Today marks the beginning of the 8th International Open Access Week, which will be celebrated at hundreds of events across more than 50 countries around the world. This week, the Open Access community will raise awareness, celebrate progress, and lay the foundation for continued collective efforts to advance Open Access for the rest of the year.
This year’s theme of “Open for Collaboration” celebrates the partnerships—and the energy, passion, and inspiration they provide—that underlie many of the initiatives that have advanced Open Access since the movement was launched in 2002.
To highlight this theme of collaboration, in partnership with the Wikipedia Library, SPARC is kicking off a global, virtual edit-a-thon for Open Access-related content on Wikipedia that will run from today through Friday.
The edit-a-thon aims to improve existing Open Access-related pages, create new content where it needs to be added, and translate Open Access-related pages into languages where they don’t yet exist.
You can find everything you’ll need to participate, from recorded trainings on how to edit Wikipedia to lists of Open Access-related articles to be improved to others ways to be involved on the edit-a-thon homepage: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/OA_week
If you will be participating in the edit-a-thon, consider joining our kickoff call and daily check-in calls, which will be held at the following times:
- Edit-a-thon Kickoff: Monday, October 19 @ 12pm EDT / 4pm GMT
- Check-in Call: Tuesday, October 20 @ 6am EDT / 10am GMT
- Check-in Call: Wednesday, October 21 @ 12pm EDT / 4pm GMT
- Check-in Call: Thursday, October 22 @ 6am EDT / 10am GMT
- Edit-a-thon Wrap Up Call: Friday, October 23 @ 12pm EDT / 4pm GMT
All calls can be joined at https://www.uberconference.com/sparcconference (requires Chrome or Firefox) and instructions for joining by phone can be found here.
To capture and highlight the diversity of how people around the world are advancing Open Access—both this week and year-round—we’re inviting blog post submissions on the Open Access Week website. Anyone is welcome to submit a post detailing their efforts, successes, challenges, or ideas. Posts can be submitted at http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blog/new.
If you’re hosting any Open Access Week activities, be sure to register them on the Open Access Week website, so they can be recorded on our map of global Open Access Week celebrations.
Follow the official #OAWeek hashtag on Twitter, and check the www.openaccessweek.org website for new content throughout the week—including a welcome videos from US Senator John Cornyn, new blog posts, and more.
Happy Open Access Week!