I support Peter MR's proposal. For a longer version of the case for open theses, see my article from 2006.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#etds <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#etds>The article responds to some objections raised against the idea in the past, and includes some strategies for avoiding the copyright problems Peter MR envisions. Peter S. Peter Suber www.bit.ly/suber On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <[email protected]> wrote: > Greetings all, > > I believe there is a real need for a communal effort in making academic > theses more Open and would like the OKF to set up a project along these > lines. I believe that the OKF is the most appropriate organization to > address this issue (and perhaps the only one capable of doing it!). I am > posting this to okfn-discuss (after recent meta-discussions) but am also > happy for it to be re-copied and reformulated on > [email protected] (and indeed this could act as the first trial of > that). As the process is new I'm writing this slightly more discursively and > occasionally in the first person, but obviously if this goes anywhere it > would be communally owned. > > Motivation > ======== > My motivation is that over several years (e.g. attending meetings of ETD > (Electronic Theses and Dissertations ) and OR(OpenRepositories) and more > recently an ETHOS meeting (JISC) that the university and HE sector does not > fully address the issue of making theses Open. I should make it clear that > they have all done a huge amount of good things - such as promoting > born-digital theses and promoting repositories, and the OpenThesis project > is intended to be entirely complementary. > > The problem arises from the fact that theses are by their nature protected > by copyright. (There is an important additional point that much of a modern > thesis may be more suitably regarded as "data" or "code" or "metadata" but I > believe that OpenThesis will subsume these concerns by addressing the larger > problem of copyright). Theses are often handled by University Libraries (who > also often manage the repositories) and they naturally and responsibly > address the problem of copyright. Too frequently, however, the actual rights > are poorly represented, especially at the machine-understandbility level. > There is often a single copyright notice on a repository which takes a > (perhaps forgivable) approach that everything is forbidden unless permitted > explicitly. Licences are often unnecessarily restrictive (e.g. ND-NC). There > are excellent cases where libraries and authors are pro-active in > encouraging licences to be embedded in theses but the normal case is that > there are no explicit machine-readable rights on a per-work basis. > > Theses also have a commercial value and there are organizations which > provide cataloguing and dissemination of theses or extract and republish of > material. These derivative works are usually protected and there is a > tendency for their rights to be applied to the orginal work by implication. > > I am one of many who would like machine-discoverable and machine-readable > (i.e. semantic) theses. The original theses are often born in semantic form > (HTML, DOCX/OOXML or TeX) but then flattened into PDF. Many theses are only > available on a per-thesis basis, controlled by a portal/gatekeeper, which > destroys any possibility of Linked open data. > > I am sure that most of the current lack of Linked Open Theses (LOT) is due > to ignorance of the value of Openness. I think that if we can explain > carefully and compellingly the value of LOT then many authors and many > instituitions will welcome it. > > This is a global challenge. Institutions are regulated by local degree > regulations (and these must be of course be honoured). Countries can only > act for themselves (e.g. JISC, SURF(NL) and similar bodies elsewhere). The > OKF can do something that they cannot easily do: > * show the global vision > * create exemplars > * find and extol early adopters (and they already exist) > * support and coordinate the actual authors (many of whom want their theses > to be open). > * provide accurate and compelling information > > Proposal > ======= > (a) set up an open-Thesis mailing list and project/pirate page > > (b) evolve a similar approach to the Panton Principles which applied to > theses. It would be something like: > 1 author: make a clear statement of your wishes (do NOT rely on formal > licences to convey this) > 2 author: identify which parts of your work do not involve third party > rights (e.g. graphic images or transcluded text). Label these clearly and in > machine-readable form; institution: support the author in this process > 3 author (with institutional help): select an appropriate licence or set of > licences. (theses may contain text, source code, data and these all require > different licences. > 4 institution: display the thesis and metadata and licences in machine > readable-form. Make it trivial for machines to ascertain that (a) this is a > thesis (b) what rights the machine-reader has to re-use the material. > Promote discovery of theses (e.g. through tables of contents). > 5 institution: label theses as Open (e.g. with an OKF OpenThesis button) > > (c) create exemplars for demonstration and advocacy > (d) engage with early-adopter repositories > (e) engage with regulators/funderadvocacy SPARC, JISC, Wellcome, SURF, > NSDL, OR, ETD, etc. > (f) design and populate an OpenThesis Bibliography (Table Of Contents) by a > mixture of crawling repositories and crowdsourcing. I would not expect this > to violate any rights > > Support and funding > ================ > > The OKF is now a fundable body so I would expect that engagement with > generic funders (JISC, SURF, ARDS, NSDL, etc.) would be appropriate. I would > also hope that research funders (e.g. Wellcome, RCUK) would be sympathetic. > > Technical Requirements > =================== > (a) mailing list > (b) project pages > (c) probably some exemplars in CKAN or a special resource > > I would see the technology being developed on openbiblio-dev and > #jiscopenbib as almost excelty what we need. It will create an Open > ThesisTOC and will also allow us to annotate individual theses for Openness. > I'd suggest this was organised by Country => Institution (=>Department). An > attraction of this is we get a formal list of institutions as a result. > > Risks > ==== > > I think the IP risks are small but should be considered. With goodwill from > the community they are negligible. > > It's ambitious but it can easily be scaled per country or even per > institution. This would distribute most of the human involvement. > > Many OKF people are probably actively involved in theses (doing research, > writing up, just submitted, etc.) so there is a large pool of talent! > > P. > > > > -- > Peter Murray-Rust > Reader in Molecular Informatics > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry > University of Cambridge > CB2 1EW, UK > +44-1223-763069 > > _______________________________________________ > okfn-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss > >
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