[A2k] First Open Access Day to be held October 14, 2008

Wed Sep 3 10:58:16 2008

FYI

-------- Original Message --------

For immediate release
August 28, 2008

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
(202) 296-2296
jennifer@arl.org

FIRST OPEN ACCESS DAY TO BE HELD OCTOBER 14, 2008

Washington, DC =96 August 28, 2008 =96 SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and
Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international
Open Access Day. Building on the worldwide momentum toward Open Access
to publicly funded research, Open Access Day will create a key
opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to
understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of
content.

Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians,
students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of
events. In North America, events will be held at 7:00 PM (Eastern) and
7:00 PM (Pacific) and feature appearances from:

Sir Richard Roberts, Ph.D., F.R.S.
Joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993 for
discovering split genes and RNA splicing, one of 26 Nobel Prize-winners
to sign the Open Letter to U.S. Congress in support of taxpayer access
to publicly funded research, and currently at New England Biolabs, USA.
[7PM Eastern]

Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D.
Philip E. Bourne is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational
Biology and the author of the popular PLoS Computational Biology Ten
Simple Rules Series. He is Professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy
and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego,
Associate Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank, Senior Advisor to the
San Diego Supercomputer Center, an Adjunct Professor at the Burnham
Institute, and Co-Founder of SciVee. [7PM Pacific]

Librarians and student organizers are invited to host meetings around
the broadcast. To see a list of participating campuses and to sign up,
visit the Open Access Day Web site at http://www.openaccessday.org.
Additional international events will be announced shortly.

The event will also mark the launch of the new =93Voices of Open Access
Video Series.=94 Key members of the research community, including a
teacher, librarian, researcher, student, patient advocate, and a funder,
will speak on why they are committed to Open Access.

=93The momentum behind Open Access to research has been accelerating for
some time now, even before the mandates at the U.S. National Institutes
of Health and Harvard University,=94 said Heather Joseph, Executive
Director of SPARC. =93Events beyond the U.S. especially underscore the
higher education community=92s commitment to having the access they need.
Open Access Day will provide a perfect way for folks to come together,
consider, and celebrate the ramifications of the global shift we=92re
experiencing.=94

=93Open Access Day is a great opportunity to inform everyone on campus
about the nature and importance of Open Access,=94 added Nelson Pavlosky,
Co-Founder of Students for FreeCulture. =93It=92s really an issue that
impacts everyone in the university, whether they are professors who
publish, students who research, or librarians who purchase journal
subscriptions. Students for FreeCulture looks forward to working with
SPARC and PLoS to inform our peers, as well as faculty, staff and
administration, about how Open Access can help bring publishing into the
21st Century.=94

=93Making full use of the Internet to share and reuse content without
restriction is pushing scientific communication into the future,=94 said
Peter Jerram, CEO of PLoS. =93Open Access Day acknowledges the enormous
progress that=92s been made towards comprehensive access to research.  We
are pleased to be partnering with the community on this special day. We
would ask our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the
commencement of our publishing activities in October by participating.=94

Open Access Day was inspired by the National Day of Action on February
15, 2007, led by Students for FreeCulture with support from the Alliance
for Taxpayer Access. This year, the same partners have joined forces
with PLoS, the Open Access scientific and medical Web publisher. Open
Access-supporting organizations are also invited to take part. For
details, contact the organizers.

For details and to participate, visit http://www.openaccessday.org.

#

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with
SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than
800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system
of scholarly communication. SPARC=92s advocacy, educational and publisher
partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research.
SPARC is a founder of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, representing
taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that
support open public access to taxpayer-funded research. SPARC is on the
Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

Students for Free Culture (SFC)
Students for FreeCulture is a diverse, non-partisan group of students
and young people who are working to get their peers involved in the free
culture movement. Launched in April 2004 at Swarthmore College, it has
helped establish student groups at colleges and universities across the
United States. Today, chapters exist at over 30 colleges, from Maine to
California, with many more getting started around the world. Students
for FreeCulture was founded by two Swarthmore students after they sued
voting-machine manufacturer Diebold for abusing copyright law in 2003.
Named after the book Free Culture by Stanford University law professor
Lawrence Lessig, it is part of a growing movement, with roots in the
free software/open source community, media activists, creative artists
and writers, and civil libertarians. Groups with which it has
collaborated include Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Downhill Battle. Students for Free
Culture is on the Web at http://www.freeculture.org.

PLoS
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of
scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and
medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS publishes
open access, peer-reviewed journals available online to anyone. PLoS
celebrates their fifth anniversary on October 13, 2008. PLoS is on the
Web at www.plos.org.

--
--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
**************************
Save the date: The SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008
November 17  18, 2008 | Baltimore, MD
**************************
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org

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