My article  “Open Access: Towards Fairer Access to Research” is up on the Impact of Social Sciences blog.

There I argue that practical and sustainable ways of increasing access to scholarly materials will require a more thorough transformation of the…

Greetings, all! I have two big questions for the Open Access community:

1) What type font does Open Access use in its logo? If possible, I'd like to match it in some of the fan art I'm making for the big week.

2) How do you translate the seminal phrase 'Set the default to open' in other languages? I'd like to start with Spanish ('Establecer el valor predeterminado a abierto') but I…

Whether your events are focused on getting faculty and students informed on Open Access Issues or if you want to promote Open Access projects your campus has begun, start planning and posting your events now to get maximum participation! And don't forget to post your events on the Wiki page as well. This is useful because it…

On our August 6, 2013 webcast our guest speaker, Brian Glanz, showed us that Hackathons are not just for the technologists. Open Access Week is now just around the corner (October 21-27) and a Hackathon is a great way to stir interest, involvement, and possibly create finished projects using Open Access content.

Our guest speaker, Brian Glanz, is the founder of the Open Science Federation and co-founder of the American chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation. With…

Negative results are to be expected in experimental science. Most researchers have lab books and files full of negative data, blurry gel photos and graphs showing no significant differences. When I was still working at the bench, the normal procedure was to shelve this data and keep working until you had "publishable results." You would tell your lab…

Tools for Open Access Advocacy: Demystifying Hackathons

Another free SPARC online event

Tuesday, August 6th, 2013

12:00 - 1:00PM EDT (use helpful time converter)

Registration is free, but required. Please…

SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the World Bank have announced they will co-sponsor the kickoff event for Open Access Week 2013 on Monday October 21^st in Washington, DC. The live event will take place at the state-of-the-art World Bank facilities and will host a Liveblog and Webcast for those who cannot attend in person. The event will also be recorded, and be available to the community for use during and after local Open Access…

You are warmly invited to SPARC Europe Open Session in conjunction with the Pre-LIBER conference in Munich, Germany, the 25th of June at 2.30pm-5.30pm.

Venue: Hilton Park Hotel Am Tucherpark 7, 80538.



We will discuss how libraries can make open access work now that open access is moving into the mainstream. Can libraries/universities reallocate funds from the big deals to the support of open access publishing? Speakers for this topic are:



Prof. Björn Brembs,…

Greetings, all

I am a novice when it comes to open access, so I look forward to learning a lot this week. The question I would like to answer is ... how do I explain 'open access' options to colleagues working in conservation? These friends are academics, journalists and goverment officials. That said, it's been difficult to get these fans of email attachments onto the social web. That said, I believe that sharing and remixing are the future so we might as well get good at…

Starting with the Open Access Week 2012, the Romanian information specialists, researchers, funding agencies and interested parties are the beneficiaries of a new portal dedicated to Open Access advocacy: www.acces-deschis.ro (beta version).



This is…

There are lots of great events being posted here-- please see what is going on your area.

Today also marks the World Bank and SPARC kickoff event. This live-streamed event is a great place to start if you are having problems coming up with things to do. This event will be recorded, and features a Q&A portal and live blog for…

To celebrate Open Access Week 2012, I would like to share with you my LibGuides as follows:-

 Open Access, A2K & Scholarly Communication:

http://libguides.wits.ac.za/openaccess_a2k_scholarly_communication

Open Educational Resources:

 …

This year  for the Open Access Week, the University of Liege (ULg) and its Library have launched a large campaign for information:

•  An interactive video produced by the WebTV ULg - to be seen from 22 October on YouTube, the University website and on the institutional repository ORBi.

• Systematic contact of ULg researchers who deposit their full texts in…

We are thrilled to announce the publication of "The Denton Declaration: An Open Data Manifesto."

The Declaration was developed in the wake of UNT's 3rd Annual Open Access Symposium by a national panel of leaders in research data management. The Declaration emphatically states a vision for openness in research data that bridges the converging interests of diverse stakeholders and promotes collaboration, transparency,…

eLife, the new open-access journal for outstanding scientific advancements, has published its first four research articles.

First announced in summer 2011, eLife is a researcher-led initiative for the best in science and science communication. Backed by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, the initiative’s first aim is to launch an open-access journal for outstanding advances in life science and…

"On 27th September 2012 the Imperial College SciCommForum held a follow up discussion on open access to publicly funded research in response to the Finch Report and RCUK Policy.  

We were joined by Mark Thorley (NERC, RCUK) and Professor Stephen Curry (Imperial College) and Richard Van Noorden (Nature News) chaired the discussion. We had representatives from HEFCE, Wellcome Trust, RLUK, MRC, NIMR, Imperial College Library - and more - in the audience, and the discussion…

Upcoming Events

Mendeley: Social Networking for Your Research



Monday, October 22, 12 noon to 1 pm



Ballroom, William Pitt Union



Mendeley is an academic social network and citation manager that helps scholars organize research, collaborate online, and discover the latest research. With Mendeley, faculty and students can create citations and bibliographies, read and annotate papers, and make…

In a breakthrough for Africa, the 10^th annual Berlin Open Access Conference will be taking place on the continent for the first time later this year, with Stellenbosch University (SU) as host.

The prestigious gathering will be taking place at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) from 7 to 8 November. It will be preceded by a preconference on the practical implementation of open access principles on 6 November.

Read more…