Case study : electronic only submission of theses through DSpace

Abstract

Munin, the institutional repository at University of Tromsø, Norway, has in its first year since launching emphasized publishing master theses. According to Norwegian law, the institution may not mandate master theses to be published in Munin. Lots of effort were therefore put into announcing the option and convincing the students that having their thesis available in Munin is a good idea. In the spring semester of 2006, the resulting percentage of published master theses, out of all submitted for defence, were 16. In order to turn this around, we intend to introduce Munin as the only means to submit master theses to the faculty for defence. In stead of publishing those theses actively being submitted to Munin, this way we publish them all, except for those actively being marked “do not publish”. <br>The use of Munin as the submission channel for any master thesis has been tried out at the Faculty of Science in the spring semester of 2007. We have learned that meeting the needs of the faculty administration, including printing services, is difficult through adjustments of the one and only Munin submission form and the workflow options of the Munin DSpace. We therefore launched this project of establishing a submission portal for master theses by the use of a separate DSpace instance. We plan to have the portal operating by the submission deadline medio november 2007. <br>The project include: 1) Presenting and discussing the plan with the faculties as well as with the University’s administration. The goal is that the University decide to use Munin as the only submission channel for master theses. 2) Defining and describing the administrative needs of the faculties and the University. 3) Designing the separate DSpace instance as the submission portal, optimizing the submission form and the workflow for the purpose. 4) Integrating printing service requirements, through the design of the submission form and integrating printing services in the workflow. 5) Document and metadata exchange between the submission portal DSpace and the Munin DSpace, as well as with possible other administrative tools. <br>The objective of the project is to maximize the number of master theses published in Munin, and to establish more efficient workflows for the administrative needs. A possible extension would be to establish a similar submission portal for doctoral theses.