[22167] in Athena Bugs
Re: Thesis template change concerns
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Tue May 20 10:28:03 2003
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Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 10:31:02 -0400
To: Laura Baldwin <boojum@mit.edu>, John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bugs@mit.edu, fuzzballs@mit.edu
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It's worth noting that when this question came in through OLC, Laura
and I conferred, and when the template was updated, I also updated
the stock answer LATEX->THESIS->"Where to find the thesis template
files?" (10->6->3) to clearly state how copyright works by default,
how to change it, and that all students should check with their
thesis advisor to find out which copyright their thesis should use.
Thus the students are informed of copyright issues before they even
get the thesis templates.
We have also had since 1998 a stock answer on copyright ("Who should
hold the Copyright on your thesis?") which makes it abundantly clear
that students should contact the departmental headquarters, thesis
advisor, or TLO to determine their individual requirements. That
answer also quotes from Institute Policy.
But, like Laura said, I'm going to step aside and let owls make a
ruling on this.
-Jon
At 9:42 AM -0400 5/20/03, Laura Baldwin wrote:
>For reference, I made the change at the behest of Silvia Mejia-Suarez
>of the libraries, who contacted OLC, asking for the change to be made
>at the behest of Course VI. I believe that the libraries have
>contacted a number of other groups in I/S (such as the Faculty
>Liasons) in an attempt to get the template changed.
>
> "I am the thesis processor and I have been contacted by two
> different administrators from the department of EECS (Course 6). It
> appears students are having problems with the front page of the
> thesis template, more specifically with the copyright statement. I
> am attaching the pertinent parts of their questions:
>
> A number of SM and PhD EECS theses are coming in with the copyright
> to the student when in fact it should be to MIT. Students are
> getting this information online. They have found a template for the
> cover page in LaTeX that defaults the copyright to the student and
> not to MIT. Do you know how I can correct this so the default
> copyright is to MIT and not to the student?"
>
>If Course VI didn't want copyright-to-the-student as the default,
>then there didn't seem to be much point in keeping the vi option as
>the default for all theses.
>
>I left a comment in main.tex:
>
> %\documentclass[12pt,vi,twoside]{mitthesis}
> %%
> %% If you want your thesis copyright to you instead of MIT, use the
> %% ``vi'' option, as above.
> %%
> \documentclass[12pt,twoside]{mitthesis}
>
>on the theory that anyone writing their thesis in LaTeX would have to
>edit main.tex at some point.
>
>I'll defer to Owls on sorting out between jhawk, the libraries, and
>Course VI as to what the default copyright should be; it's certainly
>easy enough to revert.
>
>-Laura
--
-------------------
Jonathan Reed
jdreed@mit.edu
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