Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Zambia National ETD Portal?

A single place to search the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) of Zambian universities and higher education institutions. It collects descriptions of ETDs (title, author, abstract, subjects, institution, year and so on) from each institution's repository and links to the full text held there.

Does the portal store the theses themselves?

No. Only the metadata is harvested. The "Download" button opens the file in the institution's own repository, and the rights and conditions for reuse are those of that repository.

Which institutions are included?

The portal aims to include every institution with Master's or PhD programmes accredited by the Higher Education Authority. The home page lists them all; institutions showing 0 have no public repository yet, no ETD collection, or a repository that cannot currently be harvested.

How can my institution's ETDs be included?

Set up an institutional repository (for example DSpace), place theses and dissertations in a dedicated collection, and make the repository harvestable over OAI-PMH. Then email datalab@unza.zm with the repository address.

How often is the portal updated?

Every participating repository is harvested automatically once a day, so new ETDs normally appear within a day of being published in the repository.

A record has a mistake or a broken download link. What should I do?

Use "Report a problem" on the record's page. Corrections to the metadata itself are best made in the institution's repository, since the portal updates from there.

Why do some records have no supervisor, department or degree level?

Many repositories do not record these details. The portal shows what each repository provides; work on filling these gaps automatically is under way.

Can I use the portal's data in my own work?

Yes. See Developer Resources for the JSON API and the OAI-PMH interface.