E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) is a bibliographic database and union catalogue of electronic theses provided by the British Library, the National Library of the United Kingdom.[1][2][3][4] As of February 2022[update] EThOS provided access to over 500,000 doctoral theses awarded by over 140 UK higher education institutions,[5] with around 3,000 new thesis records added every month[6][7][8][9][10] until the British Library cyberattack forced the service to be temporarily taken offline.[11]
 | |
Type of site | Bibliographic database |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | British Library |
| URL | ethos |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | 2009[1] |
| Current status | Offline ever since the British Library cyberattack |
EThOS services
edit
EThOS records thesis data and metadata which can then be searched with basic[4] and advanced search terms.[18]
Data recorded in EThOS
editTheses indexed by EThOS have a minimum of a thesis title, author, awarding body and date. Optional additional metadata may be included such as the thesis abstract, doctoral advisor, sponsor, cross links to other databases and the full text of the thesis itself.[18]
As of September 2017[update] the EThOS website gives open access to the full text of around 160,000 UK doctoral theses that have been digitised. Theses can be accessed by freely registering for then logging into EThOS. Open access is also provided by links to the Institutional repository of the awarding body. Since 2015,[7] EThOS has integrated authority control and other unique identifiers including:
- The author's ORCID identifier..
- The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI).
- The Handle System.
- Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).
Some thesis records include the name of the doctoral advisor.
Doctoral advisor metadata can be used in academic genealogies like academictree.org,[19][20] Wikidata[21][22] and the Mathematics Genealogy Project. Academic genealogies in Wikidata are built using the doctoral advisor relation (Property:P184).[21]
Searching EThOS metadata
editWhere present, metadata can be used as search criteria. So for example, in addition to a basic search,[4] an advanced search facility allows users to search for theses by publication year, awarding body, author's given name, surname, thesis title, doctoral advisor and various other metadata.[18] Data in EThOS can also be accessed programmatically (by machines) using the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH) from the Open Archives Initiative (OAI),[23] DataCite[24] and its Application Programming Interface (API).[25]
Types of thesis included
editAs well as indexing Doctor of Philosophy theses, EThOS holds records of other kinds of doctorates including:
- Doctor of Medicine (MD) theses, for example Pensée Wu's thesis.[26]
- Doctor of Science (ScD or DSc) theses, for example Else Bartels thesis.[27]
- Doctor of Engineering (EngD or DEng) theses, for example Chris Dighton's thesis.[28]
- Doctor of Professional Studies (ProfD or DProf) theses, for example Andreas Georgiou's thesis.[29]
- Doctor of Music (MusD or DMus) and Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) theses, for example Evaristo Lopez thesis.[30]
- Doctor of Education (EdD or DEd) theses, for example Mary Greaves thesis.[31]
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD or DPhil) by prior publication in peer reviewed journals, for example Jill Steward's thesis.[32]
- Doctor of Philosophy in creative writing, for example Sally O'Reilly's thesis.[33]
Master's degree theses such as Master of Philosophy (MPhil), Master of Research (MRes), Master of Science (MSc) and Master of Arts (MA) theses are not indexed by EThoS. Honorary degrees are also not included as there is usually no actual written thesis.
Development and contact
editEThOS was developed in partnership with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) around the UK with funding from Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and Jisc (formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee) and was launched in January 2009.[1][34] EThOS staff at the British Library can be contacted during office hours on email, Twitter[35] and in person at the British Library.
Availability
editEThOS was taken offline by the British Library cyberattack and has been unavailable since December 2023.[36][37][11]
References
edit- ^ a b c Troman, Anthony; Jacobs, Neil; Copeland, Susan (2007). "A new electronic service for UK theses: access transformed by EThOS". Interlending & Document Supply. 35 (3): 157–163. doi:10.1108/02641610710780836. ISSN 0264-1615.
- ^ Gould, Sara (2016). "UK theses and the British Library EThOS service: from supply on demand to repository linking". Interlending & Document Supply. 44 (1): 7–13. doi:10.1108/ILDS-10-2015-0033. ISSN 0264-1615.
- ^ Gould, Sara (6 June 2017). "UK theses and the British Library EThOS service: from supply on demand to repository linking". Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.803351.
- ^ a b c Anon (2009). "British Library EThOS e-theses online service". ethos.bl.uk. Archived from the original on 2009-01-24.
- ^ Anon (2017). "Higher Education Institutions Participating in EThOS". bl.uk. Archived from the original on 2012-02-24.
- ^ Anon (2014). Using PhD theses in research: EThOS on YouTube
- ^ a b Anon (2017). "About EThOS". bl.uk. Archived from the original on 2016-03-21.
