Looking back on Degree Regulations revision of OA for ETDs

It has been two years since the revision of the Degree Regulations (11 March, 2013 promulgation, 1 April enforcement ) to oblige doctoral degree awardees to make their theses and dissertations accessible to the public via the Internet. AS per the rules, all ETDs (full-text or digest) on the first year were made available on the Internet. primarily through institutional repository of each university. Nowadays new movements of open access are seen. The author, at that time a chief of the University Library Unit of the Ministry of Education. Culture, Sports. Science and Technology, looks back on the process of getting the regulations changed to OA for ETDs as the first OA mandatory policy in Japan.