Next week is international "Open Access Week," with events around the world - including regionally at Murray State University. Open Access is a way to open up scholarly communication between different academies internationally, says Philip Siblo-Landsman of MSU Libraries. He speaks with Tracy Ross on Sounds Good about events at Murray State and more about what open access aims to achieve.
Often the issue people have with open access is the misconception around it, questioning peer review and scholarly publication. However, this is not true, Siblo-Landsman says, open access. repositories have been set up to allow blind and double blind review for the publication process.
An example of a successful open access case we may have heard about involves the Open Library of Humanities released on September 28, a platform being funded by a number of institutions including Harvard University.
Murray State hosts workshops and panels next week, outlining the benefits and misconceptions that members of academic and research communities have about open access. A workshop on authors rights seeks to clarify the kind of rights faculty and students have as authors and creators of content while they're working on something and then the rights they lose when working with a publisher. However, through open access, creators can retain those rights.
For instance, if an author wrote an article for a publisher, they may not be able to post that article to their own website without first seeking the publisher's permission. In an open access situation, the author would be free to use their work how they like.
Alongside the workshop and panel discussion, MSU Libraries is releasing a series of YouTube videos titled "The Buzz on Open Access" for all members of the community. He says it's important for everyone to be aware of open access initiatives, particularly scholarly research. It's important for citizens to be aware of what kind of research we have access too, especially on a global scale where there might not be money to fund databases for researchers in those countries to have the data to learn and further studies, he says.