FAIR ETD Repositories of G20 Countries: comparative studies with respect to NDLTD’s Global ETD Search

ETDs are primary information sources, that originate from doctorial theses or dissertation submitted to university for the doctorial award. The FAIR ETDs are those electronic theses and dissertations, which are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). The study intends to cover ETD initiatives by G20 Member countries, comprising of 19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States) and the European Union. The G20 Member countries represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.

This study aims to analyze the current state of the FAIR ETD repositories of the G20 member countries and to describe their characteristics and performance in brief. The major objectives of the study are to analyze the importance of ETD in global context, to find out linkage between Global ETD and ETDs of G20 member’s Countries, and analyse the comparative scenario of ETD initiatives with respect to NDLTD repositories. Among G20 Member countries, 14 countries have national ETD repositories, except the countries of European Union. The twelve European Union countries have national ETD repositories, including France, Germany and Italy, overlapping as individual members of G20 and also members of European Union. By taking in to consideration the findings, at the end of the study, there are some proposals of recommendations to further improve the status of national ETD repositories.