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Hello Friends, With reference to the Open Thesis, there are many thorny issues. NDLTD has been irked by the uncivil/unethical practice of harvesting not only the metadata but full text too (which is against the basic tenet of OAI-PMH). There have been lots of discussions currently going on and many issues that the NDLTD members have taken up. So far, we (NDLTD) have not got convincing and satisfactory answers. I reproduce one open letter sent by John Hagen, a member of the NDLTD Board with Pete Celano of OpenThesis - which I believe raises the pertinent issues- for the benefit of LIS Forum members. ----- Pete, I need to clear the air, please allow me to rant. After viewing all the ruckus the past few days on the ETD listserv about OpenThesis, I am bothered by the fact that you (Patents Online LLC, not necessarily you personally), did not follow the Open Access Initiative (OAI) harvesting protocol as I had previously mentioned (you will recall the Google/NDLTD story I told you when they wanted to do the same some years ago). Harvesting the metadata is fine, however, I was not aware you intended to harvest the documents themselves. This was not part of the bargain. OAI harvesting protocol is intended to harvest only the metadata (bibliographic information) along with a pointer (URL) back to the originating institution to provide document access. The documents themselves are NOT harvested. There are a number of reasons why as outlined below. - Integrity: the originating institution maintains copy (version) control. point back to the version at the originating institution. - Authentication: End-users know they are accessing the genuine document when it is served via the originating institutions' IP network / institutional repository. - Acknowledgment: Branding and Access Statistics, Copyright... -- Branding: Institutions often have their unique branding which accompanies the metadata and document file link appearing on the Web screen of their institutional repository. -- Access Statistics: Institutions maintain access log statistics to report the popularity (via hit count) of documents downloaded. This information is often published and enables graduate alumni to document the success of their research by number of accesses to the thesis or dissertation. -- Copyright: This can vary from country to country, but individuals as well as institutions can get very possessive about intellectual property they produce. Granted OIA technically allows robotic harvesting unless the admin embeds a "stop crawling identifier", the basic tenets of civility worked out in the OAI protocol means we don't just take things (i.e. digital objects) from others, especially without asking first, much for the reasons specified above. I will give you concrete examples of how this should be done. I had previously cited VTLS Visualizer at http://www.vtls.com/ndltd. See also Scirus ETD Search at http://www.ndltd.org/serviceproviders/scirus-etd-search. These are listed as ETD search interfaces on the NDLTD page at http://www.ndltd.org/find. You will notice that when you do a search on either system, they index the basic information (correctly I might add), and point back to the originating institution to provide document access. In many cases it points back to a "document data" screen in the originating institutions' IR, and provides a link to the document. In some cases, it will take you directly to the document via a "Handle", also published as part of the metadata. These services include not only metadata about open access ETDs, but also include the metadata for restricted access ETDs as well (even though the document may require login to access the file in the case of a campus restriction, the metadata and the fact that the document exists is indexed to reflect the entire holdings of the collection). The solution I would recommend is that in OpenThesis, you provide the ETD metadata, ensure it is accurate, and most importantly, point back to the originating institution for document access; do not provide file access from the copy you harvested on your server. Rather than going out and grabbing IP just because you can, then telling folks that authors and institutions can voluntarily upload their IP, then they find out after the fact that you have already harvested their IP without their permission, it seems to me there must be a better approach than this. At least this is my perception of what the NDLTD constituency have been so irked about since you made the OpenThesis announcement. I am happy to work with you Pete, but it is not my business to defend OpenThesis, and it puts me in an awkward position. This does not have to be adversarial, nor should it be. But please, you need to be a team player. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks, - John ps - Of course there is nothing prohibiting authors or institutions from voluntarily uploading copies of ETDs in the OpenThesis system, for reasons of recognition, royalty, online viewing convenience and/or print-on-demand service , citation impact, preservation, etc., (barring local copyright legislation as some have cited regarding institutions). <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> John H. Hagen Manager, WVU Institutional Repository Program / Coordinator, Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Program Board Member, NDLTD Co-Chair, http://www.library.pitt.edu/etd2009/ ETD 2009 Symposium WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES Acquisitions Department Wise Library, Room 2510 P.O. Box 6069 / 1549 University Ave. Morgantown, WV 26506-6069 (304) 293-5267 http://www.wvu.edu/~thesis/ http://www.wvu.edu/~thesis/ Dr. Shalini Urs Executive Director and Professor International School of Information Management University of Mysore Mysore - 570006 Phone : + 91 821 2514699 Fax : + 91 821 2519209 www.isim.ac.in ISiM - Management School of IT. Technology School for IM _____ From: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in] On Behalf Of Shamprasad Pujar Sent: 04 February 2010 11:01 To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] Open Thesis Dear Members, Now you may search, upload or download many of the full text of theses/dissertations/other academic documents submitted to various universities in all parts of the world in different subject areas using Open Thesis free database. You may find more information and search this database at: http://www.openthesis.org Interested Institutions may participate in this project and get a collection specific homepage. With best Regards, Dr Shamprasad M. Pujar Deputy Librarian Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Gen Vaidya Marg, Film City Road, Goregaon (East) MUMBAI-400 065, India Phone: 91-22-2841 6547 ; 2840 0919 Ext: 547 E-mail: pujar@igidr.ac.in Skype: sham.pujar URL: http://www.igidr.ac.in Blog: http://spujar.wordpress.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by http://www.mailscanner.info/ MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.