[okfn-discuss] Proposal for OpenThesis Project

[Daniel Mietchen]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Thomas Kluyver
<thomas.kluyver at cantab.net> wrote:
> On 13 July 2010 14:00, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> The problem is that there are probably 5000 - 10000 HE institutions
>> globally (anyone have a better figure?) and we can only do this by
>> crowdsourcing. (Have we ever had the idea of an OKF contact/group per
>> institution? This could be a very powerful way of engaging?)
>
> Would something along these lines work:
> (0. Decide what we want)
>
> 1 Make a website for the project, along the lines of pantonprinciples.org,
> setting out clearly what we're aiming for and why it's a good idea.
> 2 Work with high profile universities (Cambridge is an obvious target, though
> I don't know how they make theses available at present) to get them signed
> up, preferably with a press release saying how proud they are to be working
> with us, at the forefront of the internet, and so on.
> 3 Provide encouragement and assistance as other universities catch on and want
> to follow suit.
>
> We'd still have to build up enough momentum in step 2 that the idea catches
> on.
Two more ideas on step 2:
- Mendeley are building up a "contact per institution" network
( http://www.mendeley.com/blog/community-relations/mendeley-university-advisor-applications-pouring-in%E2%80%A6/
)
and may be open for collaboration in that regard.
- Basically all European universities are members of http://www.eua.be ,
which could be approached as well. Their current projects:
http://www.eua.be/eua-projects/current-projects.aspx .