The University of Malta seems determined to make the knowledge produced by its students inaccessible to both the Maltese public and scholars abroad.

Many of the hundreds of theses produced yearly by the students of Malta’s highest academic institution are simply unavailable. Those that are can only be accessed by visiting the University’s Library and manually filling in a form, which is passed to the staff, who then have to dive into the archives to retrieve the thesis.

Moreover, these documents can neither be taken out of the room nor photocopied.

This procedure might have made some sense before the dawn of the internet as a means to control plagiarism but in the 21st century there other more effective means to regulate misconduct available to universities.

Making the theses freely available to all is an obligation of the University of Malta. After all, it is a public institution that is funded by the taxpayer. The least the Maltese public can expect is to have unrestricted access to the knowledge the University produces.

Making its knowledge as publicly available as possible is also beneficial to the University.

Hidden knowledge cannot be used by other researchers and it is a University’s participation in the rapidly developing, globalised scholarly world that can attract funding, dynamic students and experienced staff.

The University of Malta has already taken the important step of having its more recent thesis stored in electronic format, making the dissemination of these documents easier. However, it must ensure that the high-quality research it produces is available to researchers on campus and worldwide, particularly to those studying topics such as migration, hunting or tourism where the Maltese and Mediterranean context are particularly important.