[FC-discuss] Free Thesis Project Released Today

[Gavin Baker]

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Well, the people who actually implemented the project can tell you why
they did it that way, but from where I sit, I'm looking at this as a
pilot project -- to see whether it would be worthwhile to build a
"universal" open repository for student papers, and how best that would
be implemented.

My other comment is that institutional repositories are already quite
common. Lots of schools have an IR for their faculty's research. So the
"school-specific" model is in many ways the standard operating procedure.

There's various reasons why IRs are SOP, including collective action
problems: e.g. schools get higher visibility for having an IR (more
accessible work frequently has a higher citation factor, etc.), so
they're willing to pay to maintain it, but they're less willing to pay
to maintain the "big universal repository in the sky," because the
benefits of that contribution are less apparent (e.g. "my contribution
doesn't make a difference, so I won't chip in").

More practically, the repositories store their metadata in a
standardized way, which should make it easy to find stuff, no matter
whose repository it's in. And if the contents are freely licensed, then
anyone can mirror the whole repository, which allows for redundancy. So
I really don't think it makes much practical difference.

Frankly, I find this whole discussion to be akin to suggesting that I
shouldn't have my own blog, I should just get a MySpace, because that
way we'll all be on the same site. What's it matter?

Gavin

Chris Morris wrote:
> I don't understand why it is school specific. What about people that
> go to a school that has no such project? Or what if the club that is
> hosting it stops existing? Why not have a universal project? Sure some
> might have tricky issues involved depending on the school, country,
> etc..., but I would think most would be easy.
> 
> Chris
> 
> On 4/27/07, Elizabeth Stark <emstark at gmail.com> wrote:
>> To clarify, anyone can access the material in the respository. As of
>> now, our site is Harvard-specific, in that only people from our school
>> can upload to it. The scope of the project is currently for theses,
>> which are written by university students.
>>
>> The software is GPLed. http://www.eprints.org/software/
>>
>> On 4/27/07, Koh Choon Lin <open07 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Very good idea, but why in schools? why not to everyone in general?
>>>> public on the internet? many people already out of university likes to keep
>>>> studying all their lives, doing research or just curious, or even better
>>>> some people may be in third world countries were education is very expensive
>>>> any help available on the internet the MIT project is very good for
>>>> society in general.
>>> Yes, I about to ask the same question. Why are the papers restricted
>>> internally rather than share with the rest of the world?
>>>
>>> In addition, is the software free as in freedom?
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Koh Choon Lin
>>>
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