Electronic handling of dissertations in the Obuda University
László Gábor Dr
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Óbudai Egyetem
As the information technology made electronic access easy, the unresolved issue of archiving the dissertation and the same time the escalation of the problems with plagiarism created a problem in the Obuda University, as well. In the recent years, the library resources didn’t follow the expansion of the number of students. The central and the departmental libraries were not able to store the physical dissertation copies. Therefore, the students were compelled to submit their dissertations also in electronic format which were stored by the departments in CDs, in a scrupulous way and hard to search for something.
In western higher educational institutes, the plagiarism considered as a critical blame usually implicating some procedure that might end at dismissal of the student – this might be the case if it happens in a minor project in the course of the semester. However, in Hungary we regard it as a minor mischief – mainly attributed to internal obstacles – and though it hurts when the case is out for publicity.
Not like the Ph.D. theses the university dissertations and diploma works are not subject of legislation that is controlling the rules of storing and preservations. We can decide which action is legitimate for handling a specific document when stipulating the legislation related. But the experience proves that this practice results in different interpretations of the law and doesn’t help in the definitions of the proper legal handling of the dissertations.
The proposal about the system to be developed in the Obuda University was a one step solution based on the integration and expansion of the existing systems and it would have solved the electronic upload, storage and retrieval and plagiarism check of the dissertations. The upload, storage, search and delivery is established in the library’s DigiTool system provided by the Ex-Lh Ltd. and the plagiarism check delivered by the Ephorus system as an integrated service.
The main advantages of the system in operation are from one hand the legal compliance from the other the „end user” (the student) can see the dissertations of the earlier years that are available also for the lecturers, moreover the plagiarism software can check in that new expanding environment.
In the lecture we’ll present the selection criteria, the implementation of the integration and the options for further developments.