UB tesis number 10.000 in TDX
The University of Barcelona has entered its 10,000th doctoral thesis in the digital repository Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa (TDX). This number 10,000 thesis is about new techniques for analysing water quality. The UB used this number to reflect, at an event in the Historical Building, on Thursday 30 March, on this vast digital space that is the TDX repository, where all the theses read at Catalan and Spanish universities are deposited. Everyone can access these studies and thus be updated with new advances in research on many fields.
The University of Barcelona has entered its 10,000th doctoral thesis in the digital repository Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa (TDX). This number 10,000 thesis is about new techniques for analysing water quality. The UB used this number to reflect, at an event in the Historical Building, on Thursday 30 March, on this vast digital space that is the TDX repository, where all the theses read at Catalan and Spanish universities are deposited. Everyone can access these studies and thus be updated with new advances in research on many fields.
Anna Pinar, the author of the UB's 10,000th thesis in this repository, has studied the use of massive sequencing techniques in the drinking water purification process. Pinar explains that "the main novelty is that we have generated knowledge on the bacterial communities that exist in the drinking water purification processes which we did not have to date, while we can detect variations that could influence the quality and/or safety of the water". The researcher works in the microbiology laboratory of Aigües de Barcelona and has carried out her study within the framework of an industrial doctorate, i.e. she has developed her research within the company and in collaboration with the university. She is convinced that the publication of her thesis in the TDX will give her more visibility: "Open science allows you to reach not only the scientific community but also society in general, and I think that this option makes it easier to establish future collaborations, and the chance to continuing doing research with other working groups, for example".
Currently, more than 38,000 doctoral theses can be consulted on the TDX repository. Last year, the digital repository received a total of 108,258 queries. Those interested can search for theses by looking up items such as their author, the university where they have been presented, by subject or by a list of more than 1,600 keywords. The repository contains theses on all subjects, ranging from biomedicine to economic history or new artistic trends. It is a territory of virtually limitless knowledge available to everyone.
Maria Feliu, vice-rector for Doctoral Studies and Training Research Staff, says: "Having doctoral theses in the TDX repository has twice the value for the UB. On the one hand, for the research activity: doctoral students can look for information and models in the studies by colleagues who have preceded them. On the other hand, there is also a part of giving back: the UB does research, but it must give it back to society and the TDX repository is a way to communicate it and make it available to everyone".
Among the objectives of the TDX repository, managed by the Consortium of University Services of Catalonia (CSUC), is the dissemination of the results of university research and, at the same time, it aims to provide researchers with a tool that increases the visibility of their work. This is achieved through the open publication of research, with the conditions established by each author. Anna Pinar, for example, has published her thesis in the TDX repository with a creative commons license that allows the document to be downloaded and reused as long as its authorship is acknowledged, but without modifying it to create derivative works or using it for commercial purposes.
Since its creation in 2001, the TDX repository has continued to grow. It experienced a turning point in 2012, when the requirement of Royal Decree 99/2011 came into force, demanding that a copy of the thesis in open electronic format must be deposited in a repository. Until then, the inclusion of the doctoral thesis in the repository was voluntary. The TDX repository is based on the free DSpace software and since 2011 has been a member of the MetaArchive cooperative, a pioneer in the field of digital preservation of academic and cultural documents.
From Dolors Aleu's thesis in the 19th century to the research studies by Ernest Lluch or Joan Solà
In addition to recent research studies that are constantly being added, the TDX repository contains historical documents: theses from different periods that have been digitised for a better preservation and dissemination.
"The life of women, from the earliest times, has been a continuous agony". This potent sentence can be found in the doctoral thesis, which can be consulted in the TDX repository, presented in 1882 by the former UB student Dolors Aleu, who was the first woman to obtain a degree in Medicine in Spain. In the same thesis, Aleu found the solution to women's problems in education: "the instruction of women is indispensable; history gives us clear evidence that the great demoralisation has always been concomitant with ignorance".
The TDX repository offers a thesis from the 20th century, the one presented by the prestigious surgeon Moisès Broggi. Broggi, who played an important role in the Civil War and was head of the team of surgeons in the International Brigades, presented his thesis in 1935, shortly before the outbreak of the conflict. In his thesis, the knowledge of the physiology of the time on the mechanisms of skin thermoregulation and vasoconstriction are brought together. The surgeon applied all this theory to sixty real cases of trauma and vascular diseases.
Other theses that can be found in the TDX repository, already in the 20th century, are, for example, the one by Ernest Lluch, former UB professor and politician assassinated by ETA. He had dedicated his research to the history of economic thought in Catalonia. Another thesis we can find is the one presented by the linguist Joan Solà in 1970, supervised by the former rector of the UB Antoni Badia Margarit. His thesis dealt with the current problems of Catalan grammar: negation.
Currently, all UB doctoral graduates who do not yet have their thesis in the TDX repository can contact the UB's CRAI library. They only need to sign an authorisation document, and if a hard copy is available, the University of Barcelona's Digitisation Centre will digitise it and prepare it for inclusion in the repository.
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UB tesis number 10.000 in TDX
Among the objectives of the TDX repository is the dissemination of the results of university research and, at the same time, it aims to provide researchers with a tool that increases the visibility of their work.