I can tell you it didn't get stuck in the admin queue or I would have let it through ... I don't *think* the Mailman system is set up to reject mail before it even hits the admin queue, but I could be wrong ...

On 5 May 2017 at 14:32, leutha@fabiant.eu wrote:

Hi all,

This is the email I sent on Tuesday, which as far as I can see never went through the list (apologies if it has, but there is no record on the archive)

all the best

Fabian

aka Leutha

---------- Original Message ---------- From: leutha@fabiant.eu To: Lucy Crompton-Reid lucy.crompton-reid@wikimedia.org.uk, UK Wikimedia mailing list wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: John Lubbock john.lubbock@wikimedia.org.uk Date: 02 May 2017 at 20:49 Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] CC licenses for PhD theses

Hi Lucy,

Yes, you're right I hadn't read your email until after I had sent my post.

Of course, I am happy for John to do some work with the universities, but here are other areas which I feel get neglected.

I am sorry if my sense of frustration over OTRS comes over a bit strong, but it arises as much from the inflexibility of the OTRS community as anything else. This is an area where I would like to see us pushing for organisational change within our own community.

I feel Fae made some good point, and perhaps there's a way forward their in some respects.

I would appreciate the opportunity to have chat with you on the phone, when it is convenient for you.

all the best

Fabian

aka leutha

On 02 May 2017 at 15:00 Lucy Crompton-Reid lucy.crompton-reid@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

Hi Fabian

I'm not sure whether you saw my email, responding to your suggestion about training, and saying I would discuss this with Michael on Thursday (as he has much more knowledge of Wikimedia Commons and OTRS than I do). Mine and John's replies were posted at about the same time and clearly weren't co-ordinated (I'm working from home today) but I don't think they were mutually exclusive. By which I mean, I think it's a legitimate question for John to ask how we can influence universities to become more open, and it doesn't mean that Wikimedia UK can't also facilitate OTRS training if this seems feasible and valuable.

From what I can see from your email message you are frustrated that OTRS training is not something that has been pursued by the charity so far, but I think alluding to a Wikimedia UK 3.0 seems like rather a nuclear option. I'm sorry that you and others feel like we have been experiencing mission drift and I can only say that from inside the charity, it feels like our work is more focused on our strategy than ever before. Clearly though, if volunteers don't feel supported then that is a real problem and one that we want to address. Perhaps I can give you a call to discuss how we can take this forward?

Thanks for your great suggestions about creating generic clauses for wills to easily enable someone to specify that their work should be released under an open licence after their death; and something similar for people who own the copyright of works created by someone who has died. Again, I will discuss this with Michael given his legal background, and discuss with the team how we could create and then publicise this guidance. However for these sorts of initiatives to be really effective the general public needs to understand the value of knowledge being free and open, which is why I see this sort of advocacy as an essential (but certainly not the only) part of our work.

All best Lucy

On 2 May 2017 at 14:38, leutha@fabiant.eu wrote:

Hi all

Thanks to John for his prompt prompt response.

Actually my answer is no.

I am afraid John's solution does not deal with the wealth of academic material, theses etc which have been produced before such universities start to understand the benefits you mention. As students already have the option of publishing their material on CC licenses (Students are not employees), they do not need to universities to provide such an option.

My point is that Wikimedia UK is in a unique position to actually do something to benefit how the community works as regards OTRS, of which the benefit I have mentioned is just an example.

If Wikimedia UK does not want to do this, then perhaps we could have a policy decision from the organisation to put us in the picture.

Then we could explore doing this directly through the Foundation. I doubt there is much appetite for setting up some sort of Wikimedia UK 3.0 – at this moment in time.

I know from one or two discussions I have had that various people feel that Wikimedia Uk has been experiencing some mission drift towards more general open knowledge advocacy and away from specific Wikimedia Community support. I feel this is an opportunity for the organisation to clarify where it's going.

Another issue I feel the charity could address is a generic clause for people to add to their wills releasing their copyrightable output under Creative Commons licenses. These could be generic, i.e. everything, or partitioned (for example: "all my photographs").

It would also be useful to have some phraseology so that people who own the copyright of someone who has died can release their material under a Creative Commons license. I feel this would make a significant impact in covering the gap between photos in particular taken by people whose copyright has lapsed and the contemporary period when people have started releasing their own photos on a CC license.

all the best

Fabian

aka Leutha

On 02 May 2017 at 14:05 John Lubbock john.lubbock@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

Hi Fabian. Do you not think that this time consuming process of asking authors individually could be substantially reduced by getting universities to understand the benefits of Open Licenses and having them give their students the option of publishing on CC licenses. Then the only work we would have to do is to upload them.

