EThOS Webinar: questions and answers Using EThOS 1. Do I have to be logged in to use EThOS? Do I have to be in my university/place of work? Can I use it from any country or only in the UK? You can access EThOS from anywhere in the world, for free. And there s no need to log in to search or to follow links to other repositories; you only log in to download from EThOS or to order scanned copies. 2. Can anyone use EThOS, or only academic researchers? Can I continue to use it after I graduate or leave my university? Anyone can use it for their research academics, business users, personal users 3. I have to be logged in to order a copy for digitisation or download from EThOS. Can I use my main British Library account details? No, unfortunately you have to register specifically for EThOS the first time you want to download a thesis, or order one for digitisation. 4. Why did Sara use numbers to search for theses in the webinar? Every EThOS record has a unique ID number, e.g. 572628. There s no international system like ISBNs for theses, so the EThOS ID is really useful. Normally you wouldn t use the number, but please quote it if you ever need to speak to us about individual records. And we d encourage university contacts to add the ID to your own records if possible it helps enormously with matching and updating our records, for example when we harvest or re-harvest your data. 5. What about subject specific searching? And searching by faculty? It s not easy to do a subject search on EThOS. We sometimes suggest that users go to the British Library catalogue instead. All EThOS records are on the catalogue and you can filter your search by subject. Go to http://www.bl.uk/ and you will see the search box on the home page make sure you check the catalogue box for your search; then you can filter by subject and by material type on the left hand side. We are now adding some more guidelines for searching by subject to the BL web page for EThOS, here http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/theses/ethos/. 6. For records without full text, can a researcher be certain of getting it somehow? Some theses will never be digitised, for various reasons mentioned in the webinar. But if you know the university, if it s not in EThOS or if there s no e-copy, contact them direct they may let you visit to view the original or even supply it on interlibrary loan. 7. Seeing an abstract before deciding whether to order it for digitisation is really helpful. What can we do if there s no abstract? We re trying to add abstracts to as many records as possible. They aren t always available because traditional library catalogue records don t include abstracts so they ve never been systematically recorded over the years. You could try checking the university library catalogue for more details, or asking them direct if they can help. 8. Are the documents that are in the universities online repositories all free to access? Yes, they are. These institutional repositories are the free, online stores where a university hosts all of its research outputs such as conference papers presented by its academic staff, often its
PhD theses (not always), and some journal articles. Note that a very small number of repositories have access that is restricted to its own staff and students. Digitisation 9. What happens to the fee you pay if the thesis cannot be digitised? You are only charged if and when the thesis is digitised. 10. Can we see a list of the universities that have a fund to cover the scanning costs of their own theses? No, but there is a list of participating universities here http://ethos.bl.uk/heilist. 11. If someone else has already requested that a thesis be digitised, but it is still going through the process, will this be indicated in the EThOS record? Not in the record itself, but when you go through the process of ordering it for digitisation you will see a Zero charge if there s an order already in the system you won t be charged again, and you ll still be notified when the item becomes available. What s in EThOS 12. Why don t you include Masters theses? Well, we have to stop somewhere! We think it s useful to have a focused service for research theses only for now. 13. Does EThOS hold MPhils or Masters by Research? No. Guidance from the QAA considers these to be Masters-level, so they re not generally included. The QAA Qualifications Framework can be found here http://www.qaa.ac.uk/assuringstandardsandquality/qualifications/pages/default.aspx. 14. Does EThOS hold professional Doctorates? What about PhD by publication or creative writing PhDs? EThOS aims to hold a record for all UK doctoral theses, so yes, all these are listed where we are able to get the information for them. For Creative Writing PhDs, we might just hold a simple record that indicates the PhD was undertaken or there might also be the full written analysis that is often required to accompany the piece of creative writing. An example of a Creative Writing PhD is here http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=6&uin=uk.bl.ethos.571794 (EThOS ID 571794). 15. Does EThOS hold theses awarded by UK universities written in different languages? Yes, many universities allow students to write their thesis in a language other than English. Some examples are http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=5&uin=uk.bl.ethos.275343 (Welsh EThOS ID 275343); http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=4&uin=uk.bl.ethos.252272 (French EThOS ID 252272); http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.268537 (Irish Gaelic EThOS ID 268537) Use Advanced Search, Language = [3-letter code] to find some foreign language theses in EThOS. Our most used codes are fre, spa, ger, wel, gla, gle, cat and por (French, Spanish, German, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Catalan and Portugese). Note that there may be other foreign-language theses in EThOS where the language code has not been recorded in the past. If you find any, do let us know and we will add the code! An extremely full list of the Marc cataloguing language codes is here http://www.loc.gov/marc/languages/language_name.html#f.
