Category — Student Activism

Via Michael Geist:

The Canadian Federation of Students, representing a half million students from coast to coast, just released its position paper on copyright reform. The CFS position includes support for a more flexible fair dealing provision, rejection of the AUCC/CMEC educational exemption, calling for balanced TPM measures, implementation of a notice-and-notice approach, elimination of crown copyright, and limits on statutory damages.

The statement doesn’t include issues such as open access to research, but it’s still great to see the student community getting involved with information policy issues.

Bita M. Assad, Web Site Provides Theses Online, The Harvard Crimson, April 7, 2008.

As the final round of seniors turn in their theses, a fledgling open-access initiative is encouraging students to make their work accessible to the world.

The Free Thesis Project, a Web site run by Harvard College Free Culture, currently allows seniors to upload their theses to an online repository. But while the Web site was launched in April 2007, only 20 students so far have submitted their theses for free and open access. …

The primary arguments in favor of open access for scholarly literature written by faculty and students are both pragmatic and ideological, according to Grant W. Dasher ’09, one of the leaders of the Free Thesis Project. He added that there is a need to drive down the cost of scholarly journals, which would eliminate the high subscription rates for universities.

Even as the University shifts to open access, the Free Thesis Project has yet to pick up momentum among Harvard’s senior thesis writers.

Jason E. Neal ’08, the only senior to have submitted his thesis so far this year, said seniors are often too preoccupied to think about how they would like their thesis to be distributed for future readers.

“Seniors are busy finishing their theses, and are so relieved to be done, that they don’t ever want to think about it again,” said Neal, who is a government concentrator.

Dasher acknowledged that although the shortage in submissions is partially due to limited awareness, departments have been receptive to the idea of encouraging the initiative. …

According to Dasher, the Free Thesis Project plans to expand its depository to include PhD theses and eventually to integrate the archive with faculty publications.

Carolyn Kenny is a professor of human development and indigenous studies at Antioch University and co-editor-in-chief of the open access journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. In a new interview at Create Change, Kenny describes how she got her beginning with open access:

I was a recalcitrant, traditional paper-and-pen professor, who printed out every document from the computer and worked with the hard copies. About ten years ago, one of my art students said she wanted to do a Web-based thesis. I was horrified. I said: “No way. This is ridiculous.” But she was persistent. Finally, I told her to give it a try. Once I got into it, I was totally hooked. She was able to embed photographs of the art installations of her students in the document. When she cited books and articles, we could just click onto an embedded link that took us directly to the reference list for the full citations. I was just blown away. Ever since then, I’ve been a fan. Now I encourage students to do Web-based dissertations. I’m not fluent in electronic media myself. Often I learn about new options from our librarian or my students.

Students: Ask your professors to support open access!