EBSCO Information Services’ OpenDissertations.org Project Creates Expanded Discovery & Access Models around Theses and Dissertations

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EBSCO information Services is Partnering with BiblioLabs to Support Open Access Discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

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With OpenDissertations.org we are helping institutions succeed at driving increased usage of their own open institutional research and increasing access to this valuable content.

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and BiblioLabs have announced the launch of a collaborative open access initiative dedicated to advancing library and industry innovation related to electronic theses and dissertations (ETD). OpenDissertations.org, is committed to facilitating open and free access to ETD metadata and content. In addition to the fully open website, EBSCO will include EDT metadata in EBSCO Discovery Service™ to facilitate access and improve content discovery.

Project sponsors recognize that ETD authors are faced with an expanding world of discovery and hosting options for their work. EBSCO is committed to easing the path of discovery. By exposing metadata via the OpenDissertations.org website and EBSCO Discovery Service, the project seeks to increase the visibility of ETDs on the open web. Users will be able to link from individual records in the database to partnering host sites, including academic institutional repositories.

Universities have long provided theses and dissertations to companies that require libraries to subscribe to their products to gain the added value of aggregated access to this research output. With more and more universities now hosting and distributing their own ETDs on the open-web, EBSCO and BiblioLabs are seeking to add an enhanced service that freely aggregates and exposes this valuable content, extending access to any interested reader worldwide.

The project is open to libraries around the world and currently includes: the British Library’s EThOS Service, Cornell University, Florida State University, University of Florida, University of Michigan, Michigan State University and the University of Kentucky. The OpenDissertations.org program provides libraries with additional academic and open web discovery of ETD metadata. Students will also be able to access the full text of the ETD in their library’s own institutional repository.

More than 20 libraries are expected to be participating by the time OpenDissertations.org goes live in 2018. Libraries that currently contribute to existing for-fee dissertation products are in a perfect position to support the open dissertations project, with minimal work required. Over the course of 2018 the partners will also be announcing several innovations related to handling a growing world of multi-media ETD’s and handling the underlying research data sets students create in the process of their research.

EBSCO Information Services’ Senior Vice President of Business Development, Mark Herrick, says the FOLIO Project and OpenDissertations.org are natural extensions of EBSCO’s commitment to address critical parts of the academic ecosystem. “With our initial investment in FOLIO, we committed ourselves to supporting more open source software models in the library industry. With OpenDissertations.org we are helping institutions succeed at driving increased usage of their own open institutional research and increasing access to this valuable content. Open Access is creating new paradigms around which EBSCO and libraries can partner more closely and we are working with BiblioLabs to unlock that potential.”

BiblioLabs CEO Mitchell Davis says, “We are excited to be working with EBSCO to innovate around ETDs and look forward to finding many ways to drive more discovery and usage of these important materials. Beyond leveraging EBSCO’s massive institutional presence, this collaboration is centered on meeting a rising tide of institutional needs around ETDs and working to create sustainable access and business models around this stream of research.”

Opendissertations.org is the next step in an ongoing effort to open access to dissertations. In 2014, EBSCO and the H.W. Wilson Foundation created American Doctoral Dissertations which contained indexing from the H.W. Wilson print publication, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities, 1933-1955. In 2015, the H.W. Wilson Foundation agreed to support the expansion of the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses from 1955 to the present with the goal of creating a single portal for ETDs which could be added to university profiles and accessed online.

Libraries interested in participating can contact https://biblioboard.com/opendissertations/contact/ or visit OpenDissertations.org.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 11,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 1,000,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: http://www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.

About BiblioLabs
BiblioLabs is a leader in Open Education Resource (OER) and OA content creation, curation and distribution software to academic institutions. Based in Charleston, South Carolina, their BiblioBoard platform aims to transform student and researcher access to information by delivering a simple, intuitive and modern user experience and delivering the best OER and OA content creation tools. They work with public and academic institutions of all sizes to democratize access to information and lower costs for students.

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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
978-356-6500 ext. 2594
kmcevoy(at)ebsco(dot)com

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