Open access is the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research. It has direct and widespread implications for academia and society as a whole.

Open Access Week, October 20-26, is a global event now entering its eighth year, an opportunity for the academic and research community to learn about the benefits of open access and to inspire wider participation in helping to make open access the new norm in scholarship and research. This year’s theme for Open Access Week is Generation Open, a recognition of the changing and evolving nature of the academy as new researchers enter its ranks.

There are lots of ways to be involved:

STUDENTS

Part of a registered student organization? Invite representatives of the Libraries to come talk about open access with your group, and consider signing the Student Statement on the Right to Research. The Student Government Association, Congress of Graduate Students, and the American Library Association FSU Student Chapter led the way by endorsing the Statement last year. The Statement can be signed by individuals as well as organizations.

FACULTY

New Faculty: Welcome to FSU! Did you know that the Libraries has personnel and services to achieve the broadest possible exposure and impact of your work. Participate in the 2014 DigiNole Upload-A-Thon by uploading your most recent article to DigiNole Commons, the institutional repository at FSU. All you have to do is email your Liaison Librarian a citation and the accepted version of the article. We’ll take care of the rest. Share the results on your social media and challenge a colleague to do the same. While new faculty are a focus this year, we’d love to work with any faculty at FSU to make their scholarship more available.

ALL

Attend a workshop. Learn what open access is, what it isn’t, and why it matters to you in Intro to Open Access Workshops, offered Tuesday Oct. 21 at 11 am in Strozier Library, and again on Wednesday Oct. 22 at 3 pm in Dirac Library.

Attend a screening of The Internet’s Own Boy, an award winning documentary about Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist and visionary who committed suicide in early 2013 after being arrested for downloading millions of scholarly papers from JSTOR. Interested student groups can host their own screenings. Can’t make a screening? Host your own watch party with friends and participate in the conversation #GenOpenFSU. Contact Josh Bolick for details on showing the film, which was released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommericial-ShareAlike license (i.e. you can show it, for free, without permission, or rather, the permission is built in).

Screenings will be:

• Tuesday Oct. 21 at 7:00, Strozier Starbucks, in partnership with Learning Commons in FSU Libraries.
• Wednesday Oct. 22 at 6:00, Dirac 216 (conference room), in partnership with Dirac Science Library.
• Thursday Oct. 23 at 7:00; Honors, Scholars, and Fellows House Great Hall (4th floor), in partnership with the HSF Program
• Friday Oct. 24 at 3:00, The CAVE in Goldstein Library, in partnership with ALA@FSU.

 

Follow the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Ask questions, share posts and news, retweet, and use #GenOpenFSU.

For more information contact Josh Bolick, Scholarly Communication Assistant, or Micah Vandegrift, Scholarly Communication Librarian, of the Office of Scholarly Communication in FSU Libraries.