Open Access Week 2013: A Recap Of This Year’s Global Celebration

This year’s Open Access Week, a global event that just finished its sixth year, was held Oct. 21–27, 2013. Celebrations of various types were sponsored by libraries, students, researchers, publishers, and nonprofit organizations to increase awareness about open access (OA). The Open Access Week website notes that the week is designed to provide “an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.”

On Monday, Oct. 21, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and The World Bank Group kicked off the week with a two-part event to “explore the nature of impact” and award “innovative use of open content.” The first part of the event included a 60-minute panel discussion hosted by Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), article-level metrics, OA at the federal level within the United States, and OA to support the humanities were among the topics discussed.