Unveiling the Growth and Usage Pattern of Electronic Theses and Dissertations Through National ETD Repository: A Case Study of Shodhganga

Abstract

Poor visibility and closed accessibility of printed copies of Theses available in the Libraries were the major issues among the research community in India before the year 2009. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) which is the digitised version of traditional print theses and dissertations, have emerged as an important means of sharing, transferring and collaborating the research and publication output of any Institution. ETDs, not only, support the documents submission and archiving, but also, play an important role in collaboration and Interoperability among the Institutions in terms of research output i.e. PhD Theses. The objective of this study is to explore the growth and usage analytics of Shodhganga. The present study explored various methods to analyse the data from Shodhganga in terms of Theses submissions, usage pattern, accessibility, growth and usability, metadata formats and standards, workflow management, metadata creation, data validation, text mining, Citations export tool and a file format, etc.