There is a great event coming up at the University of Michigan, sponsored and coordinated by a great team of librarians: Open Access Week 2009.
Molly Kleinman, one of those great librarians, puts it into context for us:
I’m struck by how timely these events are, and how much we could conceivably do under the umbrella of discussing open access and the future of scholarship. … The confluence of circumstances nationally has made this the perfect moment to discuss what’s wrong with existing modes of academic publishing, and to start getting aggressive about making change.
You really should read the rest of Molly’s post for a wonderful explanation of why the current scholarly publishing system is failing for everyone except the Elseviers of the world.
Along with presentations focused on faculty and scholarly publishing models, there is also going to be a talk by my current boss, Nathan Yergler, CTO of Creative Commons. Nathan will be talking about the impact of Creative Commons (CC) licenses on Open Access, what challenges still exist for Open Access, and what the Creative Commons is doing to build and support an ecosystem of openness. Everyone is welcome to join this event, and all the events during Open Access Week. For the details about Nathan’s talk, check out the announcement on the OPEN:Michigan blog.
If you are in the South East Michigan area and are interested in what Michigan is doing to promote Open Access and make it really work, come by for any of the events; there should be a wide enough range to accommodate most interests.
