The roundtable discussion was opened by Irina Sakirko, head of the Department of Dissertations of the Russian State Library, who introduced the participants and reported on the changes of the “Legal Deposits” Law which were accepted with � 278-FZ Federal Law dated by 03 July 2016, and which were coming into legal force 1 January 2017.

 The point of particular attention of the audience was the amended Clause 10 “Transfer of Legal Deposit Copies of Unpublished Documents” which obliged document producers to address the both forms of their dissertations, the paper copy and the electronic one, to the Russian State Library from 1 January 2017. The amendments covered works in all subjects and specializations, this including Medicine and Pharmaceuticals.  

The new order of transferring electronic legal deposits of dissertations was reported by the executive director of CITiS P. Starikov. The speaker explained that in compliance with the amendments coming into legal force, the electronic copy of the document was to be signed by the qualification electronic signature which could be received at the accredited centre. For the moment there existed an agreement for transferring digital forms of dissertations to the RSL through CITiS. And the same agreement was very likely to be achieved with the Central Scientific Medical Library. The transfer of the electronic copy of the document would be carried out with the permission of the Dissertation Council in the written form.

Deputy CIO of the Russian State Library Igor Gruzdev spoke on the benefits of the centralized transfer of electronic forms of documents through “one window” of CITiS. 

In continuation of the roundtable discussion the head of the Department of support of Internet technologies of the RSL Vasily Pavlov announced the launching of the new website “Electronic Legal Deposit Copy” in the end of December of the current year. There were demonstrated the principal sections of the website and its location on the main page of the website of the Russian State Library www.rsl.ru.

All the important details concerning transfer and acceptance procedures for electronic legal deposit copies of dissertations were claimed to be put on the official websites of the RSL and CITiS.

Addressing to the representatives of Dissertation Councils of Medicine and Pharmacy, the director of the Central Scientific Medical Library B. Loginov reminded them that the coming into force amendments of the “Legal Deposit” Federal Law did not remove the necessity of timely transfer of paper copies of the defended dissertations to CSML in compliance with all the existing rules and orders. He would also point out that the collections of the CSML contained works in Medicine and Pharmaceuticals dated by 1895 on, and that they were constantly replenished.

After that there was a queue of questions from the representatives of Dissertation Councils themed mainly as follows: responsibility for electronic legal deposit transfer; official body supervising the proper enforcement of Federal Law “About Legal Deposit Copies of Documents”; combining transfers of dissertations to the Higher Attestation Committee under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and to CITiS; rules of getting electronic signatures; order of transferring all the forms of medical dissertations; differences of the electronic form of dissertation and of the electronic legal deposit copy of dissertation signed by the electronic signature, etc.

I. Sakirko and P. Starikov answered readily the questions addressed by the representatives of Dissertation Councils. 

In conclusion the participants of the roundtable emphasized the fruitfulness and importance of such meetings. So there was made a decision to meet up once again in the end of January 2017 after the approbation of the new system for quick search of solutions for the awaited problems.