Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 03/08/2012 05:50 PM, Darren New wrote:
> > In addition, the school itself gets a copy of the thesis (or many
> > copies) and they wind up in the department or library or something.
> > Certainly when the student publishes a thesis, the school isn't going to
> > fail to have a vanity copy.
>
> Sure. But that doesn't help *me* read it. I always seem to have trouble
> getting my hands on interesting papers and stuff...

At my university, I have to deliver two printed copies to the school library. I
must also deliver an electronic copy to a commercial online publisher to make
available through their private (paid) service. Registering a copyright and
providing open access are add-on costs for the author.

I'll shell out the bucks for the copyright since my thesis has immediate
commercial applications and I don't want one company monopolizing it.  (I don't
mind not getting a piece of it since public funds paid for the research and most
applications involve safety.)

I'm also on the open-access side of scholarly publication.  However, I have
worked with professional technical editors and think we need to figure out how
to get them back into the technical publication process. Peer review generally
works well enough for checking the content, but it seems silly that researchers
also need to have the specialized skills of a proofreader, copy editor, graphic
artist, and sometimes even page layout specialist.

Modern software doesn't make these respectable jobs obsolete, it just gives
authors the tools to do all of them themselves, poorly, when we could be doing
more of the research we're good at.

[It feels good to leave that preposition there at the end, where it belongs.]

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