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OpenThesis.org Launches

A new web property called OpenThesis (www.openthesis.org) has been launched. It exposes theses and dissertations, making them highly accessible, useful, and shareable-at absolutely no cost. OpenThesis.org will allow authors to upload their theses/dissertations, and the documents will then be vaulted for posterity and made searchable anywhere in the world. If an author (or an author's family) has only a paper copy of a thesis/dissertation, the site will give guidance on how to get it scanned into computer-readable form for subsequent uploading.

OpenThesis.org also will work directly with universities to ensure as comprehensive a database as possible. The existence of a comprehensive electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) database will benefit universities in licensing efforts and will benefit authors regarding networking for collaboration and jobs.

Optionally, visitors to OpenThesis will be able to register in about 1 minute, also for free. They will gain access to special features such as the ability to organize documents into portfolios, and they will be able to set up alerts for automatic notification of new documents of interest.

Here are a few other important aspects of OpenThesis.org:

• Authors will create accounts that will be email-verified as part of uploading their document(s), and they can choose on their own author pages (www.OpenThesis.org/their-name) to show their contact information and/or LinkedIn profile page as desired. There's even an embargo feature-authors can upload and indicate a future "go live" date on a given document.
• All colleges and universities will have free microsites, e.g., www.openthesis.org/school/The-University-of-Texas-at-Austin/results.html, such that they can link to a repository of documents from their own authors, co-branded with their logos.
• The site will allow users to search the entire document collection or to limit the search to a particular institution. The documents from a given institution also can be browsed within that institution's microsite.

Source: OpenThesis