Open Access Day Being Celebrated Today Worldwide


Today is the first Open Access Day, a worldwide celebration of barrier-free access to scholarship and research.

As part of the celebration, the organizers of Open Access Day — SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS), along with Students for FreeCulture — are offering a new video series, which presents six unique perspectives on the importance of Open Access to research.

The “Voices of Open Access” series includes one-minute interviews with a teacher, research funder, patient advocate, physician scientist, librarian, and PhD student who explain why Open Access matters to them. In a press release, Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, says that: “This series speaks to the heart of the broad appeal of Open Access…the new opportunities it creates for everyone to benefit from the results of science and scholarship.”

More information on Open Access day 2008 — including details about live broadcasts with leading scientists and celebratory plans on more than 100 campuses in 20 countries — is available at the OA Day website.

More information about what is happening at MIT in relation to open access is available at the scholarly publishing website or by contacting copyright-lib@mit.edu.