Why aren’t Ph.D. theses included in the policy?
MIT has already made a commitment to making Ph.D. theses openly available worldwide. MIT’s DSpace makes more than 20,000 selected theses and dissertations from all MIT departments, dating as far back as the mid 1800’s, openly available to the world. Since 2004, all new Masters and Ph.D. theses are being scanned and added to this collection after degrees are awarded. Regardless of whether copyright is held by the student or the Institute, the MIT Libraries publish the thesis electronically, allowing open access viewing. While there are fees charged for scanning and printing theses, these fees are used to scan more theses and make them available for open viewing. Without these fees, only a very small subset of theses (those submitted electronically) would be available online. While the current system is not strictly open access as defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which would include no limits on printing, it’s a significant step in that direction.
