Shodh Ganga : A reservoir of Indian Theses

Shodhganga is a digital repository of theses and dissertations submitted to Indian universities. It is maintained by INFLIBNET Centre which is an autonomous Inter-University Center of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India. More than 397 universities and  centrally funded institutions contributing their research out put to the Shodh Ganga and  467 institutions signed MOU with the project.There are 231171 full text theses and 6450 synopses are currently available at the portal. The full text of all the documents submitted to Shodh Ganga are available to read and to download in open access to the academic community worldwide.

According to Shodh Ganga website "Theses and dissertations are known to be the rich and unique source of information, often the only source of research work that does not find its way into various publication channels. Theses and dissertations remain an un-tapped and under-utilized asset, leading to unnecessary duplication and repetition that, in effect, is the anti-theses of research and wastage of huge resources, both human and financial." To solve this problem since 2016 May UGC made mandate submission of electronic version of theses and dissertations by the researchers in universities with an aim to facilitate open access to Indian theses and dissertations. The online platform of electronic theses will help to easy access and archiving of theses and dissertation of all institution participating in the project. This facilitate to improve the standard and quality of academic research by avoiding duplication of research.  

 The Shodhganga depository is built using open source digital library software DSpace developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in partnership between Hewlett- Packard (HP). The DSpace uses internationally recognized protocols and interoperability standards. So the  repository has the ability to capture, index, store, disseminate and preserve ETDs (Electronic Theses and Dissertations). Access the portal at https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in .

 

Shodhganga home page

e-Prints @ IISc: Open Access Repository of Indian Institute of Science Research Publications

ePrints@IISc repository collects, preserves and disseminates in digital format the research output created by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,  research community. It enables the Institute community to deposit their preprints, postprints and other scholarly publications using a web interface, and organizes these publications for easy retrieval. While eprints@IISc can be accessed by anybody, submission of documents to this repository is limited to the IISc research community only. ePrints@IISc repository is running on EPrints open archive software, a freely distributable archive system available from eprints.org. ePrints@IISc complies with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) framework allowing publications to be easily indexed by web search engines and other indexing services.

You  can access the depository at http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/ . You can browse documents by subject wise / department wise, by Author, by year of publishing by type of document such as books, conference proceedings, technical report, journal articles, short communication, patent, preprints, teaching resources, etc.

The Internet Archive : An ocean of knowledge

The Internet Archive is a non-profit initiative to build digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. It provided free access to students, researchers, scholars and the general public. The internet archive aims to provide universal access to all knowledge. It started archiving internet resources in 1996 and now it participating with more than 450 libraries and other agencies to archive the resources. It has more than twenty years of web history through the Wayback Machine .

As of April 2019 it had archived 330 billion web pages, 20 million books and texts, 4.5 million audio recordings, 4 million videos, 3 millon images and 20,000 software programs. Any one with a free account can archive media to the Internet Archive. Books has special attention by this website. They atarted to digitize books in 2005 and today there are 1000 new books are uploading each day from different centers across the globe. Books published prior to 1923 are availble for download and modern books can be borrowed through Open Library site.

To know more and access ocean of knowledge visit https://archive.org/

The National Academic Depository ( NAD ) for Digital Preservation of Academic Awards

The National Academic Depository ( NAD ) is a digital dtabase of academic awards provided by the Governement of India under Digital India initiative. It is an inter-operable system for strorage, retrieval, authentication and verification of academic awards. National Academic Depository (NAD) is a 24X7 online store house of all academic awards viz.certificates, diplomas, degrees, mark-sheets etc. duly digitised and lodged by academic institutions / boards / eligibility assessment bodies. NAD not only ensures easy access to and retrieval of an academic award but also validates and guarantees its authenticity and safe storage. National Academic Depository comprises of two interoperable digital depositories viz. CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) and NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML). These digital depositories have ensured hardware, network facilities and software of prescribed quality for smooth and secured operationalisation of NAD.

Features of NAD

• It operates in fully online mode.
  
  
• Allow lodging of Academic awards in a digital format, maintaining the integrity of access to the database and of the awards lodged in the database.
  
  
• Allow students to retrieve their lodged academic awards at any time.
  
  
• Allow employers and other person with prior approval of the concerned student to verify the authenticity of any academic award.
  
  
• Maintain the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of the database.

Stakeholders of NAD

• Students/other award holders.
  
  
• Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility assessment bodies.
  
  
• Verifying entities i.e. banks, employer companies (domestic and overseas), Government entities, academic institutions/universities/boards/eligibility assessment bodies (domestic and overseas) etc.
  
  
• Ministry of Human Resource Development/ University Grants Commission.
  
  
• Depositories.

Academic Institutions under NAD

• Central Universities.
  
  
• Central Higher Educational Institutions and institutions empowered by an Act of Parliament or State Legislature to grant degrees.
  
  
• Central Higher Educational Institutions awarding diplomas.
  
  
• State Universities and Deemed to be Universities approved for participating in NAD by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
  
  
• Private Universities approved by University Grants Commission.
  
  
• Institutions approved by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) for participating in NAD.
  
  
• Central Board of Secondary Education, State Education Boards and other school boards.
  
  
• Eligibility test conducting bodies such as bodies listed by name by UGC and shall include University Grants Commission (UGC) for National Eligibility Test (NET) and CBSE for Teacher Eligibility Test (TET).

Academic awards to be covered under NAD

• Any certificate or degree or diploma including related mark sheets, transcript or evaluation reports or provisional certificates, as the case may be, granted by an Academic Institution.
  
  
• Certificate, degree, diploma for skill development issued by approved institutions.
  
  
• ll certifications by National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) aligned bodies which shall include all training courses/short term and long term certificate courses/any other courses as offered by institutions and as approved by the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) for participating in NAD.
  
  
• Mark sheets, certificates issued by the school boards.
  
  
• Certificates issued by eligibility test conducting bodies.

Services by NAD

• Register Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility Assessment bodies.
  
  
• Register students based on Aadhaar / Unique NAD ID.
  
  
• Register verification users.
  
  
• Allow Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility Assessment bodies to upload the academic awards issued by them.
  

• Allow Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility Assessment bodies to map/link the academic award to the NAD Accounts of Students concerned.

• Allow students to view the academic awards linked to their respective account.

• Allow students to download/print an authenticated copy of the academic award.

• Allow verifying entities to verify the authenticity of the academic award (subject to prior student consent)
  
  For more information visit official website of National Academic Depository at https://nad.gov.in