First Open Access Day to be held October 14, 2008

[Jennifer McLennan <jennifer@arl.org>]

For immediate release
August 28, 2008

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
(202) 296-2296
jennifer@arl.org

*FIRST OPEN ACCESS DAY TO BE HELD OCTOBER 14, 2008*

Washington, DC -- August 28, 2008 -- 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. Building on 
the worldwide momentum toward Open Access to publicly funded 
research, 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.

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, 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. [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. [7PM Pacific]

Librarians and student organizers are invited to host meetings 
around the broadcast. To see a list of participating campuses and 
to sign up, visit the Open Access Day Web site at 
http://www.openaccessday.org. Additional international events 
will be announced shortly.

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.

"The momentum behind Open Access to research has been 
accelerating for some time now, even before the mandates at the 
U.S. National Institutes of Health and Harvard University," said 
Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. "Events beyond the 
U.S. especially underscore the higher education community's 
commitment to having the access they need. Open Access Day will 
provide a perfect way for folks to come together, consider, and 
celebrate the ramifications of the global shift we're 
experiencing."

"Open Access Day is a great opportunity to inform everyone on 
campus about the nature and importance of Open Access," added 
Nelson Pavlosky, Co-Founder of Students for FreeCulture. "It's 
really an issue that impacts everyone in the university, whether 
they are professors who publish, students who research, or 
librarians who purchase journal subscriptions. Students for 
FreeCulture looks forward to working with SPARC and PLoS to 
inform our peers, as well as faculty, staff and administration, 
about how Open Access can help bring publishing into the 21st 
Century."

"Making full use of the Internet to share and reuse content 
without restriction is pushing scientific communication into the 
future," said Peter Jerram, CEO of PLoS. "Open Access Day 
acknowledges the enormous progress that's been made towards 
comprehensive access to research.  We are pleased to be 
partnering with the community on this special day. We would ask 
our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the 
commencement of our publishing activities in October by 
participating."

Open Access Day was inspired by the National Day of Action on 
February 15, 2007, led by Students for FreeCulture with support 
from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. This year, the same 
partners have joined forces with PLoS, the Open Access scientific 
and medical Web publisher. Open Access-supporting organizations 
are also invited to take part. For details, contact the 
organizers.

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

--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc