Holly Turpin is a Research Associate in Archiving and Preserving Open Access Books at Loughborough University.
This blog post has also been published on Loughborough University’s Open Research Blog.
Loughborough University is one of the partners working on Open Book Futures (OBF). OBF builds upon the work of the COPIM project (2019–2023) and aims to initiate a step-change in the ambition, scope and impact of community-led Open Access book publishing. Specifically, Loughborough University is part of Work Package 7 (WP7), Archiving and Preservation, which is developing guidance and easy to use tools to help scholar-led open access presses and library repositories to digitally preserve open access monographs and their associated content (e.g. video, audio files etc.) for long term access.
One of the main areas of activity of WP7 for the Open Book Futures project is focussed on the archiving and preservation of PhD theses, an activity in which university repositories typically play an important role. For OBF, archiving and preserving PhD theses means not only safely storing the final version of the thesis and its associated content in a digital format, but also ensuring that PhD theses are openly accessible to be discovered and read by any reader with internet access.
Recently completing my PhD at Loughborough University has coincided with me starting a post as a Research Associate for WP7, Archiving and Preservation, based at Loughborough University. It seemed fitting, therefore, to reflect on the challenges I faced when the time came to submit my own thesis to the University repository so that it could be archived and digitally preserved. The purpose of these reflections is to kick-start a strand of research within WP7 that focuses on the doctoral researcher experience regarding the digital preservation of PhD theses. This builds on preliminary work within WP7 that scoped out the perspective of university repository managers, who are key stakeholders in the digital preservation of UK PhD theses, within the British Isles. This earlier scoping work has been summarised by my predecessor Miranda Barnes in the blog post titled Scoping PhD Theses: Some initial reflections.
For context, my PhD thesis is titled ‘Understanding Homelessness in Loughborough Through Co-Created Immersive Digital Storytelling’. As part of this research, I co-created 360-degree films with participants with experiences of homelessness in Loughborough. These films include voiceover narrations from the participants and 360-degree video footage of different locations in Loughborough. The films can be viewed either using video players compatible with 360 or through virtual reality headsets. From an archiving and preservation perspective my thesis falls into the category of emergent digital formats an area that the British Library, partners on the Open Book Futures project, have been leading on.
One key consideration that I had for archiving and preserving my thesis was the complexities that would arise from the ‘born digital’ nature of this content. ‘Born digital’[1] content refers to content that is digitally created, such as the 360-degree films in my research, as opposed to when analogue materials become digital when they are digitally archived. Another key consideration for me was the archiving and preservation of research and research outputs that concern a sensitive topic such as homelessness.
Digital Thesis submission processes & policies
In the initial scoping work, it became clear that there was variation in the way in which digital PhD thesis submissions were handled across different universities. This included differences in terms of which support services acquire the thesis and which support the doctoral researchers with their digital submission. Generally, the thesis is processed through a doctoral college or academic registry when a student submits the thesis for examination, before the submitted file is passed to the library for deposit into the university research repository.
At Loughborough University a Doctoral Researcher’s thesis is processed through the doctoral college when submitted for examination. When the Doctoral Researcher has passed their examination, and when any required corrections to the thesis have been approved by the internal examiner, this is confirmed by the doctoral college. The doctoral college then refers the Doctoral Researcher to online guidance on ‘completing your studies’ and directs them to submit the final version of their PhD thesis, as approved by their Examiners, in electronic format in the University’s Research Repository. After this, thesis records are made available online in the Research Repository once the Doctoral College Office have undertaken their necessary processes and notified the Library that they have added the author’s name to their official pass list.
Whilst the submission process did not present a significant challenge for me, it has caused me to reflect on how rooted the process is in the final stages of the PhD journey, the viva process, and future dissemination plans. As my thesis contains multi-media objects, I did deposit these in Loughborough University’s Research Repository ahead of submitting my thesis to be examined, however the formatting and accessibility of these media objects (the 360-degree films) is not something I had considered in detail prior to this point.
The late stage in the Doctoral Researcher journey that these considerations came to my attention is a recurring theme in these reflections, as is the conclusion that I wish I had more knowledge of the processes and requirements of archiving and preserving before I had started creating research outputs, such as the 360-degree videos.
Electronic-only submission
At Loughborough University doctoral researchers are only required to submit their theses electronically as opposed to submitting a physical manuscript. Whilst most universities also moved to electronic-only submission in 2020, due to the in-person restrictions introduced by the Covid-19 pandemic, in the initial discussions some universities’ raised concerns that without a preservation policy, not having a physical copy of the thesis runs the risk of losing this knowledge if electronic copies are not securely archived.
