The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Building on the worldwide momentum toward Open Access to publicly funded research, Open Access Day is expected to create a key opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of content.
Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians, students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of events. In North America, events will be held at 7:00 PM (Eastern) and 7:00 PM (Pacific) and feature appearances from Sir Richard Roberts, joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993 for discovering split genes and RNA splicing; and Dr Philip E. Bourne, Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology and the author of the popular PLoS Computational Biology Ten Simple Rules Series.
The event will also mark the launch of the new 'Voices of Open Access Video Series.' Key members of the research community, including a teacher, librarian, researcher, student, patient advocate, and a funder, will speak on why they are committed to Open Access. Librarians and student organisers are invited to host meetings around the broadcast. Additional international events will be announced shortly.
Open Access Day was inspired by the National Day of Action on February 15, 2007, led by Students for FreeCulture with support from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. This year, the same partners have joined forces with PLoS, the Open Access scientific and medical Web publisher. Open Access-supporting organisations are also invited to take part. For details and to participate, visit http://www.openaccessday.org..
