Gauhati University administrative building

Guwahati, July 8: Gauhati University is planning to make all synopses of proposed research and theses for various PhD degrees globally accessible thro-ugh the Internet in a bid to check duplicity in research.

The exercise will be done with the help of ShodhGangotri and Shodhganga projects of the Information and Library Network (Inflibnet), an autonomous inter-university centre of the UGC.

Inflibnet is involved in creating infrastructure to share library and information resources and services among academic and research institutions by working collaboratively with libraries of universities across the country.

According to the UGC, under the ShodhGangotri project, the universities will deposit electronic versions of approved synopses submitted by research scholars for registering themselves for the PhD programme. The repository on one hand would reveal the trends and directions of research being conducted in Indian universities and on the other it would avoid duplication of research. The commission said the synopses would later be incorporated with the full-text theses.

The Shodhganga centre provides a platform for research students to deposit their PhD theses and make these available to the entire scholar community through open access. The repository has the ability to capture, index, store, disseminate and preserve electronic theses submitted by researchers.

Wooma Sankar Dev Nath, librarian of Krishna Kanta Handiqui library, said the research scholars have been asked to submit a soft copy of their theses (along with the hard copy) so they can be uploaded in the repository of Inflibnet.

At present, Inflibnet has a huge repository of e-books and e-journals, which are accessible to all colleges and universities of the country. The research papers of various universities, including Gauhati University will be a part of this repository.

Nath said the university is one of the 40 universities for which UGC has approved Rs 10 lakh under the ShodhGangotri project.

“Now it will be possible to see exactly on which topics research is going on in different universities. Besides, it will also be possible to check the similarities in the contents of the theses through specially designed software,” said Nath.

At present, the service of Inflibnet is free for colleges and universities of the Northeast, under a special scheme. The ministry of human resources development bears the cost of the entire e-book collection for colleges of the region, whereas a college from any other state has to pay Rs 46,000 per annum.

The varsity initiated the exercise after it received a letter from the UGC in this regard recently. The university completed the groundwork last week and the uploading process will be started within this month.

Nath said the number of research scholars in the universities has increased over the years. “In 2006, there were around 300 research scholars in various departments of the university which went up to around 600 in 2009 and the number crossed 1,000 in 2010,” the librarian said.

“Earlier, access to a thesis was very difficult for students and other research scholars. As they were available only in hard copy, only one person could go through them at a time. Besides, the universities were hesitant to make them available to others for the fear of loss or damage. As soon as these theses are available in Inflibnet, a number of persons can go through them simultaneously,” Nath said.

Kandarpa Deka, vice-chancellor of Dibrugarh University, said they have also received a circular from UGC on the issue and they will also upload the theses and research papers. “We have also received a circular from the UGC and the process of uploading will be started very soon,” said Deka.