Italy

From European e-Theses

E-theses in Italy

Introduction

The Italian situation varies across institutions. Only a few universities are already in line with the European best practices, but the situation is changing. There are a few initiatives that will bring about a better coordination within the Italian PhD management: the creation of the Italian OA Group sponsored by CRUI (Conference of the Rectors of the Italian Universities), the next publication of guidelines and recommendations about ETD harvesting and curation and the new regulation regarding PhD Thesis delivery to the national libraries. The work is in progress

75 out of 77 Italian universities have signed the Berlin Declaration, but only 24 institutions (19 universities and 5 faculty/dept. services) have answered our survey.

1. Are electronic doctoral (PhD) theses being collected digitally and made accessible (publicly/open access) in the UK?

Collected digitally:

- yes: 16

- only graduate theses but not yet PhD: 5

- not yet: 3 (but in a start up phase)

Made accessible:

- yes 14 (12 with author’s permission)

- not yet 3*

- no 2*

• note that Italian law mandates public availability of PhD theses via the National Library

Via:

- Internet website/OAI repository

- only locally on disc/paper

Projects:

- most universities use (or plan to use) an OAI compliant repository for e-theses

- very few universities are planning to digitize paper PhD theses from previous years.

The recent availability of the new standard OAI-PMH protocol, and of compliant easy-to-use tools, has triggered the interest regarding the management of electronic materials, among which theses have an important role.

2. How many per year? What percentage of the total of e-theses?

An average number is 150 PhD theses per year, but at the moment only a few universities make a mandatory and systematic collection of e-versions and make them available.

The legal office of CRUI is currently providing recommendations for mandatory and systematic collection of PhD theses and for their public availability. PhD regulations will contain a provision for dissertations to be included in an institutional repository

3. Does anyone enrich (add value to) e-theses? For example,

· by identifying and resolving legal (e.g. copyright) or plagiarism issues'

As most universities don’t have support from their legal offices, the legal office of CRUI will be the central reference point for legal matters

· preserving them

Preservation and statistics are provided where an appropriate repository exists

· linking e-theses with related material on which they are based (including data, statistics, multimedia, etc)

Very few universities provide value added services (corresponding to those who make e-theses available). 2 universities allow the use of Creative Commons licenses for theses.

4. What kinds of interoperability are useful in your national context? For example-

· syntactic interoperability (e.g., simple / advanced cross-search, use of OAI-PMH harvesting protocol)

· semantic interoperability (e.g., access via disciplines / subjects, multilingual access)

Most replies report that both are important. A few pointed out the syntactic interoperability, others the semantic one.

5. Who ensures that the following issues are dealt with, so that e-theses are available?

· business models (financial sustainability - who pays?)'

There are three different business models: 1) central administration taking care of e-theses; 2) libraries (often together with IT department); 3) Faculty or department

· organisational / roles and responsibilities (who does what?)

The library and the IT Dept. have the organizational role and responsibility

· legal (copyright / licences, liability, etc)

According to the Italian copyright law the author (PhD student) is the Holder of the copyright and has the right to deny public availability of his/her Thesis. This is in contrast with the law about PhD courses (DPR 07/11/80, n. 382, art 73, D.M. n. 224 04/30/99) that mandates public availability of PhD theses via the National Library. According to the CRUI recommendations authors will be aware, as from the beginning of their PhD, of the fact that their thesis will be available to the public in the IR. A delay of the OA to the text will be accepted only if there are confidentiality issues (ongoing publication, sensitive data, patent…)

6. What European-level activities would be useful to add value to your national activities?

- services: interoperability, open access and easier circulation (European service provider, European archive, European network). The service provider should allow search/browsing by country, language, discipline, subject, keywords. Evaluation mechanisms. Information about study and job opportunities (in companies and research centers)

- funds: European funding (for cooperation projects, for open archives platforms for theses, for European service provider that aggregates metadata from institutional theses archives)

- regulations: European directives (for copyright management of theses, for OAI-PMH compliancy, for mandatory availability, in general for theses treatment)

- guidelines: European standards and best practices, preservation, metadata

The abundance of answers received to this specific question, especially if compared to the other questions, reveals a generalized need for European intervention and regulations.

7. Please could you say a little about the educational / university processes around the production of PhD theses, and graduation for doctoral students, in Italy

Most replies were empty. A few universities have a special Doctoral Office, taking care of all the procedures (that are different for each university). In other universities the library takes care of all the procedures There are several projects for a centralized management of electronic theses.

8. Any other information that you'd like to provide

As mentioned, Italian law mandates public availability of PHD theses (on paper) via the National Library. So there should be no reason to limit accessibility at the local level, even though the electronic medium is different from paper support. In most universities (corresponding to those who don’t have an IR) this limitation is probably due to a cautious attitude in order to avoid possible infringements (also for lack of national case-law on copyright issues for electronic material).