John

On 2 May 2017 at 14:02, leutha@fabiant.eu wrote:

Hi all,

As copyright for a PhD thesis rests with the person who wrote it, it would seem to be a secondary concern to worry over much about various institutional arrangements. The Wikimedia movement has already developed Wikisource https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page, which is a suitable repository for PhD theses, and I would say Masters thesis as well. In fact all we need do is ask the people who own the copyright to upload a pdf (or better a Dejavu file) to commons. Once they have done this - which involves releasing reproduction rights as Creative Commons - then whether they or others take the document through to becoming a completely validated document.

The advantage of this is that we can then generate an annotated version which includes hyperlinks to wikipedia pages which means we can create an approach to reading which allows the reader to move fluidly between wikipedia pages and upload PhD theses.

One of the problems I have encountered during my period as a Wikimedian in Residence at MayDay Rooms, is in uploading an old MA thesis from Chris Knight, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Chris_Knight currently a professor of Anthropology. Getting his agreement, getting a pdf of his thesis was quite easy. The problem was that having uploaded the file to commons and having sent emails to the Commons OTRS https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OTRS, nothing happened for several weeks. Indeed it was only thanks to the help of a Wikimedia at the London Meet up who had access to the OTRS system, that the Commons documentation could be updated.

The hold up is largely down to a shortage of people with OTRS access. When I volunteered for this I was told I did not have enough experience. I was not informed how such relevant experience constituted and how it might be gained.

I raised this issue at the Education Summit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wikimedia-uk-education- summit-at-middlesex-university-tickets-30324750144 (sorry

for the eventbrite link, but I have been unable to find any on-wiki documentation), and it would be interesting to know whether Wikimedia UK would be interested in doing something about this?

In particular it would be useful if we could have some people already active on OTRS to deliver a training session, so that we could have a whole cohort trained up, and if they could thus show a sufficient level of competence, could then go through the OTRS recruitment process.

OTRS respondents have a verified identity, but this identity is not made public. This means that Wikimedia UK with its robust Data Protection Policy https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Data_Protection_Policy constitutes a suitable vehicle for organising such training, as this cannot be organised by an informal group.

I would suggest that using staff time for this purpose should be prioritised over activities which might have less direct impact on the development of our movement.

all the best

Fabian

aka Leutha

On 02 May 2017 at 10:59 Richard Nevell richard.nevell@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

Open Research Exeter http://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/openaccess/databases/ orepolicies/#d.en.444179 allows people to publish content under Creative Commons licences.

Aside from open licences, a lot of institutions are doing some good work with making theses available online for free. As well as Exeter (where I'm a PhD student), there's Edinburgh http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding- resources/library-databases/databases-subject-a-z/database-theses , Hull https://hydra.hull.ac.uk/, Oxford https://ora.ox.ac.uk/, and White Rose http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/ which covers Leeds, Sheffield, and

York. Not everything is freely available - for example because some have embargo periods - but it represents a large resource of free-to-access information.

On 1 May 2017 at 14:34, Deryck Chan deryckchan@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks John for the idea. I'm in a good position to participate on a personal basis if something like this goes live.

I'm a PhD student at Cambridge University and I'm partially funded by EPSRC which requires all their research publications to be open access. So I will have the option to open-copyright my eventual PhD thesis, especially if there's a movement and a repository for it.

Deryck

On 1 May 2017 at 14:22, John Levin anterotesis@gmail.com wrote:

Dear list,

The subject of publishing postgrad / PhD these under open licenses came up via the W.UK twitter account a few days ago:

Wouldn't it be amazing if all postgrad/PhD students were given the option to publish dissertations/theses on Open Licenses? #OpenKnowledge https://twitter.com/wikimediauk/status/857618743924592640

I think there's two issues here: first, if, how and when postgrad theses are published, then second, under what license.

For the first, there's been debates recently about embargoing publication etc. Eg: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/publishing-dissert ation-online/51361 But that's another subject really.

For the second, I think there's no reason that prevents any thesis being published under a free open license, save where there is use of copyrighted materials. But I haven't found many unis stating this clearly. Leeds is the only UK university I've found that overtly advocates CC licenses: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/371/copyright_for/294/copyr ight_for_phds/4 But this is on the sole basis of a few hours googling.

I'm a PhD at Sussex ATM, so will be looking more closely into their arrangements next year.

John

-- John Levin http://www.anterotesis.com http://twitter.com/anterotesis

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