Open Access Theses & Dissertations: Launch of a New OA Discovery Tool
Open Access Theses & Dissertations: Launch of a New OA Discovery Tool
http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Open-Access-Theses--Dissertations-Launch-of-a-New-OA-Discovery-Tool-89442.asp
by Abby Clobridge
As the body of open access (OA) literature continues to grow, figuring out how to access OA-specific material has remained a challenge
for researchers. Various discovery layers have been developed to collect and present openly accessible materials for several subject
areas-RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), arXiv.org (physics and computational sciences), and e-LIS (eprints in library and information
science) are just a few examples. But up to this point, no discovery tool focused exclusively on openly accessible Electronic Theses and
Dissertations (ETDs). The Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD.org) project was designed to change that. Led by Thomas Dowling,
director of technologies at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, OATD.org provides a simple way for users to search a
global collection of openly accessible ETD literature. The service was launched in early April 2013 and currently includes references to ETDs from
more than 600 universities around the world.