Volunteer Opportunities at Open Access Directory

The Open Access Directory has just posted a list of Volunteer Opportunities. Please consider joining this thriving OA community - the work of keeping track of OA is easier for all of us if we just pitch in a little every now and then and contribute what we know!

• Keep the Wikipedia articles about OA accurate and up to date. Many people get their first impression of OA from those articles.
  • Make sure that Wikipedia includes articles about all major OA projects, in all disciplines and countries.
  • Make sure that Wikipedia includes biographies for all major leaders of the OA movement. Women leaders are currently under-represented.
  • Add links to OAD lists from appropriate articles in Wikipedia and other wikis.

• Systematically go through the archive of Open Access News (OAN), and add articles about OA to the OAD Bibliography of open access.
  • These additions are needed much more for works published in the spring of 2005, and after, than for works published earlier. Charles W. Bailey, Jr. published the first edition of the bibliography in March 2005.
  • This is a big job. If you need a public workspace to coordinate efforts, consider using an entry on the OAD page of Research in progress. If you use a different system, such as another wiki or a Google Doc, indicate what it is on the Research in progress page.

• Systematically go through the numbers on the OAD page of OA by the numbers and update them. Each number is accompanied by a link to make the job easier.
  • Because we had to start the OAD list with an old version of the file, most of the numbers have not been updated since 2006. Once it's up to date, it should be the place to go for the latest figures on the state of OA and its growth. It will then attract readers, to consult it, and contributors, to keep it up to date.
  • Of course the list could also be improved with relevant new numbers not already listed.
  • Use Dapper to make RSS feeds for the useful subsets of the numbers.

• Volunteer to gently take care of a list on the OAD. As we grow in size it would help us if subject specialists would take watch out for content for that would be appropriate for specific lists. As an all volunteer organization, the OAD does count on good folks to step up and look out for the quality of our content.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.