[okfn-discuss] Proposal for OpenThesis Project

Sun Jul 11 17:07:11 UTC 2010

Thanks both for rapid response,

PeterS's presentation is, as always, lucid, compelling and comprehensive. It
was written 4 years ago and I think it covers almost everything. There will,
of course, be even more compelling articles and exemplars.

My suggestion would be that the pirate pad should take PeterS's document and
divide out the issues into separate subtopics as a start for the supporting
material and actions. My own role would be mainly in helping get the OKF
technology going (because that has moved a lot in the last 4 years) and
perhaps some special aspects of "STM theses". This is a horrible term as
it's divisive and A+H is just as competent with graphs, tables, etc.
"non-textual" is just as bad.

The problem arises from the fact that copyright applies to "creative works".
On the one hand a graph or picture can be highly creative (I spent 2 days
per molecular picture for my thesis, as it was all calculated by hand). OTOH
if I use "creative work" then the publisher claims this as their copyright -
which of course it shouldn't be - it's scientific knowledge that belongs to
the whole world.

I really liked Peter's examples of those who had challenged the status quo
in their theses. I am sure we can build up a greater gallery. One that I
found about 2 years ago was Mathias Klang:

http://hdl.handle.net/2077/9910 or the blog
http://www.digital-rights.net/?page_id=1233

where he explicitly includes a CC licence in his thesis
(He used NC-SA, and I would now hope to convince him that he should use
CC-BY, but I didn't spot that at the time either!), Note also that the
repository carries a blanket:
Items in GUPEA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless
otherwise indicated. They may not be used for commercial purposes.
I'm sure this is well meant but part of Open Thesis would be to advocate
that this is not helpful.

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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