Emerald Insight | Library Management | Analytical study of the ETD repositories and government initiatives for depositing ETDs in India

Use the link to access pay-per-view options for the article published in Library Management available from Emerald.  The abstract reads as follows: "Purpose - The paper aims to critically analyze the ETD repository creation efforts by various institutions in India and also analyze whether the guidelines issued for depositing ETDs by various govt. bodies in India are sufficient to implement the ETD submission nationwide. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is the result of the analytical evaluation of the Indian digital repositories especially ETD repositories and the guidelines issued by various govt. bodies for acceptance of ETDs. To obtain a complete picture of the Indian ETD repositories literature review was conducted, browsed the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), since these do not include all the Indian ETD repositories snowball technique was followed. Many of the sites were inaccessible during the study, they are discussed either on the basis of the earlier accessed record or the available literature. Findings - Though in India UGC (in 2005) and other Govt. bodies have issued guidelines for ETD submission and UGC (in 2009) made it mandatory for all the Universities to deposit a copy of the thesis submitted, in the National ETD repository i.e. SHODHGANGA, yet the universities do not seem very serious about this issue so far. The study of the ETD repositories of most of the Indian Universities and Higher level institutions reveals that most of them are busy with the Govt. funded projects of retro-conversion of the Ph. D. theses piled up in their libraries and have not taken sufficient steps for accepting the current ETD and ETD creating facilities for the researchers. Practical implications - The Indian universities may expedite the process of accepting the current ETDs and plan training and workshops for the Researchers, Faculty, Theses Evaluators and Librarians to make them aware about their respective responsibilities. Originality/value - The literature survey about the ETDs in Indian libraries revealed that almost every article describes the availability of the ETDs and define the ETDs decoratively. All the existing repositories are not exhaustive and contain only retro theses, which neither anybody has tried to evaluate nor stressed on the need of starting accepting the current ETDs. This paper analyses the available collections in ETD repositories and Policy provisions for ETD acceptance and also tries to identify the unclear issue before the Indian Universities regarding accepting current ETDs."