An Overview of ETD Initiatives in Pakistan: Proposed model for International Islamic University, Islamabad
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An Overview of ETD Initiatives in Pakistan: Proposed model for International Islamic University, Islamabad
The first ETD initiative in Pakistan was launched by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, called "The Pakistan Research Repository (PRR)" which promotes the international visibility of research originating out of institutes of higher education in Pakistan and to be in line with global initiatives to promote open access to scientific literature. The aim of this service is to maintain a digital archive of the intellectual output of Pakistani institutions, to provide a single-entry access point to view this research, and to distribute this information as widely as possible. The content of the Pakistan Research Repository has been indexed by leading online search tools, including Google and Google Scholar. As part of the objective of the HEC to capitalize on the benefits of open access to both individual researchers and the scientific community as a whole, the PRR will serve as an aggregated repository archiving the research output from institutions across Pakistan. In the first phase it covers only MPhil and PhD level theses/dissertations. In the 2nd phase, M. Phil and Master theses, E. Books and Research Papers will also be made part of the PRR. In addition, Child Server will be Placed at the Universities and authorized personnel will upload the university research on PRR server. At present, full-text in high quality digitized format of over 1096 Ph.D. theses are available on the Web. Almost 100 are in the process of being uploaded. Once completed, the repository will include all Ph.D. theses published by institutions in Pakistan, approximately 3000 Ph.D. in number. The International Islamic University launched its ETD project last year. IIU has archive of about 3000 theses and dissertations in Arabic and English (700+2300) languages. In the first phase, the library's ETD team is scanning these theses and dissertations into PDF files. The second phase would be to provide these theses online and third phase would be to translate these theses into English language which involves a lot of costs. At the same time, the university ETD team has submitted a proposal to the President of the University which presents policies and guidelines to the faculties which makes it essential for the students and faculties to submit the theses by the present and forthcoming students in electronic format as well as the hard copy. The proposal has been presented to the board of studies for review and recommendations. After that the proposal is being submitted to the President, IIUI for final approval. Concerns expressed in connection with ETDs by the university administration include archiving, copyright, and future publication issues. The university administration also considered that it will promote plagiarism in the research community. This pilot proposal is based on lessons learned from other institutions for submission and publication of electronic theses and dissertations. During the implementation of the project, the library had to face many challenges in technical aspects, legal issues, advocacy work, workflow requirements, institutional rules and regulations, etc. References: HEC - Pakistan Research Repository at http://www.eprints.hec.gov.pk/; Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations at http://www.ndltd.org
2008