Open Access Dissertations: Al Manhal

Al Manhal

Al manhal is a non-profitable initiative whose mission is to contribute to the academic knowledge through creating an e-library that includes scientific resources that originate from and concern the universities of the Arab World and neighborhood countries . For this reason, Al Manhal is more than a project that integrates the principal activities of MERC as it is also a work tool which is open to all people. Its objective is to help the researchers to effectively use the Information Technologies at the benefit of research in social sciences. The content principally targets the students who are finishing their studies and for young MA and PhD researchers.

The Collection

The e-library of Al manhal is made of collections that relate to each other. Each one harbours a specific common theme. Up today, thanks to the help of many partners who believe in the spirit of open knowledge, the database is composed of 10 categories of documents:

• PhD Dissertations (Full Text Format) Downloadable.
• PhD Dissertations (Full Text Format) Read Only.
• PhD Dissertations (30% Format) Read only or Downloadable.
• Master Theses (30% Format).
• Assessor’s Reports
• MERC Reports.
• Articles.
• The Working Papers.

The collections of this database are selected according to a rigorous process and basing on the contributions of collaborating institutions and on the contributions of researchers. Initiated by MERC, four institutions have agreed upon backing and supplying this database:

• The Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of Tunis. University of Tunis
• The Cairo faculty of Letters; Cairo University.
• King Saoud University(KSA)
• King Abdu Aziz University (KSA).

From this standpoint, Al manhal database (online theses) aims at promoting the consultation and downloading of theses, dissertations defended by members of the juries from different countries. Thanks to the services offered by the different cyber-theses and thesaurus of many universities, we put at the disposal of the researchers a huge number of considerable documents without geographically being limited to the Arab World and Turkey.

In order to guarantee the openness and the exchange, Al manhal is open to the public. Before including it into our website, each researcher can freely consult, download and deposit his or her thesis. That will be equally conducted by a person in charge in a library (a librarian for instance) who has an authorization from the author. The thesis does not necessarily mean to be recent; old ones as far as they are available are widely welcomed.

It’s within the spirit of public interest and « Open resource » that this base was created further to a recommendation of MERC annual conference held in Tunis in 2006 . Thus, ‘Al manhal’ is not but a communicative tool between the links that are already available on the web and public. Consequently, ‘‘MERC’’ does not take any judicial or scientific responsibility concerning the orientation, the content of the links provided for researchers.