UF pushes access for scholarship

October 25, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Open Access is based on one ideal: Knowledge should be available to anyone who seeks it. Open Access Week was created to spread that ideal, and improve the way in which research is shared.

Now in its fourth year, Open Access Week will be celebrated by the University of Florida Wednesday in the Rion Ballroom at the Reitz Student Union. The event will run from 1 to 3:30 p.m. and begins with a poster session and speeches from UF faculty, and ends with an hour of roundtable discussions focused on this year’s theme, “Open Access — Scholarship Unbound.”

“It’s all about the greater ideal of knowledge being shared freely on the Internet without restriction,” said Christine Ross, scholarly communications librarian at UF. “Access to journals can be expensive, and publishing through open access leads to collaboration and promotes research. There are a lot of positive benefits.”

The event was organized by the Scholarly Communications Working Group, a joint effort by the libraries on campus to showcase and preserve intellectual output. The event hopes to eliminate any confusion regarding copyright laws, author’s rights and publishing in an open access journal.

The university’s contribution to open access is the Institutional Repository, a digital archive with access to research, news and educational materials published by the university. UF also started an Open Access Publishing Fund Pilot Project in July of 2010 to help cover the publishing costs for researchers at the university, and encourage the use of open access journals.