Digitally Preserving e-Theses: Challenges and Opportunities

The digital preservation of e-Theses presents several challenges. This is partly because the status of doctoral theses within the scholarly communication ecosystem is unclear. The shift from physical submission of theses to digital submission is also relatively new, spurred on by the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper is focused on policies, practices and workflows as they relate to e-Thesis submission and digital preservation. The research underpinning the paper is based on interviews, surveys and focus groups with doctoral colleges, institutional repositories and doctoral researchers within UK universities.