The battleground: How is OA changing our work? How can we advocate and foster OA?

The growth of the Open Access (OA) movement is changing the landscape of scholarship, how it is produced, shared and accessed.

We will examine its challenges and opportunities, and the best ways to foster OA initiatives on the individual, institutional and consortial level, from the perspective of librarians and faculty. Together with the audience, we hope to create recommendations for ways forward for AMICAL on the Open Access front.

• Mark Muehlhaeusler: I will look at support for OA at the individual, and institutional level: How can AMICAL members support individual faculty who want to publish (or use) OA resources, and how can AMICAL members provide systematic support across departments and schools, by making policies, and providing resources.

• Elisabetta Morani: While European national consortia are engaged large scale implementation of OA, what initiatives would be appropriate for a small consortium of mainly liberal arts college libraries? I will describe the challenges that I face in my library and in the E-resource Committee to find out possible answers.

• Dalal Rahme: “Why Open Data is important and why we should advocate for it.” I will discuss open access to research data in the face of persistent, but irrational fears about data ownership, credibility, management and copyright. I will also touch upon the role of institutional and general repositories.

• Sawsan Habre: I will talk about strategies used to collaborate with faculty and convince them about the new Scholarly Communication System (SCS) and accordingly push them to accept publishing in Open Access journals, use open educational resources in teaching and archive their publications in institutional/subject repositories. Strategies used to outreach and educate faculty about copyright laws and retaining their author’s rights

• Maha Bali: “Why OA has changed my life as an academic and why more people should care.” As a researcher and editorial board member, I will talk about the benefits of OA to all academics in practical terms, but more importantly, about OA as a social justice practice all scholars should advocate for.