Happy International Open Access Week 2018! Established by SPARC and partners in the student community in 2008, International Open Access Week is an opportunity to take action in making openness the default for research—to raise the visibility of scholarship, accelerate research, and turn breakthroughs into better lives. Open Access Week 2018 runs October 22–28, 2018.
From 1–2 PM each weekday this week, Boston College Libraries will have a table in O’Neill Library with free coffee and information about Open Access and ORCID. We have created a postcard for graduate and undergraduate students that shares some of the basics about Open Access on the front and has a listing of all the BC Subject Liaison Librarians on the back. Students, faculty, and other researchers are welcome to come grab some coffee, a postcard, buttons, stickers, etc. this week in the lobby of O’Neill Library.
Beginning this week, BC Libraries are also rolling out their new policies for the BC Open Access Fund. The Libraries, in collaboration with the Provost, have established a fund to finance payment of article and monograph processing fees for Boston College authors who wish to publish in open access journals. Open access funds demonstrate an institution’s concrete support for new and innovative research publishing models. Goals of OA Fund include:
- Support for Boston College affiliated authors who wish to publish open access
- Support for transition to a more sustainable scholarly publishing model
- Greater equality of access to information
- Greater visibility and accessibility of Boston College scholarship
- Encouragement of authors to retain rights to their work
Finally, and most importantly, a satellite event of OpenCon, the world-renowned conference dedicated to open access, open education, and open data, is happening live in Boston on November 9, 2018. Co-hosted by Boston University and Boston College Libraries, OpenCon Boston will be held at Boston University from 8:30–4:30pm. Come join us for an exciting event featuring presentations, lightning talks, and breakout sessions. Topics include recent trends in OER, making local history openly accessible, new technology to support your work in OA, strategies to help you achieve your goals, working with Wikipedia, cultural issues around open access, and more. The conference will conclude with a showing of the movie Paywall: The Business of Scholarship followed by a Q&A with director/producer Jason Schmitt. Please see the information page for more details. Registration for the full conference (including screening) is capped at 35 people, so sign up soon! Separate movie registration is open to the public.
Happy Open Access Week to all, and to all a good night!