During the last week of October, Indiana University joins institutions around the world from countries as diverse as Senegal, Ghana, Austria, Lithuania, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and dozens of US states to host a great variety of events for International Open Access Week. The groups include institutions as varied as university libraries, academic publishers, governmental groups, scientific organizations and even Wikimedia. As previously covered in this blog and elsewhere, Open Access is vitally-important goal that is supported by Indiana University Bloomington. Indeed, as shown by the recent announcement by Science Europe, IUB and its faculty was ahead of the curve in embracing and supporting an Open Access policy for all faculty members.
To review, most Open Access is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. OA is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review. (source)
Open Access means that knowledge is regarded as a public good and shared resource, and authors use open access publishing to make the fruits of their research such as scholarly articles, datasets and source code, accessible to the world for the sake of inquiry and knowledge without expectation of payment. Adopting such a policy reduces barriers to research and learning by making research available on the public internet to be downloaded and shared freely, making it possible for scholarship to be more widely read and cited than literature that appears in closed-access, licensed journal databases.
Open Access Week supports all of these goals–through a vast panoply of events and initiatives, OA Week seeks to raise awareness around Open Access and to encourage even more participation. No stranger to participation in OA Week, the Scholarly Communications Department, in collaboration with Indiana University Libraries, IU MoneySmarts, the Teaching and Learning Department and others in the Learning Commons are hosting a series of events for students and the public to learn all about Open Access, why you should care about it, and what you can do!
IUB’s Open Access Week events will include learning how to improve your Instagram and presentation game with CC0 images, reflecting on Wikipedia and its data, obtaining Open Access research, discussing course material costs, and learning more about open government information resources. Join us on the following dates –
- October 22nd from 11am-1pm in Wells Library Learning Commons
- October 23nd from 11am-1pm in Wells Library Learning Commons and
- October 25th from 11am-12pm in Wells Library W138
The final highlight of the week from the Scholarly Communications department will be Sarah Hare’s presentation on how to start your own Open Access Journal. From the event page:
Anyone affiliated with Indiana University–students, staff, and faculty–can create an open access journal at no cost! This session will give an overview of the publishing platform, services, and support IU Libraries provides to those interested in starting a journal. The session will also provide information on flipping a closed journal to open access to those interested. Participants should bring any questions they have about journal publishing, open access, or their specific publication to the session.
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