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Open Publishing - Overview of PSU Libraries Open Publishing Program

Open Publishing - Overview of PSU Libraries Open Publishing Program In-Person

Tuesday, October 23, 1:00 – 2:30 pm

Open Publishing - Overview of PSU Libraries Open Publishing Program

Media Site Link:

http://live.libraries.psu.edu/Mediasite/Play/c21e495da91d4847b0afb9a09c8706d71d?catalog=8376d4b2-4dd1-457e-a3bf-e4cf9163feda

This event is Online, no registration required.

Related LibGuide: Copyright by Esther Dell

Date:
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Time:
1:00pm - 2:30pm
Time Zone:
Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
Location:
ONLINE
Categories:
  Presentation/Reception  

Celebrating “Open Access” Week – October 22 – 28, 2018

The theme for the 2018 Open Access Week is “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge”. So what exactly is all the fuss? What is “open”? How is it “open”? How does this affect you and me?

To put it in a very simplistic way, the goal of Open Access (OA) is to remove barriers and increase transparency so that available knowledge, in the form of published works, can be freely examined, shared, used and re-used.

The “free-ing” of knowledge is an evolving process that is quite complex, and affects us as creators, processors and users of scholarly works. Issues at stake are legal, financial, ethical, and more. There are no easy solutions, but the conversation must continue to provide maximum access to available knowledge in a financially sustainable way and, at the same time, insure that disseminated works represent quality research that is transparent and methodically assessed by the community of peers in their disciplines.

Penn State spends millions each year to provide access to a large percent of the scholarly output via subscription programs, and supplemented by interlibrary loan as well as individual item purchases. The use of these materials is further restricted by copyright laws and licensing agreements; additional usage requires permission from copyright holders and often incurs royalty payments. Institutional budgets directly affect the availability of published information. Third world countries are at the mercy of publishers and their special access programs for low income countries.

Many grant funding agencies require funded authors to make their publications openly available, using repositories like Pubmed Central. Institutions are also implementing Open Access initiatives to encourage faculty and researchers to retain permission (prior to signing the publisher’s copyright agreement) so that a copy of their work can be archived in their institutional repository. See http://openaccess.psu.edu/faculty-senate-resolution-on-open-access-to-scholarly-publications/ for the resolution passed by the Penn State Faculty Senate. Publications with proper permissions can be archived at Penn State’s Scholarsphere, found at https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/.

The cost of textbooks for the learning community also continues to rise and the financial burden is a barrier to education at all levels, especially since publicly funded education is not available worldwide. It is therefore another area where discussions are ongoing to make provision of educational materials at low/no cost.

Open data – making research data openly available – is now a requirement by many funding agencies and/or publishers. The goal is to provide access to data for transparency and re-examination purposes. Datasets are stored in repositories built by government agencies, disciplinary organizations, and individual institutions. Penn State’s data repository can be found at www.datacommons.psu.edu.

With this international dialog, many positive outcomes have emerged. However, various bad actors have also surfaced. Be aware of for-profit organizations who have no regard for quality science and scholarship, They charge author fees for publishing on an OA platform but do not provide the rigorous peer review process that is expected of quality work. Also, do not utilize or contribute to illegal repositories of stolen content, which is against Penn State policy and can also jeopardize personal as well as institutional network security.

Please contact Esther Dell (eyd1@psu.edu or 717-531-8633) if you have specific questions or need additional information.

Event Organizer

Sharon Daugherty

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