[okfn-discuss] Proposal for OpenThesis Project

Sun Jul 11 16:22:06 UTC 2010

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 <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> 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
> propose-project at okfn.org (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
>
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>
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