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.
