The paper will set the scene with a brief description of Lancaster University, its current international partnerships and the journey we have taken to disseminate ETDs (electronic theses and dissertations), inspired by the ever-expanding opportunities of a digitally integrated society. The journey progresses from 2009 when the Library implemented a low-profile participation in the British Library’s EThOS service, to the present day with a public University commitment in 2021 to share Lancaster research globally and openly. Lancaster University surfaces its ETD output via its open access institutional repository EPrints, participation with the British Library’s hub for UK electronic theses, EThOS, and most recently, a content partnership with the ProQuest ETD Dissemination Programme. Focusing on the benefits of the relationship between Lancaster University and ProQuest, the paper will demonstrate why it has become critical to partner with ETD aggregators such as ProQuest to fully promote and share Lancaster’s thesis and dissertation content. The paper will develop the theme of the ETD content dissemination partnership with ProQuest in the context of Lancaster University’s strategic plan, 2021-2026 (Lancaster University, 2021). Lancaster University’s vision has been developed in the context of the post-pandemic world, acknowledging the need to fully exploit the digital environment and embrace the opportunity to be innovative, connected and digitally transformative. Lancaster University aims to develop a culture and environment that enables world-class research, fostering collaboration and helping to change practice and thinking across the globe. Further, enshrined in this vision is a commitment to support early career researchers and a recognition that ETDs have moved to playing a central role in the global scholarly ecosystem. Lancaster University Library has aligned its strategic vision (Lancaster University Library, 2021) to this aspiration. Support for the University’s research strategy is enshrined in the five strands of the Library’s vision, including a goal to maximise the global reach of Lancaster research including ETDS, and support Lancaster University’s scholarly communications strategy. In 2020 Lancaster University made the decision to become a ProQuest content partner, including doctoral level and Masters by research theses in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (PQDT), at the same time upgrading the subscription to the ProQuest full-text collection from the ProQuest A & I service to support the growing expectations of its internal researchers for enhanced access to global ETD content. Although the pandemic acted as a catalyst to Lancaster’s decision, it was already evident that the research landscape was changing and the significance of theses and dissertations was growing. Evidence for this was apparent in download statistics from the Lancaster institutional repository and the EThOS platform, and usage figures from a limited set of Lancaster full text theses from a digitisation project with ProQuest in 2018. These findings were supported by research articles (Chad, 2020) and case studies investigating the impact of disseminating ETDs in partnership with aggregator platforms (Bennett and Flannagan, 2016; Grieg, 2017). It was clear that if Lancaster wanted to maximise its research impact globally, it would need to look beyond its current dissemination pathways and think more boldly by entering a new partnership with a major global aggregator for ETDs. Lancaster gave considered attention to the likely benefits that would be delivered by a partnership with ProQuest from the standpoint of three groupings: authors, the institution, the global research community. The paper will consider each of these groupings, identifying the benefits that could be realised as a result of a ProQuest ETD Dissemination partnership, and elaborating why Lancaster University believed that working with ProQuest would enable the Library to realise one of its core aims to amplify the global impact of its research and in so doing, support the University’s research goals. To support and illustrate the paper’s argument, reference will be made to the findings of a recent case study co-produced by Lancaster University and ProQuest. The case study was commissioned to investigate the achievements and outcomes delivered throughout the seven months following the initial harvesting of Lancaster content to the ProQuest platform in the context of the University’s research strategy. The paper will discuss the significance of quantitative evidence for the impact on thesis downloads. Data has been sourced from IRUS UK (JISC, 2021) for ETD downloads from the institutional repository, and the ProQuest ETD Dashboard (ProQuest, 2021). In addition to retrieval data, the ETD Dashboard also produces reports on the top countries using the Lancaster full-text theses on the platform from 2018 to the present. The data has been analysed to investigate the impact on ETD downloads from the institutional repository since ProQuest began harvesting content, and also the complementary effect on traffic to the institutional repository for all formats. The paper will discuss how this data provides evidence that working with a global partner such as ProQuest is supporting Lancaster’s ambition to promote its research globally. Qualitative evidence taken from researchers and Lancaster University Faculty support librarians will also be considered and used to evaluate the views of early career researchers on open research and to provide insight into how PQDT is being used to support early career researchers at Lancaster. The paper will conclude by reviewing how a partnership between Lancaster University and ProQuest illuminates rather than obscures the value of Lancaster’s existing ETD dissemination solutions. In the context of the ever- increasing global shift to open scholarly research and the critical need for researchers to disseminate their work to an international audience it has become imperative to exploit the benefits of multiple scholarly platforms. The conclusion will highlight not only the importance of sharing research openly to the institution and to authors, but will look beyond to the global research landscape. The pandemic has shown us that the digital ecosystem is vital not only in terms of accessibility, but in terms of shared knowledge to find solutions to global problems beyond COVID-19. If research is indeed inspired by standing on the shoulders of giants, then we need to be able to climb up to those shoulders and this is where partners such as ProQuest are building ladders.

Building ladders to the shoulders of giants: How partnering with ProQuest is enabling Lancaster University to realise its aim to be a globally significant University for research in a post-pandemic world

Join us for ETD2021 (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) Conference in November 2021 in the United Arab Emirates.

Our theme, ‘Open scholarship in a post-pandemic world’ addresses the enhanced need for discoverability of research findings in a virtual world.

Since the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has constrained international travel and mobility, we have all come to rely on working in the virtual world. These developments have merely accelerated the existing trends towards more electronic and digital repositories.

Since 1991, the Networked Digital Libraries of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) have contributed to research collaboration by identifying and aggregating digital repositories of theses and dissertations as a previously fugitive class of research resources.

 ETD 2021 Conference: Open scholarship in a post-pandemic world