We have conducted a research to check different options to access the research results of dissertations. Print dissertations contain research data which are often overlooked as they can be found in appendices. In the E-Environment they can become a valuable source if they are managed and preserved in an appropriate form, which enables them to be reused and the data can be shared. The research is based on the assessment of 226 dissertation appendices from ten disciplines (humanities and social science) submitted between 2010 and 2015 at the Faculty of Arts, the University of Ljubljana, from which we obtained the empirical evidence of what types of research data they contain. The results showed that 63% of dissertations contain appendices with some sort of research data; the appendices of different disciplines vary in scope and the data presentation types. The appendices within Archeology and Art History are the most extensive, while the least extensive appendices are found within Philosophy. In the second part a bibliometric analysis has been made to find out how many scientific articles and monographs were published by 112 authors of dissertations in 5 years. All the data have been acquired from Slovenian Current Information System (Sicris). Only 53 authors had published at least one scientific article and only 18 authors had published a scientific monograph based on research results from dissertations. 53 authors had published 210 scientific articles altogether and only a half of them had been published in scientific journals indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. As the research results of dissertations are not easily accessible, we suggest that the university libraries offer assistance and advice for PhD students in managing their research data and help them publish in open repositories and open data archives. The university libraries have always played a vital role in preserving scientific communication. They will keep this role by managing, preserving and, therefore, providing easier access to research data as well.
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