October 23 - 29, 2023 | Everywhere

Student Open Access Week Wrap Up

From the Right to Research Coalition's Open Students Blog:

Last week, students from across the US, Canada, and the rest of the world celebrated the 4^th annual International Open Access Week. Students organized, presented at, and attended countless OA Week events on campuses all over the world.

4 years ago, students started this annual celebration of Open Access, and though it has grown tremendously since then in both size and diversity, students continue to play an integral role.

So before we move on from this year’s OA Week festivities, I’d like to highlight some of the student contributions from last week:

The University of California – Berkeley co-sponsored our official Right to Research Coalition Open Access Week webcast on student involvement in the Open Access movement. You can watch the webcast here.
Boston University students produced a great video pointing out that students shouldn’t settle for partial access to the scholarly record.
University of British Columbia students Goldis Chami and Gordana Panic gave a talk at UBC entitled “Student Advocacy for Open Access at UBC and Beyond,” detailing their efforts to establish an open-access policy at UBC.
The Canadian Federation of Students, along with its National Graduate Caucus, helped organize Open Access Week events across Canada.
The Association for Students at the University of Nebraska and UNL’s Graduate Student Association co-hosted a panel discussion and a contest for students to encourage their professors to use UNL’s digital repository.
The University of Calgary’s Students’ Union and Graduate Student Association co-hosted their campus’ OA Week events, along with the University of Calgary Library. Events included “Open Access & Copyright – What Grad Students Need to Know.”
A University of Kansas event for students was so popular they had to start a waitlist to attend the event.
The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College organized a number of events for students and faculty.
Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate Student Assembly co-sponsored an Open Access information session for students, faculty, and staff.
Columbia’s Public Health Doctoral Students Association co-sponsored a session on authors’ rights, entitled “Bargaining for Better Publication Agreements.”
The Duke and Harvard Law Libraries co-sponsored a workshop for student law review editors to discuss best practices for implementing the Durham Statement.
At the University of Toronto, graduate students participated in discussions on open scholarship and what it means to be an open scholar.
The Malta Medical Students’ Association joined the Right to Research Coalition.
Simon Fraser University hosted a panel on student leadership in the Open Access movement.
The University of Minnesota offered hands-on workshops for graduate student authors.
And last but not least, at the University of Pretoria, students painted in support of Open Access.

All in all, this was a tremendously successful Open Access Week – not just for students, but across the board as this year’s celebration was 3 times larger than last year’s with just under 900 participants in 94 countries. One can only imagine what next year’s Open Access Week will hold…