Funded MSc Working on OLH Tech

We're very pleased to be able to announce, in affiliation with the Public Knowledge Project, that there is a funded MSc Computer Science place to work on the typesetting mechanism proposed in the Open Library of Humanities technical roadmap. From the official advert:

The University of Lincoln, in association with the Public Knowledge Project, is pleased to offer a funded place for the MSc by Research in Computer Science. The successful candidate will not only have his or her tuition fees covered, but will also receive a £2,500 tax-free bursary.

This funded place is designed to develop an open source tool for typesetting scholarly journal articles [“meTypeset”] that will be incorporated into the widely-used Open Journal Systems software. Building on existing work, the candidate will be expected to spend his or her time researching and developing relevant software engineering techniques to create a piece of production-standard software. The practical project element, structured over 9 months, will form the basis for a Masters-level dissertation piece written over the remaining 3 months.

In addition to a good first degree in computer science, including a programming component, the candidate will be expected to have good working knowledge of, or demonstrable ability to learn:

• XSLT
• XML
• *nix environments
• Python
• PHP
• Regular expressions
• Test-driven development
• Regression testing
• git
• Free/Open source licensing

The candidate will be working under the joint supervision of Dr. Martin Paul Eve (lecturer and founder of the Open Library of Humanities project) and Dr. John Murray (senior lecturer). The successful candidate will not only be technically competent but will also be personable and able to work well in a team.

Candidates should send a covering letter and CV to meve@lincoln.ac.uk by the closing date of September 30^th 2013 with the subject line “MSc Application”. The placements are anticipated to begin in October 2013. Candidates should indicate if there are days on which they would be unable to attend an interview.

Dr. Martin Paul Eve is a lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln and a Microsoft Certified Professional in C# and the .NET Framework. Dr. Eve has written and spoken widely on open access in the humanities, including publications for the BritishAcademy and Insights journal. Of relevance to this project on open access, Dr. Eve is also a member of the Jisc OAPEN-UK steering committee, the Jisc National Monograph Strategy Expert Advisory Panel, the HEFCE Open Access Monographs Expert Reference Group and gave oral evidence to the House of Commons BIS Select Committee Inquiry into Open Access in 2013.

Dr. John Murray is a senior lecturer in computer science, having joined the University of Lincoln in 2009 from the University of Hertfordshire where he worked as Research Fellow on the EU Funded FEELIX-Growing project, working with Robotics and Emotional interactions. Dr. Murray’s research interests include all things Robotics, developing robotic systems for numerous applications including aerial surveillance, human robot interaction, animal behaviour studies and ecology.

The typesetter, which will be integrated into PKP's widely-used Open Journal Systems should provide the opportunity to substantially advance the OLH technical roadmap and a second funded place is scheduled to be advertised in the near future also.