Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD): Intiatives to Provide Open Access to Public Funded Research in India

ETD Initiatives in India are examined in the background of shifting paradigm from Information Management to Knowledge Management (KM). Examines the importance of KM and highlights major national digital repositories of PhD theses. ETDs of national importance such as Shodganga of INFLIBNET etc and institutional initiatives such as MGU Theses Archive, KrishiPrabha, Vidyanidhi of Mysore University etc are comparatively evaluated based on their major characteristics. ETDs and repositories enable bibliographic control. Full text Open Access to dissertations is a revolutionary step for ensuring quality research. It makes research transparent. However, lack of single reliable national level pool of theses and dissertations in India, and making submission of approved theses to it mandatory, remains a problem to be addressed