Project Details
Projekt
Accessibility, digitization and analysis of historical European dissertations [Dissify]
Subject Area
Public Law
History of Science
History of Science
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565356721
Despite their scientific relevance, many dissertations are difficult to access, which impairs both research and the academic recognition of the original authors. The pilot project "Accessibility, digitization and analysis of historical European dissertations [Dissify]" deals with the digitization and legal registration of historical medical dissertations in the Baltic Sea European region between 1880 and 1950. Three main objectives are to be achieved: (1) prototype creation for the automated determination of death data, (2) examination of science-historical research potential in digitized dissertations and (3) preparation of a legal opinion on the comprehensive use of European dissertations. The aim of the project is to release these dissertations after clarifying copyright and data protection issues and to make them digitally usable for the scientific community, also in the context of AI and large language models. Particular attention is paid to the collection and enrichment of metadata to clarify the copyright situation, especially by determining the authors' death dates. In addition to legal reviews, studies on the history of science are also being carried out to examine the significance and influence of these dissertations in scientific discourse. The interdisciplinary efforts also include networking with other pilot projects and the scientific community in order to further promote the transfer of knowledge and the use of the results. These results should be reusable for every institution by means of guidelines, but also lay the foundation for the vision of a European dissertation platform. The project aims at a comprehensive re-use of the developed methods and findings in order to improve the digital availability and scientific integration of historical dissertations in the long term.
DFG Programme
Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
