By Meredith Fischer, Librarian
“Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, p. 4)
The last few months of the fall term always seem to whiz by in a blur. Although events in October may feel like a distant memory, uWaterloo Library participated in an important international event during the week of October 22-28 that deserves some reflection. Open Access (OA) Week 2012 was a success – and we have our enthusiastic, inquisitive community to thank for it!
The number of faculty, students, and staff who came out to participate in OA Week events was truly impressive. The OA movement is all about exploring new possibilities for publishing, storing, and accessing information, and the first big event of the week sparked the beginning of some exciting conversations about ways that we share research with each other.
There were around 50 attendees at Monday’s panel discussion featuring Dr. John Honek, uWaterloo Chemistry Chair; Dr. Jay Dolmage, uWaterloo English Professor; Carlie Leroux, uWaterloo graduate student; and Lisa Quinn, Wilfrid Laurier University Press Editor. This discussion gave participants the chance to hear about how active community members are harnessing OA’s possibilities and determining OA’s future success at uWaterloo and beyond by choosing to publish in OA journals, initiating graduate student journals, editing prominent OA journals, and contemplating the potential for new processes of communicating within the academic community.
The conversation about OA gathered momentum around information booths at various Library locations on campus. Awareness about the movement spread as people mingled around signs, asking questions, picking up pamphlets, or simply noticing the activity around this concept called “Open Access.” No matter what their level of participation, many passers-by certainly noticed the OA signs and displays on campus (sporting an eye-catching bright orange hue accompanying the open lock symbol that has come to signify the OA movement). Catching the whole community’s attention was an important goal of the week because OA impacts anyone who wants or needs to access research that will remain costly and exclusive unless we push for the kinds of reader-benefitting changes OA can help insight.
Data Management Day, which took place mid-week, was a sold-out hit that brought together an impressive array of speakers with different points of view about the discovery, access, and preservation of research data, including Dr. Sallie Ann Keller, VP Academic and Provost; Dr. Chad Garfield, President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Dr. Warwick F. Vincent, Professor of Biology, Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Ecosystem Studies Université Laval; and Alan Darnell, Director, Scholars Portal Services, Ontario Council of University Libraries. As Dr. Garfield pointed out, uWaterloo’s Data Management Day was a unique event not to be missed. To access YouTube videos of the talks, visit uWaterloo Library’s Data Management Day 2012 Guide.
The Library is striving to make information about developments in the OA movement accessible to us all on an ongoing basis. We encourage you to visit the Library’s OA Guide and to keep directing your OA-related questions to us. OA Week’s global theme for 2012 was “Set the Default to Open Access,” and it’s important that we don’t default on our commitment to exploring the alternative possibilities OA can present. After all, orange is in!
Suber, Peter. Open Access. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.
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