I have continued to try to find full OpenAccess theses and encountered considerable difficulty. The main problem is that universities and their repositories do not help readers to find theses with OpenAccess licenses and in many cases they do not give any license information at all.
Anyway the story… I searched Google for “open access creative commons thesis” and found Mathias Klang’s thesis on Disruptive Technology. Mathias claims this is the first thesis in Sweden to be issued under CC, so I mailed and asked whether he had information from other countries about earlier theses. He mailed back:
Oleg Evnin at Caltech (successfully defended May 26, 2006) [PMR: blogged by Peter Suber]…a number of CC-licensed ETDs at the U of Edinburgh and that the earliest seems to be by Magnus Hagdorn, submitted on March 4, 2004.
Many thanks Mathias, and I shall enjoy reading your thesis – this whole area needs some disruptive technology – I am finding that approaches to repositories still look conservative and based on outdated models of thought.
I can’t comment in detail on the science but the format of Magnus’ thesis is an excellent example of what a modern thesis should contain – it’s 400Mbyte zipped but contains spendid animations and data of glaciation – worth a look.
But the problem with the repositories is that there is no indication that the actual thesis is OpenAccess. The Edinburgh repository announces:
All items in ERA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
Copyright for this page [1] belongs to The University of Edinburgh
[1] i.e. the metadata splash page
which discourages the visitor for looking for an Open License within the thesis.
I’m sure this isn’r deliberate, but, repository managers, here is a very simple idea:
Add dc:rights to the splash page and metadata and proudly proclaim in large letters:
THIS THESIS CARRIES A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE – ENJOY!