It’s Open Access Week 2018, friends!

If you’re new to this concept, let us fill you in. Open Access Week is an annual, global event focused on sharing the benefits of the Open Access movement. Here at the UWT Library, we hope to use it as an opportunity to educate, answer questions, and start conversations about the opportunities and challenges this movement presents.

What is Open Access?

From Peter Suber’s A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access:

Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.

Suber goes on to point out that most authors of scholarly works are not paid by the journals they publish in. Neither are the peer reviewers who vet the work before publication — but those who want access the article after publication usually have to pay fees to journal’s publisher. (See the video below for a summary of how this works.)

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo is licensed under CC-BY.

The Open Access movement aims to create new models of publishing that reduce costs to consumers and encourage open, ethical sharing of the scholarly research around the world.

Of course, this isn’t always a simple proposition. There are definitely unavoidable costs associated with scholarly publishing, for instance, and plenty of important questions about these models that we’re still trying to answer. Still, I’m optimistic about the potential it has to lower barriers to accessing scholarly information and make this process more equitable.

Stay tuned throughout the week for more information!

Open Access Week 2018 at UWT

Join us in the library and here on the blog over the next few weeks to learn more, ask questions, and thin about the future of scholarly publishing.

TODAY, October 22, 12:30 – 1:30 pm

WHAT: #TacomaPublicDomain: Mining DPLA (and Other Amazing Online Collections) for Local History
Beginning this summer, librarian Justin Wadland began a modest project: once a week, he posts at least one public domain primary source to Twitter under the hashtag #TacomaPublicDomain. In this talk offered as part of Open Access Week and the IAS Seminar: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Local History taught by Kim Davenport, Wadland will give a quick introduction to the public domain and share some of the tools, like the Digital Public Library of America, where public domain and openly-available primary sources can be found. Also, he will introduce a few tools that can be used to analyze and present these materials and invite you to contribute your findings.
WHERE: JOY 117
MORE INFO: Campus Event Calendar

Wednesday, October 24, 12:30 – 2:00 pm

WHAT: Paywall: The Business of Scholarship (Movie Screening)
This documentary (which is just over an hour long) examines the for-profit publishing industry and highlights some of the benefits of open access for research and science. Learn how this publishing model affects scholarship, inquiry, and the ability to solve complex problems all over the world.
WHERE: SNO 136
MORE INFO: Campus Event Calendar

Tuesday, October 30, 12:30 – 2:00 pm

WHAT: New UW Open Access Policy 
The Open Access movement promotes a vision of the world where everyone has access to the scholarly record, regardless of their income or institutional affiliation. This presentation will explore the different strategies that advocates are pursuing to make this vision a reality, including some exciting recent efforts at the University of Washington. This discussion will also highlight local efforts at UW Tacoma to help faculty openly share they’re work.
WHERE: SNO 136
MORE INFO: Campus Event Calendar