[FC-discuss] Free Thesis Project Released Today

[Elizabeth Stark]

So to clarify, these are the reasons why we started this project at Harvard:

(1) Previously, senior theses (and maybe not even all) were stored in
the library depository, which is miles away from the university.
Essentially, that meant that no one would ever access them, and they
were only available to patrons of Harvard libraries.

(2) We clarified that students keep the copyright to their thesis at
our school. We thought, why not encourage them to license their theses
freely? As such, our repository currently requires that uploaders
agree to license it CC BY, the same license used by PLoS.

(3) We decided to make it a Harvard-specific project for several
reasons, including scope and scale, and the current proposal at our
school to make a school-wide repository. That does not mean, however,
that you have to be at Harvard to *access* the work. It only means
that we're only accepting uploads from Harvard students. We hope to
eventually be able to integrate it with a Harvard repository.

(4) This is in fact a pilot project, and we're looking to provide
resources to port it to other schools, including releasing a modified
version of the e-prints software for other chapters to use, as well as
documentation on what we did. We're also in the process of making it
OAI compliant, which means that it can be indexed by other sites, and
such interoperability is key.