Ethos begins in earnest

Some of the most innovative research output in the UK will finally shake off its cloak of invisibility in two years’ time with the roll-out of a service that will take UK doctoral theses out of rarely visited library stacks and into the online mainstream.

In January, more than 70 higher education institutions said that they intended to join the Ethosnet project, which is now starting to digitise past doctoral theses in preparation for the Electronic Theses Online Service (Ethos) in 2009.

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL) have developed the prototype for the project and the British Library will run it.

Ethos will offer full text access to UK theses through a single web interface. This will include theses digitised and stored electronically by the British Library as well as other theses held electronically by universities.

Antony Troman, product development manager at the British Library, said: “This will be a route to all UK theses, from institutional repositories, libraries and microfilm at the British Library. We will digitise and deliver theses, and return paper copies to the institution. We will record who we give the theses to in case there are issues around plagiarism.”

Institutions will have to pay to have their resources digitised to gain involvement in the project’s early stages.

“We have developed a viable and sustainable business model,” Troman said. “The service is based on a cost recovery model.”

Institutions will pay up to £8,000 for 180 digitised theses.

“We are always looking for alternative sources of income – for example, government funding,” Troman added. “If that became available, the need for sponsorship might disappear.”

The cost of digitisation accounts for 90% of project costs and the British Library expects that digitisation of paper theses will be complete in 10 to 15 years.

But a number of issues remain to be resolved. For example, there are concerns over copyright and intellectual property rights, especially third-party rights and commercially sensitive content.

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