First Open Access Day to be held on October 14th

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Open Access Day will 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.

The First 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, Ph.D., F.R.S.
  Joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993 for discovering split genes and RNA splicing and one of 26 Nobel Prize-winners to sign the Open Letter to U.S. Congress in support of taxpayer access to publicly funded research, and currently at New England Biolabs, USA. [broadcast: 7PM Eastern]



• Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D.
  Philip E. Bourne is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology and the author of the popular PLoS Computational Biology Ten Simple Rules Series. He is Professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego, Associate Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank, Senior Advisor to the San Diego Supercomputer Center, an Adjunct Professor at the Burnham Institute, and Co-Founder of SciVee. [broadcast: 7PM Pacific]

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.

For details and to participate, visit: http://www.openaccessday.org/