What is Vidyanidhi? & What does Vidyanidhi do

What is Vidyanidhi

Vidyanidhi understands the importance of archiving doctoral dissertations and is an initiative to advocate, promote, and facilitate the archiving of theses. Vidyanidhi is an Indian initiative to archive and provides access to theses submitted to Indian universities. It is a Digital Library, accessible via networks. It is a portal that facilitates doctoral students with tools, resources, and software for the production of theses. It is a national repository for eTheses. It is a consortium of universities and academic institutions for archiving eTheses

What is an e-Scholarship portal?

A portal is an online gateway for accessing information. The E-Scholarship portal is a gateway to scholarly information and facilities. It offers a variety of tools, such as search engines, topic ontologies, and others.

What is e-Scholarship?

Today the world of scholarship has undergone dramatic changes brought about by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICTs have produced new and exciting opportunities for the creation, accessing, and delivery of information. Our future generation of scholars needs to be prepared for the scholarship paradigm.

What are style sheets and templates?

Style sheets help content structuring. They also act as silent cues to the writer to fill in the appropriate content- may be such a simple thing as a Table of Contents, or a list of tables, or a list of appendices. They help standardize the look and feel of theses both in terms of formatting as well as constituent parts. Such a practice also helps data capturing and metadata creation.

Also Read: Vidyanidhi digital library and e-scholarship portal

What are citing styles and Reference Management software?

Bibliographies and references that are part of any scholarly writing are to be given in a standard format. The format of citing a reference is known as citing styles. Most scholars collect references as they go along in their research work. The processes of collecting references, building a database of these references, managing such a database have been made simple by the availability of Reference Management software. There are much software that is available in the market today. Some examples are Endnotes, Procite, Refworks, etc.

What does Vidyanidhi do?

Vidyanidhi partners with universities, faculty, and researchers to

• build a national repository of eTheses
• develop an Indian theses database

What are the services that Vidyanidhi offers?

• Digitization of the theses collection of the participating universities
• Building a database of the theses collection of participating universities
• Install depositing software for online submission of theses
• RefWorks- a Reference Manager software for managing references/bibliographies- making it easy to build a bibliographic database
• Templates and style sheets for creating theses in a standard format

What types of access options may be made available?

Vidyanidhi is only a digital archive. It honors the wishes and rights of the creators of theses. Access to theses is as per the restrictions desired by the copyright holders. Following flexible options are available

• View only (No downloads).
• Preview Table of Contents /24 page only
• Pay and download ( the royalties to be shared by Vidyanidhi and the participating university)
• Free download
• Worldwide distribution
• Vidyanidhi Consortium only option
• My University only option
• Restricted Access

Also Read: Vidyanidhi Mission And Vision

Why should I join Vidyanidhi?

• By joining Vidyanidhi universities /researchers will be part of an emerging eTheses movement in India
• Catalog of your university theses collection will be integrated with the Vidyanidhi theses database
• Your doctoral research works will reach a global audience and have higher visibility
• Increased access will enhance readership, thus increasing the citations received and better visibility to the doctoral researchers
• Open Access Publishing – eTheses is a part and the first step will usher in better quality control
• Vidyanidhi tools and services are a boon to the academic community.