On October 21-25, IU celebrated International Open Access Week with a series of events to reflect on and educate the IU community about open access, including workshops, presentations, and round table discussions on topics ranging from data management to student publishing. As part of this series, we asked faculty and students to answer the question “What does open access mean to you?” and compiled their responses here.
To wrap up the discussion, I thought I would use this post to share my own response:
Open access offers something for everyone. For librarians and users, it creates a sustainable model of scholarly communication that fosters equal access to information. For universities and funding agencies, it accelerates research, supporting the mission to advance knowledge creation. For researchers and their home institutions, it creates an unparalleled opportunity for impact.
As a graduate student in the Department of Information and Library Science, I am excited by the ways libraries are playing an increasing role in the open access movement by providing open access publishing services, supporting institutional repositories, preserving open access materials through LOCKSS, and more. I strongly believe that the principles of open access align with the core values of librarianship, and it is something that I am proud to be a part of.
If you are interested in learning more about open access, the following list of resources is a great place to get started:
- Biomed Central. (n.d.). Misleading open access myths. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/advocacy12
- Peek, R. (Ed.). (2013). Open access directory. Retrieved from http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page
- Sawant, S. (2012). Transformation of the scholarly communication cycle. Library Hi Tech News 29(10), 21-24. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10760/18894
- Suber, P. (2013). Open access overview. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
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