In the context of emergent format theses like mine, that contain multiple media objects, without electronic submission several of my outputs would not be archived. For me, this would pose greater risk of the knowledge being lost, as the archiving of these media objects would fall solely to me. This responsibility also emphasises that as most doctoral researchers leave the university after depositing their thesis and lose their university email address, there is no lasting point of contact between the author and institution archiving and preserving their materials. This hasn’t been the case for me, however, generally this would further the risk of complex digital content being irretrievable.
Practice-based Theses
As mentioned previously, a certain amount of my thesis research is practice-based, falling into the category of an Art thesis. Despite having created some immersive media in previous academic roles, including 360-degree film and augmented reality, I was not an expert in the medium prior to beginning my PhD studies. Completing a PhD is designed to help you become an expert in your chosen field, but as practice-based research often falls outside of disciplinary boundaries, the route to this expertise can be less clear. For instance, the expertise of your support team and PhD supervisors is often more research based than it is technical. This means that there is often no obvious contact for doctoral researchers dealing with more complex technical issues relating to file formats and digital platforms they should be using, particularly when using newer more experimental mediums.
Given that a 360-degree video can be viewed using a virtual reality headset, it can also be categorised as experiential work. The preservation of experiences, or intangible qualities of an experience, is not only technically complex, but also theoretically complex. The increasingly hybrid nature of creative performance and audiences was explored in depth by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s joint research project Boundless Creativity, which examined the role of innovation in shaping cultural experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Understandably, experiential work is often considered by the creator with an immediate and specific audience in mind, as opposed to how it may be experienced by unknown future audiences. When it came to experiencing the 360-degree video in virtual reality in my research, this meant I was much more focussed on preparing it for exhibition at a venue accessible to my participants in Loughborough than I was on preserving the experiential qualities of these outputs.
File Formats
In the initial scoping work, universities discussed there being a split between doctoral researchers interested in only doing the bare minimum required in terms of a digital submission, and those who were ‘anxious’ depositors e.g. asking lots of questions before submitting their thesis files to the repository. In both cases, I think this is indicative of the impact of the large amount of project management, administrative tasks and responsibility that comes with doing a PhD, which is a largely independent project. This again relates to my earlier point about the issue with archiving and preservation being a consideration on in the final stages of producing a PhD thesis, as opposed to being an ongoing consideration from the very start of the journey. By the time it comes to depositing thesis files a Doctoral Researcher will have been through what is undoubtably a highly pressured and stressful stage in the PhD process and at this stage may not be in best placed to be making decisions and doing work that could have a significant effect on their future dissemination plans.
Proprietary file formats, where the file format is owned and controlled by a specific company or individual with specifications not publicly available, were another issue raised in Miranda’s initial discussions with universities. Repository staff at one university spoke of how arts and English-language researchers used the widest diversity of proprietary formats, often using software under a free trial or limited access basis. In the case of a medium such as 360-degree film this is a challenge, as each brand of 360-degree camera tends to have their own file types and editing platforms. For my own PhD thesis I was able to convert my 360-degree films into mp4 files, which retained all their 360-degree qualities. However, the issue for me has been less around proprietary file formats and more around the digital platform that is used to launch/view the files, as several video players do not recognise 360-degree files. In the long term, I am concerned that despite these files being a recognised format in their basic video form, video players of the future will altogether stop recognising their 360-degree qualities. This risks the 360-degree qualities of the videos being lost in their long-term preservation, in a way that is hard to anticipate or account for.
For my work, this is where knowledge around metadata and different metadata standards is important. When there is no guarantee of the future stability and accessibility of digital files generated using proprietary software, it is perhaps more important that such files are accurately described and recorded, for both the knowledge and context of future readers, but also for the possibility of recognising these formats in future contexts.
Rights, copyright, and licencing
As discussed in the original Scoping PhD Theses blog post, student concerns about rights, copyright and licencing come late in the process after their materials have been created.
As someone who has taught filmmaking to both undergraduate and master’s students as part of the Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University, I have some existing knowledge around copyright and licencing. From my experiences teaching, I know that students struggle to grasp these issues and often create work using copyrighted images they don’t have the licence for. In the context of submitting this work for assessment, this may have a minor impact on marking but otherwise there are no serious repercussions. Although PhD students are aware that their research is intended not just for examination, but to contribute knowledge to the wider community, I think the mentality of creating work for a selected few – which comes from previous experience of university assessments – is hard to overcome.
