OA week targets 200 participants

With Open Access Week fast upon us, from October 19-23 2009, we’re feverishly helping organizations worldwide plan their OA week events. We’ve noticed a few interesting trends in participation this year:

• Last year we had 120 participants, this year we could top 200 but at the moment only 100 have confirmed their participation. If you are one of the 100 institutions who have expressed interest but are still in the final planning stages, please confirm your involvement today so that we can beat last year’s performance!
• If you are participating, please update the OAD wiki today with information on your plans so that everyone can share ideas
• Some participants want to announce Open Access Mandates or Reports during the week but they do not want to go public yet so as to maximize the impact of their announcements
• This year it is inspiring to see whole countries mobilizing on a national scale to educate folks about OA. Organizations like Open-Access.net in Germany (who have over 60 organizations signed up) and SURF in the Netherlands are working with us, as well as organizations in other countries such as Italy, Spain and Japan to name but a few

Don’t forget to use our downloads page to get ideas for items to give-away  during the week. PLoS likes to use buttons, illustrated above, and SPARC can’t keep their orange Open Access t-shirts from flying out of the door, so order yours today.

All the organizers are delighted that momentum is starting to build.  We will be posting more regular updates in the next few weeks so watch this blog closely.