MathDiss International

    Origin

    On the one hand, dissertations are the most important documents of personal qualification for young scientists. On the other hand, dissertations also represent a significant part of the current status of scientific research in the literature. They include recent research findings and innovative methodical approaches and are therefore especially important for the scientific public in the field. Here immediate, current accessibility is critical.

    In view of the different demands posed on dissertations by societies and scientists in any field, global access to the documents from a single source remains impossible. A foundation for the handling of electronic dissertations has been laid in the project Dissertations Online . However, in the field of mathematics, additional points stemming for the relative frequent inclusion of formulas in mathematic dissertations must be considered.

    Objectives

    Within the scope of the project MathDiss International, a permanent international online full-text document server for mathematical dissertations is under developement. In this connection, questions concerning an online presentation of the documents and the problems of long-term archiving (from TeX resp. LaTeX documents) have been and will be considered. They include the question of how to homogenize such files in order to enable their later conversion into programming languages following XML. Furthermore, the expansion of research possibilities using online documents is being planned. Providing access to the tables of contents, lists of tables and illustrations and bibliographies on the LaTeX level is of top priority. Because of the structure of mathematical documents written in LaTeX we have a lot of high quality information which gathers dust in the archives without being used for the retrieval of scientific documents. This situation should be changed and it could be changed because LaTeX has become a widely accepted tool in mathematical literature. This we do in our project.

    The project MathDiss International will be sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (the German Research Foundation) for two years. At the end of that year, the results will be turned over to the State and University Library of Lower Saxony in Goettingen which has offered to provide the long-term support for this new service within mathematics.

    Project Program

    • Complete inclusion of the dissertations through metadata and the expansion of the research possibilities using the source code.
    • Standardization of the input files in consideration of mathematical contextual structuring.
    • Integration of the services in the Math-Net by the adaptation of the project results to the standards used there.
    • The creation of forms of organization for the long-term safeguarding of the service.
    • International marketing for the worldwide opening of the service.
    • Tests on the conversion of mathematical dissertations into new mark-up languages, e.g. MathML.