Celebrating Open Access Week

Next week is International Open Access Week, and the University Libraries are celebrating with a series of events designed to raise awareness and create conversation about the open access movement and its impact on teaching, scholarship and research.

Charles Lyons, electronic resources librarian, says that UB is joining hundreds of universities around the world in celebrating Open Access Week, now entering its sixth year. The open access movement, Lyons says, promotes free, immediate, online access to academic research.

The events being hosted by the UB Libraries Oct. 22-26 aim at “raising awareness of the issues surrounding open access publishing and describing how open access can maximize research impact by increasing the visibility and accessibility of scholarship,” he explains.

All events will be held in 212 Capen Hall, North Campus, and are free and open to members of the UB and greater Western New York community.

The schedule:

• UBIR: Submitting Items into the UB Institutional Repository: 10-11 a.m., Oct. 22. Presenter is Mark Ludwig, director of research systems development, UB Libraries. The UBIR is an online catalog of UB scholarship that can be used to reserve and publish documents and digital objects, as well as archive research data collections to fulfill National Science Foundation requirements. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate how the UBIR can ensure long-term preservation and access. Participants will have an opportunity to test drive the item submission process and the repository’s search engine. Register to attend
• Textbook Affordability: Making Sense of the Options: 1-2 p.m., Oct. 23. Presenter is Charles Lyons, electronic resources librarian. Escalating textbook prices threaten the affordability and accessibility of higher education at UB and across the country. The goal of this session is to increase awareness of the rapidly evolving dynamics of today’s textbook market. In addition to the cost of a textbook, a wide array of other factors can be taken into account when making decisions about textbooks, including format (print or electronic), access (rent or buy), condition (new or used), pricing model (traditional or open access) and more. This session will clarify the available options, while focusing on the issue of textbook affordability. Register to attend .
• How Publishing Decisions Affect Your Research Impact: 1-2 p.m., Oct. 24. Presenter is librarian Ben Wagner. This hands-on workshop will showcase how tools such as Web of Science and Google Scholar influence the visibility, readership and citation impact of one’s scholarship within the scientific literature. Participants will learn how to find specific metrics like the h-index and journal impact factors. Register to attend .
• Reading Goes Electric: The Rise, Evolution and Significance of the e-Book: 10-11:30 a.m., Oct. 25. Presenter is associate librarian Charles D’Aniello. Can e-books—especially free ones—make us more human? What would Thomas Jefferson say about e-books? How powerful can artificial intelligence be if it grows on a low-protein diet? What if Google, or something like it, “ruled” the world? How did IBM’s Watson computer get so smart anyway? Look at the present—it hints boldly at a possible future, for e-books and digital texts in general. What would a world corpus of recorded—textually remembered—knowledge make possible? Register to attend.
• Authors’ Rights: A Brief Introduction: 1-2 p.m., Oct. 26. Presenter is Beth Adelman, associate librarian and director and vice dean for legal information services, Law Library. This session will introduce authors to the concept of authors’ rights. The presentation is intended to provide a self-evaluative framework for authors to question whether these rights are important. It also will introduce skills to assess and to modify a publisher’s boilerplate author agreement. Register to attend .