16. What about cotutelle dissertations? Thank you to the person who asked this question as we hadn t heard of these before the webinar! European jointly supervised PhDs (widely known as cotutelle theses) offer PhD students the chance to be jointly supervised by a UK university and a university in another country, resulting in a dual award: a PhD from the UK uni and a doctorate from the partner university. We don t have a policy on these yet, but if we receive the records from our universities, then we will certainly add them to EThOS. 17. How can I get my thesis into EThOS? Can I upload it myself? I typed up my grandfather s so now it s ready to be shared more widely. We always work with the universities rather than with the PhD authors direct. That way we know that the theses we hold are the final validated thesis awarded by the university it offers reassurance to the universities, authors and users. So always start by asking your university to arrange for it to be added. There are also other websites where you can upload your own thesis you could try some of these as well? 18. If a thesis is not listed in EThOS can users suggest it so that it can be listed in the future? Yes, you can send a speculative request via EThOS here http://ethos.bl.uk/speculativerequest.do - this form is linked from the main EThOS search page as well. 19. Is there an equivalent for the US? Are there parallel services in other countries? Does EThOS contribute to DART-Europe? Please see the additional slide in the presentation for some ideas. DART-Europe is a European aggregation of many national and single university collections. EThOS data isn t in there yet but will be later this year. Author concerns 20. What if the PhD student plans to publish a book after completing their doctoral research? What if the author doesn t want to deposit their thesis in an open resource? EThOS works with the universities and each one has a different approach. You normally have to sign a deposit agreement as part of your degree arrangements, but you might be able to arrange an embargo if you have particular concerns check with your university. There are lots of records in EThOS for which the full thesis isn t available perhaps the author has declined to allow it to be digitised, or maybe the PhD output is itself an original work which isn t suitable to be made openly accessible. Using the theses 21. Can I use extracts for teaching purposes? I teach English and use theses as a resource for current doctoral students to help develop them in writing their own theses Yes you can use them for teaching purposes, please cite the thesis and highlight the fact that it came from EThOS or the awarding institution 22. Is there a way to search for practice-based theses by illustrators on the subject of illustration as an art and design practice? Or, I'm interested in examples of other theses that have both written work and film work. Or, I d like to see examples of Creative Writing PhDs, can I search for these?
We do have some film, sound, graphic design, artistic works and other creative theses in EThOS, but unfortunately you can t search for them by file type, type of doctorate or type of final output such as exhibition, published novel or practice-based output. To explain briefly, the records in EThOS and any other library-type searchable database - follow international guidelines that guide the way each bit of information is described, e.g. title, author, type of qualification, and also which bits of information are described. There is no such metadata field to describe the file type or the type of doctorate that was undertaken. For example, there isn t a tag to describe Creative Writing PhDs or Consists mainly of a film held on DVD, so it s not possible to search for such theses in any consistent way. For PhDs that don t result in a final publishable thesis/document (exhibitions, art works, films etc), there is often a record and maybe an abstract that describes the work briefly. The Kultur project did some work in this area which could be useful - http://kultur.eprints.org/index.htm. The National Association of Writers in Education http://www.nawe.co.uk/ may be a useful source of information for creative writers. To find examples of practice-based theses in EThOS, we suggest you do a combination of searches that should retrieve at least a sample. Use speech marks to search for specific phrases rather than separate words, e.g. practice-based, creative writing, perhaps combined with your area of interest. Examples: Search practice-based + film 26 records, including http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=4&uin=uk.bl.ethos.577337 where the PhD output included an experimental travelogue film. Search creative writing + fiction 28 records, including http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=8&uin=uk.bl.ethos.558110 which included a portfolio of creative writing as well as a critical component of the PhD submission Search creative practice + illustration 8 records, including http://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?did=4&uin=uk.bl.ethos.542415 for which paintings formed part of the final PhD submission. 23. Are the theses citable automatically, using referencing software such as EndNote? How do I reference theses from EThOS? Each EThOS record has a suite of buttons to help with sharing and referencing we d be interested in feedback on these do they do what you need? You can normally find advice online or from your university on how to cite a thesis, eg - http://www.reading.ac.uk/library/finding-info/guides/lib-citing-thesis.aspx The library context 24. Does EThOS provide download statistics to the JISC IRUS system? IRUS is a repository metrics system that is being developed for universities, not currently viewable on the web. We provided some experimental data to IRUS to see how we can add EThOS download counts to the data gathered direct from institutional repositories. We re now thinking about how we can make the two systems more aligned to make the data gathering process easier. 25. I understand that we cannot add theses to our [specialist subject library] collection, either in electronic or print format. But can we add the records to our catalogue and include a persistent link to the location of the full text thesis? Yes, we d be delighted if you add thesis records to you library catalogue, especially if you focus on a specialist subject area. You can link the records back to the EThOS record, or directly back
to the repository record (or both). And if you do any additional subject classification along the way, please share it with us and we ll add it to the EThOS records. 26. We currently send in our university s theses to the British library on discs are there other ways of doing it? FTP transfer is easiest. Here s some info - http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/tikiindex.php?page=full+text+theses 27. Can university libraries pay for digitisation of our own theses from our British Library Document Supply accounts? Yes, details here - http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/tikiindex.php?page=digitisation+options+for+institutions And contact ethos@bl.uk if you d like to change the way you pay for digitisation. 28. If our institution wanted to cover the costs of digitisation for our users, is there a way of using our BL account codes to pay for this like a Document Supply item? You can t pay for orders from your BL account, I m afraid you have to pay by credit card. Info about ordering on behalf of your users is here - http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/tikiindex.php?page=faq+for+institutions#4 [NOTE that the FAQ are a little out of date and sometimes refer to outdated procedures within EThOS] 29. I work in Interlibrary Loans. Can I download the thesis, save it and give the saved copy to my patron? No, as EThOS is currently presented, users have to login and accept the Terms & Conditions of supply before downloading a thesis for their own research. For this reason, you should not share a thesis that you have downloaded with anyone else. For everyone 30. How can I find out more? EThOS http://ethos.bl.uk The EThOS Toolkit has lots of information for institutions, authors and users. Note that some of the sections are a little out of date and the FAQ will be updated soon. http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/tiki-index.php ethos@bl.uk And if you re a library or repository contact, you may be interested in the international theses conference, ETD2014 to be held in Leicester, July 2014. http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/etd2014/etd2014 February 2014.