EURASIP Ph.D Thesis Library

 

The EURASIP Library of Ph.D Theses is an open database that started operating in 2008. It is now hosting over 400 Ph.D Theses and is currently considered to be the most extensive collection of doctoral dissertations in all areas of signal processing.  The goal of the database is to provide a platform that promotes dissemination of the theses documents, bring wider recognition to researchers and serve as a reference corpus for research activities.

In November 2011, EURASIP launched an improved version of the Ph.D library service that was developed using modern and cost effective software technology. The new system encompasses various features, including: friendly graphical user interface, keyword based retrieval mechanisms including similarity-based searches, flexible browsing of the theses documents, online reading capability (including sample pages), improved response times to user queries, real-time download statistics and popularity ranking results.

The service can be directly accessed at http://theses.eurasip.org or via eurasip.org. The main page of the service lists the most recently submitted theses. Submission is open to every researcher and is a moderated procedure in order to ensure quality of submissions. The library accepts any language but we strongly encourage that the abstract is submitted in English for the sake of readability and uniformity of representation.

When the user of the library service clicks on a thesis link, a summary page is returned that contains basic information about the thesis, including author name, affiliation, supervisor(s), year of defense, submission date to the database and so one. The user may also glimpse the first few pages of the thesis document and is also given the possibility to read the entire thesis online. A separate tab provides the option to download the thesis document and this is where related download statistics can be accessed for the current and previous month and also for the whole period since the thesis was submitted in the database (in the form of pie charts). The results also provide pointers that permit fast browsing. For example, the user can click on the year of defense to retrieve a list of all theses that were defended during that year or click on the supervisor to access all related hosted theses.  There is also the possibility to proceed with similarity-based queries by exploiting the keywords that accompany the documents.

From the welcome page it is also possible to query the service and obtain popularity rankings by defining the desired time period in appropriate dialogue boxes. The service operates on real-time statistics, so it is even possible to access the rankings of the current month, before the month is actually over.

We hope that the Ph.D Library will continue to grow and become an indispensible tool for the researcher in all areas of signal processing. Your comments are invaluable to us, so please do not hesitate to contact us for corrections and suggestions at membership@eurasip.org or phd@eurasip.org.

Aggelos Pikrakis

EURASIP BoD Member, Web Services