Charlottesville, VA
The Center for Open Science (COS) is pleased
to announce the release of Thesis Commons, a free, cloud-based,
open-source platform for the submission, dissemination, and discovery of
graduate and undergraduate theses and dissertations from any discipline.
Authors can share their electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) with a quick
and easy submission workflow. Readers can search, discover, and download
with a clean and simple interface. Institutions can sign-up for a branded
version of the service for their institutional community for hosting ETDs,
preprints, or other scholarship.
Thesis
Commons in part of a rapidly growing community of open scholarly
communication services built on an open-source infrastructure called the Open Science Framework (OSF). As a
shared, public good, the OSF dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for
communities to introduce and operate services across the research lifecycle
such as preprints, ETD repositories, and data or materials archives. With
a planned integration of a peer review service layer, communities will be able to
moderate these services directly and operate discipline-specific repositories
or journals with a common integrated infrastructure.
COS aims
to facilitate open and accessible scholarly communication services that promote
community-driven innovation and customization in the scholarly workflow.
“Thousands of researchers at hundreds of institutions are using the OSF to organize,
collaborate, and improve discovery of active research projects,” said Matt
Spitzer, COS Community Manager. “The OSF also enables open, community-led
interfaces for sharing preprints and papers. Institutions are looking for more
integrated, open-source services to host their community’s research outputs. By
bringing Thesis Commons and institutionally-branded repositories together, we
will dramatically improve discovery and reduce preservation costs.”
Thesis
Commons has a steering committee of experts and advocates for open scholarship
representing institution, library, and researcher stakeholder communities.
Members include Bradly Alicea from the OpenWorm Foundation, Gail Clement from
the California Institute of Technology, John Finnell from Los Alamos
Laboratory, Amanda French from GWU, Jon Grahe from Pacific Lutheran University,
Sridhar Gutam from Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Chris Hartgerink
from Tilburg University, Thea Lindquist from University of Colorado,
Boulder, Gail McMillan from Virginia Tech, Gustav Nilsonne from Stockholm
University and Karolinska Institutet, and Fred Smyth from the University of
Virginia.
Thesis
Commons is also backed by COS’s preservation fund, which ensures that all data
stored on its services would be preserved and accessible for 50+ years in the
event of COS curtailing or closing its services. Moreover, because all
COS-built software is open-source, other groups could maintain and operate the
service in COS’s absence.
For more
information on Thesis Commons or to discuss implementation at your institution,
please reach out to us here or
contact Matt Spitzer at matt.spitzer@cos.io.
###
About Center for Open Science
The Center for Open Science (COS) is a
non-profit technology startup founded in 2013 with a mission to increase
openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues
this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting
metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software
tools. The Open Science Framework (OSF),
COS’s flagship product, is a web application that connects and supports the
research workflow, enabling scientists to increase the efficiency and
effectiveness of their research. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate,
document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data.
Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.
Contacts for the Center for Open Science
Media: Rusty Speidel: rusty@cos.io | 434-284-3403
Starting a Branded Service: Matt Spitzer: matt.spitzer@cos.io
