Once per year, open access advocates (such as myself) get excited about International Open Access Week (this year running from 22 – 28 October). This event highlights the movement working to make research outputs freely available for re-use, to raise awareness for issues around making outputs available and answer questions that you might have. If you’re not sure why you should care about this, Suzanne Atkins summarised the benefits of Open Access to PGRs in her blogpost back in October 2016.
At the University of Birmingham, this year’s main Open Access week activity will be the streaming of “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship“. The documentary by Jason Schmitt looks at the current system of academic publishing and investigates why open access is needed. There will be a lunchtime screening of the movie scheduled on Tuesday 23rd October:
- 12:15 – 13:45, Met & Mat (G6) GA03 – If you would like to attend please sign up
If you can’t make the screening, you can also watch the documentary on your own as it’s available on vimeo.
You might also want to keep your eyes peeled for #ThesisThursday on Twitter on Thursday 25th October as various UK institutions will use Open Access Week to highlight gems in their collections, including older historic PhD theses or the work of famous alumni. So if you always wanted to read Brian May’s or Brian Cox’s thesis, #ThesisThursday will become your favourite hashtag!
Any questions about Open Access? Ask them on Twitter using the hashtag #UoBOAWeek18 and our experts will answer them during our live Twitter Q & A on the Thursday afternoon. You can also find more information on our general Open Access webpages and our overview page for Open Access week 2018.
See you there!
