open access week-Athabasca
Like many academics around the world we are becoming more interested (and informed) about the opportunities afforded by open access. As “Canada’s Open University” this is a natural fit for us, and thus we are pleased to take the opportunity to participate in the international Open Access Week Oct 19-23 2009.
As our contribution to the gala week, we are hosting a series of five noon hour (Mountain time UTC/GMT -7 hours) sessions focusing on various components of open access. The 60 minute sessions run on the Elluminate webconferencing system and all are invited to attend. The sessions will also be recorded and linked from http://openaccess.athabascau.ca/
The first session (Monday Oct 19) with myself as speaker, focuses on the general theme of open scholarship. The Tuesday session features a presentation on research opportunities and issues related to open access presented by Patrick McAndrew from Open University UK, who co-leads the OLNet research initiative. The Wednesday session features Athabasca University President Frits Pannekoek on Open Academic publishing and features an overview of the issues surrounding the founding and operations of Canada’s first open access scholarly publisher Athabasca University Press. Thursday’s session, by AU Librarian Tony Tin, focuses on open institutional archives and repositories. Rory McGreal winds it up on Friday with a session on Open Educational Resources.
All the sessions are open to the general public and you are welcome to participate. The URL’s for participation (and longer descriptions of the sessions) are available at http://openaccess.athabascau.ca/
Mark your calendars and be ready to ‘open’ your mind during Open Access Week!
Terry