Open Access Week, October 19-23, is an “opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of open access issues and express support for free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research.” See http://www.openaccessweek.org/ for more information about this event.
For a good introduction to open access issues, watch this Open Access 101 video from SPARC or (for a longer, technical description of OA), read the Bethesda Statement on on Open Access Publishing.
Lawrence is supporting open access in a couple of ways:
- The Mudd Library subscribes to open access journals like PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine and PLoS Biology, links to the Directory of Open Access Journals, and is a member of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). SPARC is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.
- President Beck, along with the presidents of more than 50 other liberal arts colleges, signed an open letter supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 1373). The FRPAA would be a major step forward in ensuring equitable online access to research literature that is paid for by taxpayers. For example, research supported by the National Institutes of Health, which accounts for approximately one-third of federally funded research, produces an estimated 80,000 peer-reviewed journal articles each year.