Promoting Open Access to Scholarly Data: A Study of the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) Initiative at the Public and Private Universities of Bangladesh

Abstract

By providing ideas on how to develop a good research topic, problem statement formulation, how to write a literature review without plagiarism, research methodology, data analysis, and recommendations and conclusions, scholarly data such as ETDs play an increasingly important role in improving the understanding of research and development. Academic articles, papers, citations, figures, tables, research reports, theses, and dissertations, as well as scholarly networks and digital libraries, are all included in the rapidly expanding category of scholarly data. Open access (OA) refers to the unrestricted use of electronic resources and open access to information. Any type of digital content, including text, data, software, audio, video, and multi-media, is eligible for open access. The majority of them merely deal with text, but an increasing number combine text with graphics, data, and executable code, nonscholarly content, like as books, movies, and music, can also be covered by OA. This article examines several facets of the "electronic dissertation and thesis (ETD) projects in private and public universities, including software selection, metadata collection, long-term preservation of digitized data, and other issues. The holistic approach to such projects that this paper proposes is sound project planning, which considers not only technical issues but also issues related to project policies, procedures, and copyright acknowledgments that arise in the process of providing open access, and it concluded that it played an important role in its success.