Posts from — June 2009

A SPARC Webcast - The home-field advantage: A report on 2008 OADay events at Duke

Thursday, June 25, 2009
11:00AM Pacific | 2:00PM Eastern
This one-hour event will be recorded
Registration is free and open to the public. Please RSVP by June 23

A commentator frequently featured by the Financial Times, Dr. James Boyle is a law professor who is increasingly well known for his articulate and poignant arguments in support of wider access to research. Josh Sommer is a student, patient, and co-founder of the Chordoma Foundation, challenging the likes of Dr. Boyle for their celebrity as he too gains renown as an impassioned and convincing advocate for Open Access to research.

Duke University is fortunate to name both of these compelling individuals citizens on campus – and library staff were quick to use this home-field advantage when they made plans for Open Access Day in 2008.

On June 25, Pat Thibodeau, Associate Dean at the Duke Medical Center Library, and Kevin Smith, Scholarly Communications Officer, will join us to describe the Open Access Day events that featured Dr. Boyle and Josh Sommer among speakers from the law school, medical faculty, and libraries. They’ll talk openly about the success and lessons learned from live events, as well as from participation in Web events simulcast by the OA Day organizers and using tables and videos to gain attention for the Day. Participating in the Webcast is a great way to share ideas and experience with others who plan to or may celebrate Open Access Week in October 2009.

Open Access Day @ Duke is featured in the Libraries’ Scholarly Communication blog. You can also watch Videos of the Duke presenters.

This Webcast, held in preparation for Open Access Week 2009, October 19 – 23, 2009, will also feature the official launch of OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook). This now-annual event, expanded from one day to a full week, presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public. 120 campuses in 27 countries celebrated Open Access Day in 2008.

This year’s program will highlight educational resources on Open Access that local hosts can use to customize their own programs to suit local audiences and time zones. Open Access Week is being organized by SPARC, the Public Library of Science, Students for Free Culture, eIFL, OASIS, and the Open Access Directory. To register to participate in Open Access Week, or for more information, continue to read this website.

The Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) is being launched at the 13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB2009), currently taking place in Milan, Italy until June 12th.

OASIS aims to provide an authoritative ‘sourcebook’ on Open Access, covering the concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving it. The site highlights developments and initiatives from around the world, with links to diverse additional resources and case studies. As such, it is a community-building as much as a resource building exercise.

Users are encouraged to share and download the resources provided, and to modify and customize them for local use.

Here’s a brief introductory video on OASIS from Melissa Hagemann from the Open Society Institute.

We’ve created some cool new button (called badges in the U.K.) designs for Open Access Week 2009.  There are three to choose from or take them all!

• Ask me about OA
• I support OA
• And, a version based on the above theme that is ready for your own message

When you open the files you’ll see that the images are larger than they need to be for a button which is typically 1.25″, we just wanted to show a higher resolution so that you could really see the impact of the design.

We buy our buttons/badges from affordablebuttons.com. All you would have to do is send them them one of these templates, specify your size and quantity and they would do the rest.

Watch a modern age Librarian and a Librarian stereotype duke it out with a traditional Publisher with restrictive copyright rules as they try to work out how to publish some scholarly work online. It’s really quite amusing.

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and the DOAJ/Lund University Libraries are pleased to announce the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing, which will be held at the Scandic Star hotel in Lund, Sweden from the 14th to the 16th of September.

New. The early bird registration for the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing has been extended until June 8 AND that the conference program has now been posted.

Participants will have the opportunity to hear from many leading figures within the open access publishing movement, and to participate in workshops that will highlight a number of important issues related to open access publishing. Participants who are members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association are invited to participate in the first Annual General Meeting of OASPA, which will be held in the afternoon on September 16th following the end of the conference.