The transition of CyberThèses to Open Source

Abstract

CyberThèses is a platform for the archiving and dissemination of electronic theses and dissertations built on the use of structured document (initially SGML). An important step has been crossed with the evolution of the program towards XML and the evolution of the whole platform to open access. We now propose to the community a set of tools covering the production of XML document from traditional word processing formats, their indexation which the enrichment associated to structured document and their dissemination. The whole platform is available freely (GPL license) on a collaborative development web site (http://sourcesup.cru.fr/cybertheses). The benefits we aim from this transition are of different nature: - the political one: dissemination of the results of research shall be free and we do agree on that point with some larger initiatives' recommendations OAI, BOAI, NDLTD, etc., - the financial one: their won't be anymore economic barrier to the implementation of many ETD providers, - the practical one: we hope to enlarge the users and/or developers contributions to the CyberThèses program.