Usage patterns of an electronic theses and dissertations system

Abstract

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) system is a national digital library of ETDs in South Korea. Provides a comprehensive picture of how this system has been used during its first two years in service since June 1999. The system transaction logs were collected and analysed to reveal the usage patterns of the system. Results of the study indicate that the KISTI ETD system usage has seen a significant increase since its second year. While most users appear to be domestic users, the system also attracts users from many other countries, suggesting that the KISTI ETD system has become a part of the international networked digital library of theses and dissertations. It was also found that there are a very large number of one‐time visitors to the KISTI ETD system. Nevertheless, the system began to maintain a frequent user group in its second year in service. The usage statistics regarding system features and the characteristics of users’ visits indicated that the search function was by far the most frequently used system function. Finally, discusses the implications of the findings.

Can Google Scholar and Mendeley help to assess the scholarly impacts of dissertations?

“…Statistics about downloads or views have been used to assess the usage of electronic dissertations (e.g., Zhang, Lee, & You, 2001;Coates, 2013;Ferreras-Fernández, García-Peñalvo, & Merlo-Vega, 2015). For instance, the University College London repository gives detailed downloaded statistics for dissertations 8 and the ProQuest Dissertations Dashboard service (https://dissdash.proquest.com) allows universities providing dissertation data to access usage statistics (Patel et al, 2015).…”

E-theses and Indian academia: A case study of nine ETD digital libraries and formulation of policies for a national service

“…Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) system is a national digital library of ETDs in South Korea (Zhang et al, 2001). Shin (2006) discusses the dCollection server, a digital repository system implemented in 2003 as a result of collaboration among leading college and university libraries in South Korea.…”

A Review of Emerging ETD Initiatives, Challenges and Future Developments

“…ETD is defined as a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation in electronic, rather than paper format. -ETD refers to a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation that is archived and circulated electronically rather than in print and bound format‖ [9], [14], ETDs have gained huge attention of institutions and organizations worldwide [2], [5], [16], [24], [25] as a technological tool for the graduate research outputs to be communicated globally [9]. On the other hand, a research management system (RMS) is broader in concept compared to IRfor the research processes that are integrated.…”