Copy of Copy of International Open Access Week (from October 18 to 24)

Is Open Access just a footnote? For the 4^th consecutive year, the international research community is talking to each other and acting to promote Open Access.

A unique occasion for researchers to learn more about this new and booming publication model (through meetings, online videos, lectures, etc.) and, better still, to get involved in the movement.

Some excellent reasons why they should:

• Heightened international visibility
• Increased use of research and of citation rates
• A speeding up of setting up research expert and partner networks
• Free of charge access to research information (without copyright laws being infringed)
• A rise in readership (notably amongst emerging countries)

 Amongst the Open Access Week initiatives:

• Week-long Open Access Mandate Adoption Challenge, presented by the University of Southampton, which is also celebrating 10 years of Eprints
• an Open Access subject published everyday on the website created by the JISC
• ORBi at the University of Missouri (a presentation on October 19)
• Open Access 101: a SPARC video on Open Access.

Through simply registering on the Open Access Week site, you can participate online and in realtime: chats, forums, groups, photos, etc., in other words all the methods available to get involved and get a sense of the movement’s importance: 15 to 20% of the worldwide research literature is already available on Open Access, and this number is continually increasing.

At the ULg, the ORBi institutional repository today numbers over 51,000 references, of which around 31,000 are available in full text versions. More than 800 downloads take place from the ORBi website each day (see the download statistics)!