In 2008 I was a second year doctoral student at Simmons College, Boston, MA, USA when my mentors Robin Peek and Peter Suber asked me to prepare an event at the College to celebrate the first International Open Access Day (October 14th 2008). Back then the open access movement (OA) was less well established than today and OA advocates, like myself, often faced considerable resistance from scholars. Seven years on and now that, rather than a single day, OA week is an annual and international event, I am thrilled to see that the movement has gained such momentum and that events are organised all over the world.
Almost a month ago I emailed the UKCoRR listserve membership asking about their plans for this year’s OA week. I received plenty of replies, so a big thank you to those who responded!
The main focus of this year’s events is no surprise, with the new HEFCE Open Access Policy and its implications on the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework being presented at the vast majority, targeting both compliance and deposit requirements. Other topics include general presentations on open access and the various routes to OA (e.g. green vs gold), ORCiD ids and copyright. Some institutions have also arranged subject specific presentations, i.e. humanities and sciences, with presentations on how open access specifically relates to these fields. Jisc will celebrate the launch of a wonderful project, the Open Access Button, which enables users to record and ‘map’ outputs where access is restricted by a paywall, and also includes technology to source an OA version of the article (e.g. from a repository). In addition, events this year explore Research Data Management (RDM) practice, since more and more funders are mandating not only the open accessibility of research output, but also of the data that accompanies these outputs.
There are a wide variety of events, with UK HEIs running face to face events, online webinars, formal presentations and informal discussions, some of which are addressed solely to internal delegates or to both internal and external delegates.
Here is a list of events that were announced on the UKCoRR listserve (in alphabetical order):
- Aberystwyth University
- Bournemouth University
- Bristol University
- Jisc – OA Button
- Manchester University
- Open University
- Oxford Brookes
- Oxford University
- Royal Holloway, University of London
- Salford University
- Southampton Solent
- Warwick University
- University College London
- University of Bath
- University of St. Andrews
I am sure that other institutions are also planning to run their own events and UKCoRR would love to know more about them. Feel free to add your event further down in the “Comments” and please include links to presentations.
Happy Open Access Week 2014!
May this year our repositories grow in full-text deposits and flourish!
Enjoy!
More OA activity from various organisations here http://openaccess.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
Here at Plymouth, I am running 2 sessions “Open Access, what every researchers needs to know” and a practical session looking at how to upload files into PEARL, via Elements. The sessions provide an introduction to OA, the benefits as well as information about the RCUK and REF OA policies. The first session was this morning and the hour session lasted 90 minutes as there were lots of questions from the audience. Discussion topics included different publisher’s policies, being able to publish in the journal of your choice and funda available for APCs. It was good to get a mix of PhD students and researchers and the audience were very engaged.
Good luck with your events, everyone.