Open Access Week 2017
The theme for this year’s 10th International Open Access Week, is "Open in order to…", which is an invitation to answer the question of what concrete benefits can be realized by making scholarly outputs openly available. It serves as a prompt to move beyond talking about openness in itself and focus on what openness enables.
- Open in order to increase the impact of my scholarship.
- Open in order to enable more equitable participation in research.
- Open in order to improve health and the human condition.
These are just a few examples of how this question can be answered. How will you answer it?
UTA Open Access Week Schedule 2017
| Monday, October 23 2:00 p.m. |
Boost Your Scholarly Profile |
| Tuesday, October 24 2:00 p.m. |
Celebrating a Decade of Open: Celebrate 10 years of Research Commons, UTA Libraries' open access repository (Central Library Parlor) |
| Tuesday, October 24 3:00 p.m. |
Opening Access to Educational Resources: A Primer |
| *Wednesday, October 25 10:00 a.m. |
A Walk through the Wikiverse: Reflections on My 11 Years as a Wikipedian, Michael Barera, Texas A&M University-Commerce (view presentation) |
| *Wednesday, October 25 11:30 a.m. |
Wikipedia in the Classroom Register by Friday, October 20: UTA (free) | Visitors ($30 for both Wednesday events) Watch Event Video > |
| Thursday, October 26 1:00 p.m. |
Copyright Workshop for Library staff with Emilie Algenio, Copyright/Fair Use Librarian at Texas A&M University, College Station (Room 315A) |
| Friday, October 27 1:00 p.m. |
Workshop for Library staff on reviewing faculty CVs for inclusion in the institutional repository with Faedra Wills, Digital Projects Librarian (Room 315A) |
*Wednesday's activities are part of the UTA Libraries' Risk Taking and (R)evolution in Libraries series.
What is Open Access?
According to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), open access:
- Is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.
- Ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives.
- Is the needed modern update for the communication of research that fully utilizes the Internet for what it was originally built to do—accelerate research.
Advantages of Open Access
According to PressAcademia, the advantages of open access include:
- Higher citation impact. Open access publications are more often cited because of their higher publicity and availability to anyone.
- Higher availability and visibility. Open Access publishings are freely available and downloadable at full text on the internet. No-one need to pay a subscription fee or pay-per-view charges to reach the material. Moreover, open access publications are more likely to be indexed in databases and listed in search engines.
- Lower publishing costs. There is one time article processing and handling fee paid by authors for accepted manuscripts which is normally covered by institutions or research funding agencies. The processing fees of open access publications are generally lower than that of the publications on both online and hard copy.
- Shorter publication processing time. The processing time for open access articles is shorter and accepted articles are rapidly published online compared to those of traditional journals.
What We are Doing to Support Open Access
The workshops listed above are great opportunities to engage in conversations around open access. UTA Libraries is also supporting open access by ensuring the preservation of scholarly work in our digital repository, the Research Commons. We establish and publish new open-access journals or move traditional journals to our platform like the International Journal of Research on Service-Learning in Teacher Education. We have joined the Open Textbook Network to increase access to freely available textbooks. Email library-sc@listserv.uta.edu for more information.