Between 600 and 700 PhDs are awarded per year by Aix-Marseille University, in all disciplines - sciences, law, economics, medicine, arts, literature and human sciences. In compliance with legal deposit regulations, students are now required to submit their doctoral dissertations in electronic format. The shift from print to electronic had been decided upon by each of the three universities before they were merged in 2012. It led the Academic library in charge of cataloging doctoral theses and making them available to design a new workflow. The purpose of this presentation is to describe that workflow as well as the new tools which have been created and constantly improved since then:

1. Tools

The academic library (theses coordinator and STAR/STEP coordinator) and the IT department developed a dedicated website for submitting theses electronically which is connected to apogee (a student registering software), enabling doctoral students to fulfill the submission process all by themselves. The website is being made ever more user-friendly through regular improvements. We are about to complete a fourth upgrade. Some of the improvements are part of Aix-Marseille University digital master plan.

The PhD files are then exported through a webservice to the national platform STAR (signalement des thèses, archivage et recherche) developed by ABES (Agence Bibliographique de l'enseignement supérieur).

As is the case for all institutions working with STAR, the electronic files are then archived by CINES (Centre informatique national de l'enseignement supérieur) and the metadata is available on theses.fr, as well as the full text, depending on the author's authorization.

2. Workflow

Several actors are involved in the legal deposit process, starting with the University administration that is responsible for supplying the defense date. This date triggers off the registration process for the PhD candidate. The PhD candidate needs to upload the file for his/her theses and fill in a form specifying whether the dissertation will be freely available on the internet or only through restricted access.

After the theses defense has taken place, the online approval from the PhD supervisor is required so as to ensure that the file meets all the requirements. Corrections may be requested and a second file has to be deposited. The supervisor's approval is the latest development that was added to the website for theses deposit in 2015.

Several library technical assistants are in charge of cataloging the theses in STAR, they complete the metadata which has already been imported from the University website for theses deposit and add the authorization for internet or intranet. There is a double check: the theses coordinator is in charge of proof-reading and validating the bibliographic record. After this final approval the record is available on theses.fr and SUDOC.

On the author:

Anne-Céline Lambotte, conservateur des bibliothèques, got a B.A. in English literature and Art history before entering ENSSIB (École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques). Her first position was that of the Dewey coordinator at the French National Library (BnF) between 2005 and 2008. She was at that time member of EDUG (European Dewey Users' Group) and IFLA classification and indexing section. Since 2008 she has been working in academic libraries, first as the head of Luminy science library at Aix-Marseille II University before the three universities underwent a merging and became Aix-Marseille University, then as the head of Saint-Charles science library, one of the four science libraries in Aix-Marseille University. She is also the theses coordinator of her University.