TETFund leads thesis digitisation process to check plagiarism, enhance schools’ rating

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund(TETFund) in collaboration critical stakeholders have commenced the process of digitising thesis to check plagiarism.

The Executive Secretary of the Fund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, made this known at a sensitisation workshop organised in Abuja on Wednesday.

He said the workshop, with the theme, “Thesis Digitisation Project for Beneficiary Institutions” was a step in not only checking plagiarism but ensuring benefits that accrue from digitisation of thesis and other research materials.

“We have commenced the several physical sensitisation events on the digitisation of thesis for beneficiary institutions with a view to having our own National Research Repository.

The repository will contain scholarly works produced by our own students, staff, and eventually the entire academic community.

“Digitising our academic research output will lead to increased access and innovation, consequently accelerating the journey between research and commercial application.

“This effort is critical in order to secure the contributions of our fledging research base for productivity, growth and social benefits.”

While citing the technology company Google, Bogoro, said it was time Nigeria and the academia in particular took advantage of technology for national development.

He said, “Just think of the technological giant Google, which started as an academic research project.

“Their early work is still today properly digitised, cited and referenced many times over.”

Bogoro disclosed that efforts had been made in the past by TETFund to ensure that tertiary institutions in the country leveraged on technology for advancement.

According to him, Information Communication Technology (ICT) is one of the six pillars of TETFund’s “Paradigm Shift” mantra.

“We have provided digital literacy interventions as part of our ICT support intervention.

“Currently we are providing online e-learning for our beneficiaries.

“We are also creating various electronic submission portals to reduce the burden of making submissions to the Fund,” he said.

The executive secretary lamented that in spite of the large number of projects, thesis and other research works churned out every year, many oonly end up on shelves, without soft copies and eventually losing relevance.

He said, “there is lack of properly structured digitised theses available for integration to global digital repositories.

“There is also the absence of a national research repository or a coordinated collection of individual institutional repositories.

“The question then is, how are theses produced yearly in our higher institutions stored or recovered.

“How are they leveraged on, to strengthen academic integrity of thesis to be produced in future.

“We understand the issues revolve around around lack of funding, organisational capacity, and technical know-how, to digitise your academic output and increase access to fellow researchers.”

Bogoro called on the need to embark on massive digitisation of thesis across tertiary institutions.

He also called on the need to provide an ICT platform for organising digitised academic ad research material into Digital Asset Repositories that meet national and global standards and expectations.

This according to him will ensure open access, security, reliability and sustainability.

The executive secretary expressed optimism that the project being an initial step towards digitising academic research output would yield greater dividend in future.

The sensitisation workshop was attended by librarians, directors of ICT, and desk officers from various tertiary institutions across Nigeria.