The website crashed, after Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis been published online

The University of Cambridge's website crashed on Monday (30/10/2017) after publishing Hawking's PhD thesis. It has been seen 20 million times in a few days since being available online. Hawking's thesis paper was available for free download online in a series in a PDF file format. when many users started to download the original thesis,  the website crashed. Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis, 'Properties of expanding universes', been released on Cambridge University website last week. Hawking worked on this in 1966. It became so popular that on the very first day, the publication section of Website was stalled.

Cambridge University Library's Office of Scholarly Communication has taken Professor Hawking's permission to make his thesis freely available and Open Access in Apollo. To celebrate Open Access Week 2017,  By making his PhD thesis Open Access, anyone can now freely download and read this historic and compelling.More than 5,00,000 people attempted to download this paper entitled 'Properties of Expanding Universe'. Arthur Smith of Cambridge University said, "This is the most viewed document in the university's Apollo archive." Hawking wrote this 134-page document when he was 24 years old and was a postgraduate student at Cambridge.
According to BBC News PhD thesis last week live there  has been by 800,000 browsers nearly two million times every corner of the country. Prior to this, the library of the University had to pay 65 pounds to see the full work of PhD of Hawking.Hawking said in a statement.

“By making my PhD thesis Open Access, I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos’’. Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and enquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding. "Each generation stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before them, just as I did as a young PhD student in Cambridge, inspired by the work of Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. He added It’s wonderful to hear how many people have already shown an interest in downloading my thesis – hopefully they won’t be disappointed now that they finally have access to it!”.

Dr Arthur Smith, Deputy Head of Scholarly Communication, said: "Open Access enables research. By eliminating the barriers between people and knowledge we can realize new breakthroughs in all areas of science, medicine and technology. It is especially important for disseminating the knowledge acquired during doctoral research studies. PhD theses contain a vast trove of untapped and unique information just waiting to be used, but which is often locked away from view and scrutiny.

"From October 2017 onwards, all PhD students graduating from the University of Cambridge will be required to deposit an electronic copy of their doctoral work for future preservation. And like Professor Hawking, we hope that many students will also take the opportunity to freely distribute their work online by making their thesis Open Access. We would also invite former University alumni to consider making their theses Open Access, too."

The school said it made the document available after receiving hundreds of requests from students, who wished to download Hawking’s thesis in full. It said the catalog record alone has received hundreds of views every month.

About The Author

Olivia Murakami is an Indian fact-checker and news writer, writing news for Ayupp since 2014.

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