This week is Open Access Week, which brings with it the opportunity to learn what Open Access is, why it matters, and to identify ways both large and small that we can help be the change that we want to see in the world.
Heather Joseph, the Executive Director of SPARC ( the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) , wrote this morning
“Stephen Hawking announces he has made his doctoral thesis openly available for the first time, and perfectly captures the essence of Open Access by noting in his comments:
“Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and inquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding.” (from https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/23/stephen-hawking-1966-thesis-cambridge-university-properties-of-expanding-universes )
Locally, at the Middlebury College Library, we have four main things we are doing to celebrate this week:
- We have a new display of books and pamphlets having to do with Open Access in the atrium of the Davis Library.
- We are promoting the webinar “Open Access Monographs:Current Initiatives, Sustainable Models” on Tuesday, October 24, 4 p.m Eastern time. You can sign up here .
- We’re hosting a viewing of the webinar “What We Talk About When We Talk About Open Access” which will be shown in Axinn 229 from 1-2 PM on Wednesday, October 25, with a half hour discussion of the webinar from 2-2:30 PM.
- We are encouraging faculty to submit their recently published articles to our Open Access Repository by using the form here.
(A broader summary of our engagement with Open Access can be found in a recent newsletter article “TOWARDS AN OPEN INFORMATION COMMONS” . )
There is a rich and engaging website at http://www.openaccessweek.org/ where you can see how the rest of the world is celebrating this important effort to make open the default in research and education.