This is my thesis on unpublished theses manuscripts of UP Los Baños.
The image above is part of the cover of the publication titled Abstracts Of Theses: Department Of Entomology, College Of Agriculture, University Of The Philippines 1918-2003.
A thick book, 474 pages total, with 817 abstracts of bachelor, masteral and doctoral theses actually from 1915 to 2003 "compiled…from theses manuscripts or published papers from the very first graduates in 1915."
What is a thesisanyway? Why are theses important in the life of a science institution like UP Los Baños?
From my favorite American Heritage Dictionary (thefreedictionary.com), a thesis is any combination of these:
belief, claim, conjecture, debatable issue, debatable point, doctrine, dogma, hypothesis, issue, position, postulate, premise, principle, problem, proposition, question, speculation, stand, subject, supposition, theory.
I am an alumnus of the UP College of Agriculture, graduate with a BS in Agriculture major in Ag Education – so I know that the exact meaning or description of the concept of a "thesis" is not part of the consciousness of students. Neither taught nor explained; it just has to be accepted by them as a requirement for graduation. You conduct a thesis or else. That thesis can be the results of a set of experiments, survey, or data/information collected from groups of people through a questionnaire.
Instead of publishing a thick book like that that is difficult to share, the Entomology Department of UPLB CA could have published a digital compilation in the form of a portable document format, pdf, that can easily be shared among people far and wide – and it would have been much cheaper. It would have allowed quick searches of names of students, subjects and so on.
Not only that. Entomology could have published many if not all of those bachelor and MS theses, and PhD dissertations, in the form of technical papers, each published after critical review in a proper journal, say The Entomological Journal of UP Los Baños.
In the digital world of today, scholarship is no longer simply the recording of intellectual work on pages that can be seen by many – it is publishing on pages that can be distributed digitally and as fast as lightning!
The best thing to do with theses and dissertations is to have them properly edited and, if possible, published in technical journals that are of international standards. There is the world-class Philippine Entomology Journal based in the campus of UP Los Baños, but it is only one; the university will have to come up with many more journals to publish those theses and dissertations many more than those 817 counted above!
I am not talking through my hat. I am the one who made the Philippine Journal of Crop Science, PJCS, world-class (ISI) as its one-man band Editor in Chief and layout artist. I started in 2003, with PJCS 3 years late in issues – in 3 years, in 2006, I had made it up-to-date, meaning I worked double-time! The next year, PJCS became ISI.
I will give anyone freeISI advice upon request, frankahilario@gmail.com.@517
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