International Open Access Week - Open with purpose: taking action to build structural equity and inclusion
Welcome to our University of Leicester celebration of International Open Access Week, I do hope you will join us and be involved in this important community event, which aims to make openness the default for scholarly research and ensuring that equity is at the heart of open access and open research initiatives and practice.
Theme for Open Access Week
The theme this year is “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion” and we have a variety of resources, recordings, and planned blog posts on topical Open Access (OA) challenges and benefits, all of which will support this important OA week theme, and more importantly, we hope this week will be an opportunity for new conversations, and an opportunity to think about the importance of opening up research in order to build more equitable foundations for opening up scholarly research outputs to all.
Even though we have seen a dramatic increase in the growth of open access and evidence that OA enhances the possibilities for collaboration it is still a very complex environment, with some researchers not having access to material to read and use (not aligned with, or a member of, an institution that subscribes to periodicals they need) or may not be in a position to pay an article processing charge to publish.
What's on locally to support OA week?
I have recently had three really interesting OA conversations with colleagues Neil Donohue, University Librarian; Richard Thomas, Professor of Archaeology, Dean of Research, CSSAH; and Lydia Topliss, Research Strategy and Policy Manager (REF Implementation). Each was recorded and we are sharing them with our UoL community during OAWeek. The discussions pretty much covered most aspects of OA, including the challenges and benefits of OA, OA compliance and funder expectations, the importance of OA in disseminating our research to the widest possible audience, OA and REF, budgets and OA, and much more.
2. We are participating in the Figshare upload your research competition. Further details on how to take part is available on our blog.
3. Daily blog posts will be published covering a variety of OA topics, including OA monographs, open research in practice, open data, Figshare at Leicester, and our own Open Journal publishing platform.
4. OA virtual drop-in clinic on Friday 23 October - send us your questions and queries about OA. This is your opportunity to ask the Library Research Services team questions about open access funding arrangements, transformative publishing agreements we have signed, OA requirements of research funders, Plan S, Wellcome Trust open research requirements, or anything else related to open access and open data.
We encourage you to submit your question in advance. No registration required, feel free to join us in Teams. We really look forward to hearing from you.