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Formalities remain to be completed, says VC

 Mangalore University is following the footsteps of Mysore and has now decided to host dissertation of PhD students on the net. Mangalore University will soon be signing  a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with INFLIBNET, which is assigned to host, maintain and make the digital repository of Indian Electronic Thesis and Dissertation through ‘Shodhganga’, a web portal accessible to all institutions and universities,  by   the UGC.

 Speaking to Deccan Herald, Mangalore University Vice Chancellor Prof T C Shivashankaramurthy said that this would be implemented after the university gets green signal for some of the proposed amendments. Now, they were before Governor H R Bharadwaj, who is also the Chancelors of the university.

  “I had an informal talk with INFLIBNET Shodhganga Director Jagadish Arora and only formality needs to be completed. We have ETD lab for the digitalisation of the thesis and may be a slight modification is needed,” added.

However the ‘Shodhganga’ website shows that Mangalore University is one among the first 40 universities which have agreed to join hands with the UGC. Already more than 50 universiies are with ‘Shodhganga and more than 4,450 theses and disserations have been uploaded on the web portal. “The university has no problem with the system, they can consider us as only a formality is remaining,” Shivashankarmurthy added. 

Eligibility

After signing MoU with INFLIBNET Centre for Shodhganga, universities should follow some guidelines of the UGC. Along with setting up ETD labs, universities should appoint a coordinator (a senior academic professional (Librarian/Dean/Professor) to have a communication with the UGC. The university should provide the website, infrastructure, man power and if needed funds as well.

The UGC would allocate funds for digitisation of theses, establishment of ETD Lab based on some criteria. Funds will be given for the universities where 10 theses are submitted every year and where more than 100 theses are submitted in past. A committee will be established for the purpose. 

How a researcher can enter? 

A researcher should register himself on Shodhaganga website and create an account so as to submit thesis. In this process, the researcher is assigned a user name (e-mail ID) and password to register in the database that can be used for submission as well as for editing of submitted record and files. The files should be in PDF format.

Anyhow, Shodhaganga has given power to the UGC Notification of 2009, to provide electronic version of theses and dissertations by the researchers in universities with an aim to facilitate open access to Indian theses and dissertations to the academic community world-wide. Moreover it would control the theft of unique information.