- ^ Anon (2017). "EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service)". le.ac.uk. University of Leicester. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ Anon (2017). "Requesting UK Doctoral Theses". bbk.ac.uk. Birkbeck, University of London. Archived from the original on 2016-07-14. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ Anon (2017). "EThOS Toolkit: A guide to using and participating in EThOS". ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk. Cranfield University. Archived from the original on 2017-08-23.
- ^ a b Keating, Roly (2024). "LEARNING LESSONS FROM THE CYBER-ATTACK: British Library cyber incident review" (PDF). bl.uk. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-03-09.
- ^ Anon (2017). "Professor Stephen Hawking's PhD viewed two million times". bbc.co.uk. London: BBC News.
- ^ Hawking, Stephen William (1966). Properties of Expanding Universes. repository.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. doi:10.17863/CAM.11283. OCLC 62793673. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.601153.
- ^ Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot (1937). X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of the sterols. cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.727110.
- ^ Brian Harold May (2007). A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud (PDF). Imperial College London. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-77706-1. hdl:10044/1/1333. ISBN 978-0-387-77706-1. OCLC 754716941. OL 37141356M. Wikidata Q28971627.
- ^ Greer, Germaine (1968). The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies. cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. doi:10.17863/CAM.567. OCLC 221288543. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.599683.
- ^ Cox, Brian Edward (1998). Double diffraction dissociation at large momentum transfer (PDF). desy.de (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. OCLC 644443338. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.675409.
- ^ a b c Anon (2017). "British Library EThOS: Advanced Search". ethos.bl.uk.
- ^ Anon (2017). "The Academic Family Tree". academictree.org. Archived from the original on 2017-06-08.
- ^ Amaral, Luís A. Nunes; David, Stephen V.; Hayden, Benjamin Y. (2012). "Neurotree: A Collaborative, Graphical Database of the Academic Genealogy of Neuroscience". PLoS ONE. 7 (10): e46608. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...746608D. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046608. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3465338. PMID 23071595.
- ^ a b Poulter, Martin (2017). "A step forward in the sharing of open data about theses". bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Oxford: Bodleian Library. Archived from the original on 2019-10-30.
- ^ Vrandečić, Denny; Krötzsch, Markus (2014). "Wikidata: a free collaborative knowledgebase". Communications of the ACM. 57 (10): 78–85. doi:10.1145/2629489. ISSN 0001-0782.
- ^ Anon (2017). "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about EThOS". bl.uk. Archived from the original on 2017-02-26.
- ^ Anon (2017). "DataCite search: British Library PhD theses". datacite.org.
- ^ Anon (2017). "DataCite REST API: A common API to get all metadata from DataCite". api.datacite.org.
- ^ Wu, Pensée (2009). Muscular dystrophy cell therapy : an in utero approach using human fetal mesenchymal stem cells. ethos.bl.uk (MD thesis). Imperial College London. hdl:10044/1/4726. OCLC 930655636. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ Bartels, Else Marie (1990). Studies of the physiological states of cross-striated muscle with the aim of understanding the underlying processes of the changes from one state to another. ethos.bl.uk (DSc thesis). Open University. OCLC 53556783.
- ^ Dighton, Chris (2020). Aspects of Bonded Composite Assemblies for Aerospace Applications. ethos.bl.uk (EngD thesis). University of Surrey.
- ^ Georgiou, Andreas K. (2010). Corporate governance and its effect on the performance on family and non-family companies listed on the Cyprus stock exchange. ethos.bl.uk (DProf thesis). Middlesex University. OCLC 840721110. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ Aguilar Lopez, Evaristo (2006). DMA Portfolio 'Rhythms of the Huasteca'. ethos.bl.uk (Doctor of Musical Arts thesis). University of Salford. Archived from the original on 2020-08-06. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ Greaves, Mary (2011). Practitioner research : a journey in optimistic disappointment?. ethos.bl.uk (DEd thesis). Manchester Metropolitan University. OCLC 757137107. Archived from the original on 2022-12-09. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ Steward, Jill (2008). The development of tourist culture and the formation of social and cultural identities 1800-1914, with particular reference to Central Europe. ethos.bl.uk (PhD thesis). Northumbria University. OCLC 757146249. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ O'Reilly, Sally Anne (2012). Dark Aemilia and inventing Shakespeare. ethos.bl.uk (PhD thesis). Brunel University London. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
- ^ "JISCMail". www.jiscmail.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-03-15.
- ^ E-Theses Online Service on Twitter
- ^ Grove, Jack (2023-12-04). "Scholars 'stumble through' as British Library tools stay offline". timeshighereducation.com. Times Higher Education. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ Keating, Roly (2024). "Cyber-attack update". bl.uk/cyber-incident. Archived from the original on 2024-06-29.