Every October, the world celebrates International Open Access Week. It was initiated in 2009 by the Coalition of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) with the support of the student community. This year's International Open Access Week was celebrated from 21 to 27 October.
Open access: what is it?
Open Access is an international academic movement aimed at providing free, fast, ongoing, full-text access to educational and scientific materials on the Internet. Open access publications can be freely read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, used for educational and research purposes, provided the author is properly cited.
Open access to information contributes to the dissemination of research results and their use, attracting investment in research, development of science, education and society in general. Support for the Open Access movement among research funding organizations, academic institutions, researchers, teachers, students and the public is growing every year.
Open access is implemented in two main ways:
1. Publications in open access journals. The author of the article or the organization where he works pays for the publication of the material, and readers have access to the magazine for free.
2. Deposit - Researchers place their research papers in repositories (open thematic or institutional electronic archives).
Many universities now have their own institutional repositories. At our Universities, it is the Electronic Archive of Scientific and Educational Materials of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute - ELAKPI.
Open Access Week: why and how is it celebrated?
During the International Open Access Week, academics have the opportunity to discuss the benefits of open access, share their achievements, and inspire colleagues to make open access a norm in their research life.
For universities, it is a great opportunity to organize events aimed at ensuring openness of knowledge. Starting from 2012, the Weeks have been under some slogans: in 2015 – "Open for Collaboration", in 2016 – "Open in Action", in 2017 - "Open in order to ..." in 2018 - "Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge".
This year's International Open Access Week was held under the slogan "Open for Whom? Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge". This year's theme highlighted the importance of adhering to the idea of equality in the transition to new open knowledge sharing systems.
Open Access Week at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute
On October 21-27, the #EquityOpenKnowledge flash, initiated by the Ukrainian Library Association, was held. Under the event, students, teachers, scholars, librarians had the opportunity to record a short (up to one minute) motivational video about the experience of creating or using open access resources, about the attitude of the open access movement or specific initiatives, and more. Each video had to end with the phrase: "Make Knowledge Free!" Students of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute participated in the flashmob. You can see these motivational hits on the Open Access week in Ukraine social media page.
During the Week, the KPI Library hosted individual trainings for teachers and scholars on placement of materials at ELAKPI. The purpose of these activities is to teach researchers to access their educational and scientific materials so that students and other researchers can get acquainted with them 24/7.
And what other open source resources will be interesting for the KPI community?
Among researchers are widely used, for example:
- arXiv - the largest international archive of electronic publications for scientific articles and their preprints. Repository topics include computer science, physics, mathematics, quantitative biology, statistics, and financial mathematics. Resource Web URL: https://arxiv.org/.
- Zenodo is a repository open to all scholars, regardless of the field of knowledge and sources of funding for their research. All deposits are stored in the CERN Data Center. Each Zenodo deposit receives a DOI free of charge. The resource's web address is: https://zenodo.org/.
- Figshare is a cloud-based service designed to store and manage scientific documents that allows you to safely manage and manage your own research findings and make them visible, accessible and accessible. Resource Web URL: https://figshare.com/.
Open Access Week is over, however, measures to ensure open access to knowledge and integration of the scientific component of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute always continues to the international scientific environment, and every scientist, teacher, student will be able to support open access throughout the year.
Specialists of the Center for Information Support of Education and Research GI Denysenko constantly conducts trainings for scientists of our university and provides consultations on placement of materials in ELAKPI. For questions, call 204-96-72 and enter Room 4.4 of the Library.
Mariya Lapshyna, the consultant of Denysenko National Scientific Library