[okfn-discuss] Proposal for OpenThesis Project

Sun Jul 11 16:29:55 UTC 2010

Hello Peter, Peter and everyone,

I was just searching for the link Peter Suber provided above (found it
at http://www.plos.org/cms/node/58#comment-76 , as a comment to a
similar discussion), and wish to say that I fully support the idea as
well.
I have contacted http://www.eurodoc.net/ as a possible partner, and set up
http://open-thesis.okfnpad.org/initial-thoughts
for brainstorming.

Daniel

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 6:22 PM, Peter Suber <peter.suber at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
> 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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