The focus of this post is OA week – the global (and local) event on all things Open Access. The global list of events is here and you can follow events throughout the week on twitter #OAweek
OA events in Australia and New Zealand
There’s lots going on in #OAweek across the region. A list of events is here. Tell us if we missed anything & let us know about events you attend: tag on twitter – #oaweek #AOASG or contact us via the website.
OA videos
UWA researchers talk about OA
Several institutions across the region are featuring researchers talking on what Open Access means to them. Check out videos from Professors Andrew Brown and Sydney Dekker from Griffith University and Professors Paul Low, Robyn Carroll, and Christopher Vernon from UWA. Curtin Library has a new video on an introduction to open access.
And for Open Access as Shakespeare would have written it, don’t miss “Sherpa Romeo and Juliet” from Southern Cross University Library Got videos you’d like to share? Let us know.
#OAweek #AOASG tweetchat
If you do nothing else this OA week, tune in for an hour of tweetchat from across the region on Tuesday. Everyone is welcome. Just use the #OAweek and #AOASG on tweets
#OAweek competition on Thinkable
To encourage researchers to spread the word about their research we have partnered with thinkable on a competition to highlight OA work. Video abstracts can increase the reach of open research. The Australasian Open Research Video Competition aims to create an engaging forum to showcase the best video abstracts, as voted by the community. It is open to any researcher based in Australia or New Zealand, of work published in an open access journal or which is made freely available via an open access repository.
Open Access content on Wikipedia
- to improve already existing Open Access-related pages,
- to create new content where it needs to be added,
- to translate Open Access-related pages into languages where they don’t yet exist.
You don’t need to be an expert Wikipedia editor to contribute. In fact, you don’t need any editing experience at all! All you need is an interest in Open Access and willingness to share your knowledge by adding it to an article or translating information into a new language. Training for new editors will be provided as part of the event.
A homepage for the Open Access Week Edit-a-thon has been setup on the Wikimedia website at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/OA_week. On this page, you’ll find everything you need to participate, including:
- Detailed instructions for creating, improving, and translating Open Access-related articles
- Lists of Open Access-related articles that need to be improved
- Suggestions for relevant articles that need to be created
- Information of daily check-ins and training events
- Links to tutorials on how to edit Wikipedia for beginners
Blogs on the AOASG website
We have a line up of blogs for OA week. You can also check out recent posts, including why ORCiD is so important in OA and how hard it can be to collect solid data on APCs from an institution.Resource of the month: Open Access Tracking Project – OATP
Without question, there is a LOT of daily news about OA. The Open Access Tracking Project is the best source of this news OATP for daily updates. It works as follows- “The goal is for the primary project feed to include all new OA-related developments. In practice, it includes the new OA developments noticed and tagged by participating taggers.” If you think it is missing something you can “Become a tagger and tag items yourself. Recruit other taggers.”
Highlights from the past month include:
- Launch of Open Libraries of the Humanities
- Open Access in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme
- Wikipedia gets criticised, and defends itself, for accepting Elsevier donations of subscriptions
- Knowledge Unlatched announces Second Unlatching Round
- Creative Commons awarded $450,000 from the Arcadia Fund to support open access publishing for authors
Open Access in the news
The Conversation – especially in its science & education sections, has covered many aspects of open access and the wider publishing landscape over the past few years. It is running“Your Questions Answered on open access research” during OA week and has a post at the beginning of OA week from AOASG on the “battle for open access“.
Open Access has also been on the radio with a Background Briefing programme on those who seek to exploit new developments in publishing and conferences and features in this week’s edition of Future Tense with the wonderful topic of “Designing for Serendipity“.
Open Access across the world
This week is a great time to get a view of local initiatives from across the world. Many have associated webcasts to follow or resources that can be watched later – so you don’t have to leave your desk.
Open Access week resources
Finally, if you need materials to promote OA or OA week, take a look at the OA week resource page.
Australasian Open Access Strategy Group 
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