Open Electronic Theses – should be simple…

Theses are one of the most concentrated and valuable ways that science is published. Yet they could be so much more valuable. There a a few hurdles to overcome…

Effective today, the University of Tasmania will mandate electronic submission of theses and dissertations. The new policy is simplicity itself: in addition to submitting two bound, printed copies (as before), candidates must submit one electronic copy.

Comment [from PeterS] . Kudos to Tasmania and congratulations to Arthur Sale, the mover behind the new policy. This little change can have big consequences because (as I argued in a July 2006 article), for theses and dissertations, achieving mandatory electronic submission is the hardest part of achieving OA:

In principle, universities could require electronic submission of the dissertation without requiring deposit in the institutional repository. They could also require deposit in the repository without requiring OA. But in practice, most universities don’t draw these distinctions. Most universities that encourage or require electronic submission also encourage or require OA. What’s remarkable is that for theses and dissertations, OA is not the hard step. The hard step is encouraging or requiring electronic submission. For dissertations that are born digital and submitted in digital form, OA is pretty much the default. I needn’t tell you that this is not at all the case with journal literature.

I agree with all the positive things Peter says, but I also need Open Data – the ability to re-use the data in the thesis without further permission. I believe that a large amount of chemistry (and other science, but my main activity is chemistry) is locked up in theses and never published. I’m sure this is mainly inertia, with some lack of courage and vision as well.
However at the Open Scholarship meeting in Glasgow I specifically asked for some exemplars of chemistry eTheses. I got a lot of response – and in many countries theses seem to be published routinely in electronic form under some form of (implicit) Open license. However in the UK theses seem to be restricted by additional rights and regulations imposed by the universities, and all seem to be different. So I have the impression – and it’s only an impression – that although there are electronic theses they are not necessarily OA.
Sadly, of course, while almost all theses are created electronically, most undergo the cow to hamburger destruction. I heard yesterday of a student measuring spectra with a ruler, when the original data were digital…
I think theses are a great opportunity to show the value of reposition. I know many cases where the author is among the first to request data from the repository – since they have lost their own digital records. A few cases of this sort starts to make sense even in a conservative community like chemistry.
So let’s start demanding that we all deposit theses Openly – if only for the benefit of the student and supervisor!