Open Access Week - October 18 ? 24 - 2010

[sharon sanders]

:applause::applause::applause:

Learn. Share. Advance
​

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fourth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they?ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

?Open Access? to information ? the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need ? has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year. Open Access Week is a key opportunity for all members of the community to take action to keep this momentum moving forward.

Get involved. Participating in Open Access Week can be as simple or involved as you like. It can also be a chance to let your imagination have full rein and come up with something more ambitious, wacky, fun.

OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.

Learn more about what you can do.

This year?s Open Access Week (October 18 ? 24) will highlight the collaboration and collective action that have heightened the momentum behind Open Access and showcase a broad range of initiatives around the globe. Participation by hundreds of universities, research facilities, and other sites worldwide will illustrate the depth and breadth of support for Open Access and demonstrate the real impact of unfettered access on advancing discovery across disciplines.

***The Open Access Week Challenge***
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2010 preparations kick off with a challenge to researchers from Dr. Philip E. Bourne, Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego and Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology. In a video posted to the OA Week Web site, Bourne calls upon scholars to think beyond free and ready access to the literature ? made possible by Open Access ? and consider how technology may be deployed to advance research, to truly mine the increasing amount of available literature. [Read more]

RESEARCHERS, how has Open Access enhanced your work? Share experiences and projects that demonstrate the power of Open Access to enable the Web and advance discovery at

http://www.openaccessweek.org.

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: Open Access Week - October 18 ? 24 - 2010

Open Access 101


http://vimeo.com/6973160

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: Open Access Week - October 18 ? 24 - 2010

Open Access Week for 2010 is over. Here some observation from Jennifer McLennan, Program Director for Open Access Week.

A letter from SPARC

The largest, most successful International Open Access Week yet has just come to a close. With just under 900 participants in 94 countries, this year’s event was no less than three times larger than it was just a year ago. Hundreds of videos, photos, blog posts, and more were released to promote and highlight the benefits of Open Access to research and take the conversation even more deeply into the research community – and they absolutely did.

We could celebrate the week as a success in numbers like these alone, but the numbers really only tell part of the story.

The increase in diversity of participants is even more telling. Started as a student-driven event in 2007 with support from SPARC and the library community, Open Access Day was at first a library-centric affair. Having grown in recognition and participation every year since, in 2010 we truly began to make deep inroads into the academy.

The student stake in the conversation on access continues to grow more firm, but this year participants from the academy – including humanists, climate change scientists, provosts, research funders, Nobelists, and lawyers – really took advantage of the occasion to share their insights on how Open Access has had an impact on their work and lives.

Nobel prize-winning scientist and director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute Dr. Harold Varmus participated in the official OA Week kick-off event, saying, with respect to where open-access publishing has reached and what’s now possible: “All of these adventures are tremendously exciting because they markedly enrich the experience of being a scientist, of reading the work of others, and of exchanging views with others in the scientific community.” Dr. Varmus’s comments are online at http://vimeo.com/15881200.

In his video, Dr. Nico Sommerdijk, associate professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at the Dutch Eindhoven University of Technology, expresses a need for moving beyond traditional publishing approaches to share data. He made his research data openly available so that now, “Everybody can access [the data set] directly with one click of your computer mouse. People may use the same data set for things that we were not looking for and so generate new science with the same scientific data set.” (http://www.openaccessweek.org/video/open-access-of-data-generates)

The stories that were shared are inspiring, but so was the creativity of the delivery.

In Portugal, the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém held a portion of their Open Access Week program in Second Life. (http://www.openaccessweek.org/xn/detail/5385115:Event:9662?xg_sourc...)

Students at Boston University made a video to illustrate that studying without access to the resources you need is like having half a sock to wear, half a hotdog to eat, or half a book to read (http://www.openaccessweek.org/video/open-access).

And, in Open Families (http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess/openfamilies), scientists relate in personal and compelling terms how Open Access to the research and data they produce, as well as that produced by others, is not just a professional cause for them but a family affair.

All these contributions to the conversation – in writing, photo, and video – are a fantastic resource that will help us all to continue the conversation over the course of the year and beyond, and are a sure sign of the growing momentum behind Open Access Week. Of course, the growing size and power of the global network also continues to impress.

Open Access Week 2010 was also a great reminder to us of the work and opportunities that lie ahead. We’ve isolated a need to dig deeper into the academy and find ways to meet faculty on their own terms – to find ways to bring Open Access Week, so to speak, to campus every day of the year. While we’ve made crucial advances, we’ve only just started to make the inroads needed to engage the community of scholars and researchers.

We’ve made fantastic progress, with awareness-raising around Week and with advancing Open Access as a new norm in scholarship. Congratulations to every single person who worked so hard to ensure the success of the event – locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. And, thank you!

SPARC also extends special thanks to the members of the 2010 Open Access Week program advisers (http://www.openaccessweek.org/group/programadvisers), SPARC members (http://www.arl.org/sparc/member), and everyone we’ve had the pleasure in working with this year. Thank you.

Naturally, there’s more to come. Watch for more OA Week round-up materials from SPARC, including more videos, throughout the week. And, course, there’s Open Access Week 2011 to look forward to!

Warm wishes,

Heather Joseph, Executive Director

Jennifer McLennan, Program Director for Open Access Week

On behalf of the 2010 Open Access Week Program Advisers

http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/the-conclusion-of-open-access