The Brock Library is celebrating International Open Access Week by hosting a series of events and sharing resources related to open access publishing. The Brock Library has planned a series of events to mark International Open Access Week taking place Monday, Oct. 23 to Sunday, Oct. 29.
The annual celebration aims to raise awareness of benefits of making scholarly research free, accessible online and licensed for use and re-use in future research.
This year’s theme, “Community over Commercialization,” aims to spark conversation about which open access approaches advance the best interests of the public and researchers.
“Right now, we’re operating in a system that privileges the profits of giant scholarly publishing corporations over the rights of researchers and the public to benefit from the free exchange of knowledge,” says Elizabeth Yates, Research and Scholarly Communication Librarian at Brock. “This year’s theme of ‘Community over Commercialization’ highlights the need to speed up the movement towards community-controlled publishing — where we see institutions, libraries and scholarly societies making publishing more equitable and truly open.”
Brock’s Library has been a leader in supporting community-controlled publishing platforms by disseminating Brock research globally through the open access Brock Digital Repository, investing in a wide range of open access platforms that benefit researchers and readers around the globe, and providing free hosting support for 12 open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals operated by Brock researchers.
Open Access Week events at Brock include:
- A Building Better Research series workshop on the potential benefits of community-controlled publishing platforms from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 24.
- A graduate student writing café discussing the myths and realities of open access publishing from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 25.
- A Building Better Research series workshop exploring strategies to pursue open access publishing for little to no cost from noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 26.
Throughout the week, the Library will post information about community-controlled open access publishing, equity in scholarly publishing and the Library’s open access supports. The Library has also created a virtual book display highlighting resources in its collection related to open access and scholarly communication.
Questions about Open Access Week can be sent to Yates at eyates@brocku.ca
