction to go?

THESES AND DISSERTATIONS AT CUHK Students:

Postgraduates: 3,223 (2,187 are graduate students) Undergraduates: 11,594

Full time teaching and research staff: 2,719 Academic Programs:

133 Undergraduate programs (new four-year curriculum)

158 Master’s programs 36 Doctoral programs 35 MPhil-PhD programs

No. of Theses and Dissertations collected every year: Doctoral Dissertations: about 300 volumes a year MPhil Theses: about 300 volumes a year

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ADOPTION OF OA FOR ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (ETDS) Increasing popular to establish IRs for ETDs – 53%

of the 2,394 repositories listed in OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) contains theses and dissertations

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ADOPTION OF OA FOR ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (ETDS) Less concern for copyright: the University or the

authors holds the copyright for theses and dissertations so that no legal problem will be entailed From 2007- 08 onwards: students hold the copyright

ownership of their thesis and sign an agreement to grant the University the right to digitize, store, reproduce and distribute the theses in any media and in any format

Before 2007 - 08: the University retains the copyright for every thesis and dissertation submitted

Repeated user requests to access theses and dissertations online

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ADOPTION OF OA FOR ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (ETDS) A good critical mass for CUHK SIR: CUHK ULS

has collected 14,344 volumes of theses and dissertations

Doctoral theses submitted since 1997 are already available electronically in ProQuest’s “Dissertations & Theses@CUHK”

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ADOPTION OF OA FOR ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (ETDS) Showcasing academic excellence Positive image for the University Faster accessibility Better preservation Lower cost of handling e-theses (saving the cost of

binding and space) Easier identification online Increase research impact Quicken scholarly communication Improve reputation of individual scholars and

researchers More opportunities for collaborative research

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THE ROADMAP 24/9/2013

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2010 May: Initiated discussion with Graduate School about the need for establishing ETDs

2010 Aug: ULS drafted a proposal for establishing ETDs to the Graduate School

2010 Oct: Executive Committee of the Graduate Council approved the ULS proposal and the new submission procedures of theses and dissertations

2011 Jan: Prepared budget estimate of retrospective digitization of 9,968 volumes of pre-existing theses from 1963 to 2011

2011 Oct: Discussed and confirmed with Graduate School on the policy and guidelines of thesis and dissertation submission

THE ROADMAP 2012 Mar: University approved additional funding to digitize

pre-existing print theses retrospectively 2012 Oct: Discussed and finalized the specifications of

digitization and tendering for outsourcing 2012 Nov: First batch of physical theses was sent out for

scanning 2012 Dec: Started receiving soft-copy of new dissertations and

theses in CD-ROM 2013 Mar: Initial prototype of the new ETD web site

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ESTABLISHMENT OF ETD COLLECTION – PHASE 1 New mandatory electronic submission guidelines for

theses and dissertations submitted in 2011 /12 to ensure 100 per cent deposit rate Doctoral dissertations: Two ETD websites

1. Dissertations & Theses@CUHK: students to submit one electronic copy of the final version of the dissertation saved in CD-ROM with the “Agreement Form of ProQuest Information and Learning Company” to ProQuest for online publication

2. ULS ETD Collection: students to submit one electronic copy of the final version of the dissertation saved in CD-ROM with a completed “Electronic Thesis Submission Form for Final Version of Thesis” to ULS

No more microfilming of doctoral dissertations from ProQuest

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ESTABLISHMENT OF ETD COLLECTION – PHASE 1

MPhil theses: One electronic copy of the final version of the thesis saved in a

CD-ROM together with “Electronic Thesis Submission Form for Final Version of Thesis” will be submitted to the ULS for the ETD Collection

The Graduate School also requested submission of a printout of the thesis abstract (both in English and Chinese), title page and separate page on composition of Thesis Committee (if applicable)

No more hardcopy will be sent to the ULS – save the cost of binding and space

Two sets of files are required: Abstract file (title page, abstract and TOC) and the full-text in

PDF format Abstract file (title page, abstract and TOC) and the full-text in

MS Office Word format as the source file

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ESTABLISHMENT OF ETD COLLECTION – PHASE 1

