Language, Technology, and the Limits of Open Access: Indigenous ETD Infrastructure in India

Abstract

Doctoral dissertations form a major share of publicly funded research in India, much of it written in Indian languages. Although national initiatives have promoted digitisation and open access, most Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) platforms and plagiarism-detection systems remain optimised for English, rendering Indian-language research largely invisible to full-text retrieval and quality control. This paper examines Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), Kerala, as a pioneering institutional response through its early development of Nitya DArch, a Unicode-compliant ETD system enabling multilingual full-text processing across Indian scripts. By comparing the MGU Theses Archive with the national repository ShodhGanga, the study shows how the absence of indigenous language technologies at the national level results in only partial realisation of open access. Drawing on Open Knowledge and Knowledge Commons theory, and informed by Chattampi Swamikal’s critique of linguistic barriers to knowledge, the paper argues that openness without linguistic usability produces epistemic exclusion. It concludes that integrating Indian-language technologies into national ETD infrastructure is essential for a genuinely inclusive and equitable knowledge commons.