نموذجا NDLTD : دور مستودعات الرسائل والأطروحات الجامعية في دعم الوصول الحر للمعلومات والمعرفة الأكاديمية على المستوى العالمي

Abstract

The role of theses and dissertations repositories in supporting worldwide open access to academic information and knowledge: the NDLTD model. The University is an institution for the production of knowledge and digital repositories have facilitated access to and use of that knowledge worldwide. This study deals with one of the most important academic digital repositories to support the open access to information at the global level, namely the Digital Network of theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), as a collaborative project that supports the free access of scientific production of researchers in the world. the study adopted the content analysis method based on some criteria to analyze and collect data from the website of the NDLTD project for conducting this research. The study revealed that the Project provides a multi-language search interface that helps in increasing the access to the content in different languages includes non-Latin alphabet languages, as the ETD-db software is the model one for ETD repositories over the world, the NDLTD projects also involves in a long-term preservation strategy with modern technologies to guarantee the longevity of resources, the study also revealed that most of the universities participated with an ETD program in the project offer access free of charge for the resource, as a result, NDLTD project has contributed in supporting open access and the sharing of knowledge with no restrictions through the increasing the universities that share its research outputs, which has been adopted by countries from all the continents, the study emphasized that the real challenge is the theArabic universities lack to an effective policy for cooperation to make the EDT programs successful and prepare for the partnership in the international context for increasing the visibility of the academic content in Arabic in the NDLTD project .