[FC-discuss] Free Thesis Project Released Today

[Crosbie Fitch]

Universities are supposedly for the discovery and dissemination of knowledge
- for the benefit of mankind.

Inevitable funding squeezes inspire the conversion of this knowledge into IP
protected by copyright and patent for commercial exploitation. This can
interfere with 'dissemination'.

Anything that removes such intellectual monopolies from knowledge and
facilitates its dissemination to the public is going to be good for mankind.

If the 'Free Thesis Project' moves in this direction to any extent, it is
good. If that extent is insignificant (simply facilitates privileged access
by student and faculty subscribers), then it's disappointing.

'Free' is supposed to be about unshackling the public and removing their
barriers to access knowledge/art and build upon it, not simply making things
free (of charge) and easy for the privileged.

Any scholar who has a web site and deliberately provides only abstracts to
their papers rather than the full text (only available to
'members/subscribers'), is demonstrating a lack of philanthropy and
intellect that can be presumed similarly lacking in their paper.

A scholar who self-publishes their paper in full, but uses copyright
(however licensed) to prohibit wider dissemination and restrict the liberty
of other scholars to build upon their work, could do better.

Let your fellow men stand upon your shoulders so that we may all see
further.

Of potential relevance are Google's facilities in this area:

http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/publishers.html