Further to this, doctoral researchers often start creating research outputs at an early stage in their journey, before they can realistically be fully expected to recognise and understand potential copyright and licencing issues, without prior knowledge. In my thesis the earliest point at which I created an output, which is now included in my thesis, was a 360-degree film I created at the beginning of my second year of studies. This film formed the basis for all further outputs and therefore would have benefited from being created under more thorough archiving and preservation guidance.
Embargoes
Embargoes, where work is made private as opposed to the open access default of PhD theses, again relate to how a PhD student’s motivations and level of awareness impact the preservability of what they create. In my PhD there are several examples of autoethnography, where I share some of my own experiences in relation to homelessness. Although I carefully considered what was appropriate to share and what was appropriate to keep confidential, due to the open access nature of PhD theses, it was difficult for me to fully consider what the longer-term implications might be of sharing this information in the public domain.
During my PhD studies I was part of the HOME Centre for Doctoral Training at Loughborough University also researching homelessness. As discussed in Miranda’s original blog post, where there are concerns of political safety and censorship, the Doctoral Researcher will request to embargo this work. The length of this embargo is typically between 1 and 3 years. In the case of homelessness, conducting research on this issue does not necessarily pose an immediate threat to researchers, however this can be hard to predict particularly with the rising level of online abuse faced by researchers in the digital age[2]. An issue such as this in most cases is not reason enough for a Doctoral Researcher to request for their thesis to be embargoed. It does however contribute to the levels of anxiety a Doctoral Researcher may feel around archiving and preserving their thesis and this thesis being open access. Although this doesn’t necessarily pose a direct challenge to the archiving and preservation of PhD theses in itself, it contributes to the need for guidance and awareness around open research and open access publishing earlier on in the PhD process, to help alleviate this anxiety.
In terms of the practical outputs of my PhD research and what qualifies as material that needs to be embargoed, this is something that I wish I had more knowledge about at the beginning of my PhD. Several of the 360-degree films I created have been embargoed due to confidentiality and GDPR. This is because they are filmed in public areas with people in them. Although the individuals in these films are largely in crowds and not obviously directly identifiable, meaning these films would generally be viewable in both broadcast and social media contexts, these restrictions are much greater when something is being made publicly accessible for future audiences in the context of research. Although thinking about the long-term digital preservation and open access requirements would not have necessarily changed the material I created, if I had a better awareness of this before creating these outputs, I may have been able to make decisions to mitigate these restrictions.
Longevity, preservation and future access.
An issue mentioned in Miranda’s original blogpost on the preservation of PhD theses is that of link and reference rot, which refers to when the site a reference is hosted on changes or is removed over time. Having recently consolidated the references in my own thesis, this has certainly been an issue. Although I have been able to find Digital Objective Identifiers (DOIs) for a large amount of my references, which are more secure, not all references in my thesis are published literature with a persistent identifier. Again, sourcing references is something that PhD students start doing at a very early stage in their research and therefore would benefit from early guidance on this issue.
In the initial conversations with universities, it was concluded that universities themselves are concerned about preservation, but the students do not have these concerns on their radar. I would argue that although this may be the case, students do have the potential to be concerned. The issue is the immediacy of this concern, amongst all the other things PhD students need to be concerned about.
Next steps and opportunities
In the initial discussions with universities, they suggested several helpful developments such as best-practice guidance for students and academic staff, working groups for those involved in archiving and preservation of PhD theses to discuss issues, migration guidance for when institutions change repository systems and a more in-depth consideration of the role of metadata.
From my perspective, I think another useful next step would be to hear more from doctoral researchers from a variety of different disciplines and those creating practice-based outputs, to fully understand at what point and through which means they would benefit from guidance on open access publishing and digital preservation. By understanding not only when doctoral researchers develop concerns about the archiving and preservation process, but also the exact points at which they should be concerned, would provide opportunities to ensure that students can preserve the future access of their work.
This year on the Open Book Futures project, Work Package 7 will be conducting further research into the archiving and preservation of PhD theses, speaking more to doctoral researchers, universities and repository staff. If you are interested in discussing any of the issues raised in this blogpost, please get in touch.
[1] Metz, R. (2025, May 12). Born Digital. Rafi Metz. WWW.BORNDIGITAL.COM
[2] Hodson, J. et al. (2023, 29 Nov). Online abuse: What can researchers do? Sage Research Methods Community. Online abuse: What can researchers do? — Sage Research Methods Community