Next week, October 19 – 23, 2009, will mark the first international Open Access Week, celebrating the international movement working to “throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge.” Encouraging the unrestricted sharing of scholarly and scientific research, the Open Access movement is gaining ever more momentum around the world as growing numbers of research funders, faculties, and libraries are committed to making research available free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Open Access Week is an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, and UW-Milwaukee’s Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Rita Cheng, has taken a leadership role in pushing for an Open Access agenda on our campus. She’s invited campus community to participate in an Open Access Day Seminar and Workshop on Monday, October 19, 2009. Campus community members will gather and learn about open access and why it is important, will hear of the challenges and opportunities for achieving open access, and the current efforts at UWM to embrace open access scholarship and publishing. A working lunch and breakout sessions will help identify avenues and action items to move UWM forward in supporting open access.
Open Access Day at UWM is organized jointly by the UWM Libraries and the School of Information Studies. Hopefully it will result in not only greater awareness of the importance of Open Access, but also lead to the development of a faculty mandate that the University must make our scholarship available free online.
MichaelZimmer.org 