International Open Access Week is an advocacy event organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), which is working across the globe with governments, higher education institutions, and researchers to increase knowledge of, engagement with, and participation in open access (OA), defined as “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.” The two primary vehicles for open access scholarship have been OA journals and OA archives or repositories, and open access also now includes monographs, textbooks, and other forms of scholarly output.
- Open Access at Emory: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/openaccess/
Emory University faculty passed the Emory Open Access Policy in 2011; shortly thereafter, Emory’s Scholarly Communications Office began sharing faculty scholarship in OpenEmory, which preserves Emory faculty works and makes them freely accessible, furthering the visibility of the intellectual community here at Emory. International Open Access Week this year runs from October 19 to October 25, 2020, with the theme: “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.” (Read more about this year’s theme on the Open Access Week website.)
Co-sponsors of Open Access Week 2020 at Emory include: the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS), which supports several open access journals and projects; the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry (FCHI), which supports the Mellon-funded Digital Publishing in the Humanities (DPH) initiative; the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence (CFDE), which supports Emory faculty authors, including those who wish to publish their works open access; and Emory Libraries, which supports Emory’s Open Access Publishing Fund (administered by the Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Office) and the recently launched Emory Digital Collections.
Since an in-person reception is not possible this year (details about past receptions are available on the DPH website), ECDS’s Digital Project Specialist Dr. Kayla Shipp has developed a website to virtually celebrate International Open Access Week at Emory. Our hope is to update it year-round to serve as a hub for information about Emory’s many open access initiatives.
- Open Access at Emory: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/openaccess/
The website features the following content and more:
- Video recordings of conversations between OA book authors at Emory University and experts working in related fields outside the traditional academy. Funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation enabled these books to be published OA as part of the TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) initiative, a collaboration of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).
- Information regarding approximately 50 OA journal articles published with the financial assistance of Emory Libraries’ Open Access Publishing Fund. Most of these articles are from Emory authors working in the health science disciplines; using Emory funding to make these articles immediately available to the world thus helps increase access to vital information concerning health and wellness.
- Links and information about OA projects from ECDS, which include Southern Spaces, Atlanta Studies, Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, Post45, nonsite, and Sacred Matters, and other open access digital projects/educational resources like SlaveVoyages.
- Different blog posts each day of International Open Access Week, featuring more information about these OA projects and initiatives.
You can follow ECDS on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and/or LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on Open Access Week and other ECDS-supported initiatives! Also stay tuned to the Emory Libraries social media accounts for Open Access Week content from October 19-25.