Ben-Gurion University to Contribute to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database
Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) has joined the thousands of research institutions worldwide that contribute to the acclaimed ProQuest® Dissertations and Theses database (PQDT), the world’s largest commercially available repository of graduate works. Through PQDT, a worldwide network of scholars will be able to discover BGU’s doctoral dissertations, further elevating the University’s profile as a pre-eminent research institution. In addition, the BGU contributions will enrich the diversity of content available to researchers through the database, which supports more than 200 million searches per year.
"ProQuest is actively expanding the international content in PQDT with very high quality partnerships such as the new agreement with Ben-Gurion University. BGU was a pioneer in digital dissemination for their graduate work in Israel and throughout the globe via their institutional repository," said Marta Lee-Perriard, Publisher for International Theses & Dissertations, "More than ever before, world class research is the product of rich academic interchange that spans continents. We are excited about the potential to advance scholarship by surfacing these innovative graduate works alongside those of other leading institutions in PQDT."
"This is an opportunity to increase the impact value of our students' work. Many of their projects are at the cutting edge of today's science," said director of the Aranne Central Library Haya Asner.
Established in 1969 to bring development to the Negev desert, BGU is now a major center for teaching and research and includes the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies, as well as major research institutes such as the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research with its Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies and the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism.
To house its burgeoning research production, BGU built one of the first Israeli repositories for dissertations. Beginning in 2012, it will submit these works to PQDT. ProQuest expects to add hundreds of works from BGU to PQDT each year.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is the seminal repository of intellectual property and emerging research from the world's great universities. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, whose precursor was begun in 1939, now encompasses more than one quarter of a billion pages, creating a unique, continually growing trove of emerging research and landmark works. Researchers rely on ProQuest Dissertations & Theses as both a source of enlightening information and as a pivotal component in making their own scholarly production available to the world’s intellectual communities. The archive is managed at ProQuest by a team of scholars and technologists, who combine their talents to make the archive accessible, reliable and supported by continually advancing technology.
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