Open Access Week 2023: Community over Commercialization

Collage of 9 photos of students reading, in classrooms, watching performances, and using technology with opened lock graphics superimposed over each image. Text: "International Open Access Week. Open Access Week 2023. #OAWeek October 23-29."

The UMass Amherst Libraries are celebrating International Open Access Week, October 23-29, 2023, by offering a mix of activities for students, faculty, and researchers to engage with various aspects of open education, research, and publishing.

Open Access Week is a week dedicated to learning about open access, “the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need,” and how it benefits all aspects of research and society as a whole. This year’s theme, “Community over Commercialization,” focuses on the approaches to open scholarship that prioritize the best interests of the public and the academic community.

To demonstrate this theme, World Librarians, a UMass Amherst registered student organization (RSO) that connects learners around the world without reliable internet access to open educational resources (OER), will present a panel discussion with club members on Tuesday, October 24 at 7:00 p.m. in the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the W. E. B. Du Bois Library. The RSO members will discuss their work and experiences, as well as future goals and opportunities. Space is limited, so early registration is encouraged.

Additionally, as part of the 2023 federal Year of Open Science, the Libraries are gathering examples of open scholarship projects, activities, or events that promote or utilize open tools, open licensing, or open infrastructure to make research and scholarship more collaborative, reproducible, equitable, and accessible. The Libraries invite anyone involved in such work to fill out this form; submissions will be reviewed and shared with HELIOS, an advocacy group of higher education institutions that is documenting open scholarship activities at institutions across the country. This call for projects is open through November 10th, 2023. As incentive, the Libraries will offer $15 campus dining cards to the first 20 respondents.

The Libraries will also offer workshops to highlight public, community-based tools for exchanging data and to address a range of issues in scholarly publishing. The workshops are as follows:

Registration is required for these workshops through the links above; the workshops will not be recorded.

The Libraries are committed to open and to building a community of open scholarship for public knowledge.