As many of you wonder about the "outdated" media in which the dissertation is published, I will give you the obvious explanation: The University of Munich requires that all Ph.D manuscripts have to be handed in in print form, no online or CD-ROM version allowed. To recover the printing costs (appr. $ 400), every Ph.D. candidate tries to find a decent enough publisher to get at least a small percentage back. My publisher, a newly founded PoD boutique, would not be very happy if the book appeared as a free document on the www.
Regards Michael Meier > This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition > of > writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them > perhaps > published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the > practice is > to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its > original > form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the > library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary > services > such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have > OAI- > compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as > printed > form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own > theses > on its server for free worldwide access. > > But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the > scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and > which > should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say > that > this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which > authors > are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly > books. On > that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. > > Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is > o.k.; > free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one > that > has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not > o.k. > What do others think of this line of argument? > > Fytton. > > Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. > > Quoting Thomas Krichel <kric...@openlib.org>: > > > M. Meier writes > > > > > An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. > > The > > > book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. > > > > I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that > > it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not > > freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars > > in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, > > we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is > > here. > > > > Cheers, > > > > Thomas Krichel > > mailto:kric...@openlib.org > > > > http://openlib.org/home/krichel > > > > RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel > > > > > -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net
