The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the World Bank have announced they will co-sponsor the kick-off event for Open Access Week 2012 on October 22, 2012, in Washington, DC. The live event will take place at the state of the art World Bank facilities and will host a Liveblog and Webcast for those who cannot attend in person. The event will also be recorded, and be available to the community for use during and after local Open Access events.
The co-sponsored event will begin at 4:00 p.m. and consist of a 90-minute panel discussion with Open Access experts from a variety of stakeholder groups – including students, researchers, and policy makers – as well as representatives from the World Bank and SPARC. This year's Open Access theme is 'Set the Default to Open Access.' The panelists will touch upon what that means to them, their institutions, and their work. Speakers will be announced in early September.
Immediately following the question and answer session, SPARC will sponsor a reception for those attending and participating in the panel discussion.
The World Bank was recently named as SPARC Innovator for its implementation of a new open access policy, which included the launch of the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) in 2012. The World Bank opened its data to the public in 2010.
