Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced various events to mark the 6th year of Open Access Week, which begins today (October 21). Open Access Week is a global event to increase awareness of the benefits of open access publishing, and give people the opportunity to discuss and share their views on the topic.
BioMed Central publishes all research articles open access, employing the Creative Commons attribution licence, which makes research freely available for all to read, re-use and build upon. As of September 2013, all BioMed Central journals are also published under an Open Data policy (Creative Commons CC0 waiver), which allows free re-use and distribution of all published data without legal restrictions. The company believes that removing barriers to access has widespread implications for the scientific community, and Open Access Week is a key opportunity to promote this.
BMC Medicine (@BMCMedicine), an open access journal published by BioMed Central, will be hosting a one hour Twitter-chat on October 21st at 4 pm UK time discussing how open access publishing impacts medical research and global health, following on from the success of last year's TweetChat about the growth of Open Access journals. Prominent researchers Agnes Binagwaho (@agnesbinagwaho), Charles Wiysonge (@CharlesShey) and Prabhat Jha (@countthedead) will also be joining the TweetChat. Interested parties may join to share their views, just remember to use the hashtag #BMCMed in all tweets.
Everyone is familiar with the infamous impact factor, but how should we really define the impact of a publication? BioMed Central would like to show how open access has had an impact on people's lives by giving real examples. Throughout the week the company will be highlighting and discussing articles which have really made a difference and that difference is thanks to open access. You will be able to read and discuss these next week on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
The team in Japan are organising an Author's Workshop with Hokkaido University on 22nd October including presentations from representatives about HUSCAP – Hokkaido's institutional repository, green open access, and on the gold open access trend and BioMed Central.
Other events going on during the week include the celebration of Retrovirology's 1000th published article, which will be highlighted on the Retrovirology blog. BioMed Central will also be releasing a video of a discussion between editorial board members from a range of BioMed Central journals about the importance of Open Access and its implications for the scientific community.
Staff at BioMed Central and Springer will be out and about at a great range of international events during the Open Access Week.
