October: Open Access Celebration Month!

The long-awaited celebration of the 15 years of the existence of the SciELO Program will take place in October. And October is known as Open Access month – and it all started on the 14th of October, 2008 when the first International Open Access Day was celebrated. In the following year, the celebrations were extended to a week, from 19 – 23 October 2009, with the launch of a global social event known as Open Access Week with the objective of connecting the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes at the local level to share documents, news, tools, multimedia (videos and photos), and much more.

Open Access Week states that:

“Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.¹

Acting nowadays as a repository for content relating to Open Access, the Open Access Week Web site disseminates materials from all over the world, and we can see there that both the commitment to and support for Open Access from researchers and  academics, professors, students, academic institutes, research funding agencies and the public in general are growing each year.

Since its creation, there have been more than 360 events¹ celebrating Open Access on five continents, from conferences and seminars to workshops and round tables, mostly in the month of October which happens to be Open Access month!

Amongst the various events disseminated, we highlight the 4th Luso-Brazilian Conference in Open Access (CONFOA), held October 6 – 9, 2013 in the auditorium of the Biblioteca Brasiliana (Brasiliana Library) of the University of São Paulo, which brought together researchers, teachers, librarians, administrators, students, professionals and politicians interested in the promotion, greater dissemination and penetration of Open Access, and in connecting these actors and the subject of Open Access in the Lusophone-Brazilian community. We also highlight here the SciELO 15 Years Conference which is being held October 22-25, 2013 in São Paulo, marking 15 years of the SciELO Network and which will bring together authorities and experts in research and scholarly communication with the aim of highlighting and discussing the state of the art in Open Access scholarly communication and the challenges for the development of the academic journals of the SciELO Program. Don’t miss it! Have you already registered?

Let’s celebrate Open Access!

Some other events in October celebrating Open Access worldwide:

Australia

Publishing the Open Access Way: The Change in Business Thinking Towards Open Access

http://www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw

Canada

Designing Open Access Policy – University of Ottawa

http://www.issp.uottawa.ca/eng/scienceandsociety.html

The University of Guelph’s Open Access Colloquium!

http://openaccessguelph.ca/

Finland

Open Access! Eteneekö tieteen tulosten avoin saatavuus?

https://wiki.helsinki.fi/display/OAviikko/Open+Access!+22.10.2013

France

Open Access Week Paris 2013

http://www.openaccessweek-mysciencework.com/

Germany

Podiumsdiskussion: Wissenschaft im Wandel – Ist Open Science die Zukunft?

http://openscience.alpine-geckos.at/events/wissenschaft-im-wandel-ist-open-science-die-zukunft/

Italy

Quali politiche per l’accesso aperto in Italia?

http://www.openstarts.units.it/doc/O-A-W.pdf

Japan

Revision of the Degree Regulation and Open Access Dissertation – Celebrating Open Access Week

http://www.tulips.tsukuba.ac.jp/pub/OAW/2013/welcome_en.html

Peru

Semana Internacional del Acceso Abierto en Perú 2013

http://www.openaccessperu.org/

Portugal

Communicating Science: Scientific Publication and its Audience

http://www.comunicarciencia.ubi.pt/conferencia/index.html

Spain

La Red de Bibliotecas Universitarias Españolas (REBIUN)- Open Access Week

http://accesoabierto.info/

Swiss

Open Science: Research Data & Scientific Publishing: Future Developments – University of Zurich

http://www.oai.uzh.ch/en/news/412-open-access-week-2013-open-science-research-data-a-scientific-publishing-future-developments

UK

Open [access, data, source]: science & data in the 21st century

https://epcopen.eventbrite.co.uk/

USA

Introduction to Open Access and Copyright – Virginia Tech

http://www.lib.vt.edu/openaccess/

Two Open Access Week Programs @ City Tech

http://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Turkey

2nd National Open Access Workshop

http://www.acikerisim.org/english/oa2013_program.pdf

See more events:   http://www.openaccessweek.org/events

External links

Open Access Week – http://www.openaccessweek.org

Open Access Week events: http://www.openaccessweek.org/events

4ª CONFOA – http://www.acessoaberto.pt/c/index.php/confoa2013/2013

Conferência SciELO 15 anos – http://www.scielo15.org/

Notes

¹ Open Acccess: redefining impact. About. Open Access Week. [Viewed 08 October 2013]. Available from http://www.openaccessweek.org/page/about.

About Sibele Fausto

Collaborator on the SciELO program, post-graduate in Information Science from the School of Communication and the Arts of the University of São Paulo (PPGCI-ECA-USP), specialist in Health Sciences information at the Federal University of São Paulo in partnership with the Latin American Center for Health Sciences Information (UNIFESP-BIREME-PAHO-WHO), Sibele Fausto is a librarian in the Technical Department of the Integrated Library System of the University of São Paulo (DT-SIBi-USP).

Translated from the original in Portuguese by Nicholas Cop Consulting.