Open Access Week

The week beginning 18 October 2010 is international Open Access Week, with events and activities taking place worldwide on university and research campuses. JISC has been at the forefront of the Open Access debate from the very beginning. To coincide with the Open Access Week, it has developed its own JISC Open Access Week microsite which explores some of the most current topics in Open Access for senior managers and researchers, from establishing OA policies to measuring success. The microsite offers a calendar coverage of the Week's events with a new information pack for each day's topic. The packs include very practical resources such as background briefing papers, video interviews with experts in the field talking about how they have tackled the issue, next steps you can take straight away, whether you are a manager, researcher or librarian, plus links to further resources. Further details on JISC's view of Open Access are available.

Opening the knowledge base to all researchers means that more research can be based on that knowledge with far less duplication of effort. With their work complete, researchers can reach a far wider audience thanks to Open Access and their work is more widely read and cited. Moreover, institutions gain an enhanced reputation as their research becomes more visible, funding agencies see a greater return on their investment, publishers a greater impact of their journals. Consequently, publicly funded research achieves far greater impact, benefitting society as a whole.

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fourth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they have learned with colleagues and partners, and to help strengthen wider involvement by helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.

This year’s Open Access Week (18 – 24 October) will highlight the collaboration and collective action that have heightened the momentum behind Open Access and showcase a broad range of initiatives around the globe. Participation by hundreds of universities, research facilities, and other sites world-wide will illustrate the depth and breadth of support for Open Access and demonstrate the real impact of unfettered access on advancing discovery across disciplines.