Access Agreement to be signed by students to grant to the University the non-exclusive right to archive their theses and dissertations in digital format and make it available for public access in 3 different levels: Open access: Abstract, TOC and the full-text are downloadable

for public access Restricted access: Abstract and TOC will be open to public,

full-text will be downloadable via CUHK network Confidential access: temporarily restricted from public access

until a certain date with approval from the Graduate School

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ESTABLISHMENT OF ETD COLLECTION – PHASE 2

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Retrospective digitization of 9,968 volumes of pre-existing print theses

Specification: Image: 400 dpi for full-text searching OCR accuracy rate:

body: English (96%), Chinese (95%) TOC and abstract: 99%

Searching: Searchable PDF for Whole document, TOC and abstract

As at August 2013: A total of 688,156 pages (images) in 6,204 volumes was

completed A total of 1,718 volumes is in process

To enhance the OCR accuracy rate of theses in handwritten Chinese, a total of 476 volumes in 165,031 pages will be typed out

FEATURES OF ETD COLLECTION AT CUHK System Implementation:

Still in development and evaluation Initial prototype - in-house developed software with

submission management, basic and advanced search facilities in English, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese, different browsing options, visualization and downloading Powerful CJK search engines Complete control of system functionalities Flexibility for customization to meet new needs in future

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FEATURES OF ETD COLLECTION AT CUHK Online Submission Workflow:

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FEATURES OF ETD COLLECTION AT CUHK Metadata:

Mapping to OAI Dublin Core, ETD-MS, MARC XML

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FEATURES OF ETD COLLECTION AT CUHK Interoperability:

OAI-PHM provider - use the OAI-PMH Interface of Dspace

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FEATURES OF ETD COLLECTION AT CUHK Content:

Includes final approved version only Rich full text content from 1963 onwards (more than

14,000 volumes with over one million images) Format:

metadata + full text Searchable PDF for body text, abstract and TOC Multimedia files

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FEATURES OF ETD COLLECTION AT CUHK Discoverability: Separately available in Primo URL link to each volume of thesis and

dissertation is provided at Library OPAC

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CHALLENGES AND FUTURE PLANS (1) The Graduate School still have concerns on complete open

access of the digitized theses and dissertation in Phase 2 Online submission system for both Master’s theses and PhD

dissertations not yet established No PhD dissertations for the period between 1997-2010 as

they are only available in ProQuest The University has not yet realized the benefits of open

access Students’ reception to ETD is yet to be known

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CHALLENGES AND FUTURE PLANS (2) Ongoing discussion with the Graduate School to convince

them the needs and benefits of open access of ETDs Establish an online submission system and workflow so

that students only need to do one submission and there is no need to handle CD-ROMs.

Retrospective digitization of the microfilms of doctoral dissertations provided by UMI to fill the missing gap from 1997 – 2010

Scholarly communications events to promote the benefits of open access, author rights

Continual enhancement of the services provided by ETDs Lifecycle management model

Campus-wide survey to analysis the response of faculty and students on ETDs

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REFERENCES 1. Banach, M. (2011). The benefits of managing and publishing ETDs “in house” using an

open access repository. Available: http://works.bepress.com/meghan_banach/4

2. Björk, B.C. (2013). Open access – Are the barriers to change receding? Available: http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/1/5/pdf

3. Chan, D.H.L. (2009). An integrative view of the Institutional Repositories in Hong Kong: Strategies and challenges. Serials Review, 35(3), 119-124.

4. Jain, P. (2012). Promoting open access to research in academic libraries. Available: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/jain.htm

5. Reitz, J.M. (n.d). ODLIS: Online dictionary for library and information science. Available: http://lu.com/odlis/search.cfm

6. Storey, C., Wong, R., Leung, K. and Yik, E. (2005). The Institutional Repository: The Chinese University of Hong Kong “Sir” model. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3334, 236-244.

7. Suber, P. (2010). Open access overview: Focusing on open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. Available: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

8. Suber, P. (2007). Hong Kong decides to encourage OA, not to require it. Available: http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/09/hong-kong-decides-to-encourage-oa-not.html

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