About Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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A thesis or dissertation is a document that explains the research or scholarship of a graduate or doctoral student. Traditionally, these documents are prepared in a hard-copy format, and copies are usually bound and shelved in an academic institution’s library collection.
However, with the advent of the Internet and the vast resources available through it, the options for electronic access to student research or scholarship has increased, and ETD options are becoming more and more common.
What exactly is an ETD?
The phrase “ETD” stands for “Electronic Thesis or Dissertation.” Basically, an ETD is the same as a traditional hard-copy thesis or dissertation, but it is expressed in a form simultaneously suitable for machine archives and worldwide retrieval.
An ETD includes the same information available in the traditional paper version, such as:
- Figures, tables, footnotes, and references
- A title page with the author’s name, the official name of the university, the degree sought, and the names of the committee members
- Documentation of the author’s years of academic commitment
- Explanations of why the work was done, how the research relates to previous work as recorded in the literature, and which research methods were used
- Research results, which are presented, interpreted, discussed, and summarized with conclusions
However, an ETD is different because it provides a technologically advanced medium for expressing ideas, and it offers the following advantages over the paper version:
- ETDs are usually prepared using a word processor and are thus already in an electronic format.
- Color and multimedia components are more easily incorporated and supported, thereby enhancing the final product.
- The costs of the generation and subsequent storage of paper documents are reduced considerably. Final copies are submitted on a Zip disk or CD-ROM without the requirement to submit multiple copies on acid-free paper.
- Dissemination of electronic documents provides greater access to information using the Internet.
As a result, ETDs are less expensive to prepare, consume virtually no library shelf space, and never collect dust, and they may be available to anyone browsing the World Wide Web.