The June edition of our Community Call once again saw a great mix of old and new faces, ready to build on discussions started on our increasingly buzzing discussion list (new participants always welcome!) and Twitter.

We discussed how to make OpenCon 2015 bigger and better than last year.  Call participants from India and Botswana highlighted the need to translate Open Access policy developments to the Global South, and it is exciting to see collaborations already forming between advocates who have found shared interests and priorities. Overall, ‘How To’-type sessions seem to be a priority for all those on the call. Callers from the USA and South Africa agreed that a priority should be grassroots Open Access policy development, including how to identify and engage key stakeholders. These are all great ideas, which will be channeled into the many OpenCon Satellite Events that will take place around the world, and it’s exciting to see how the community call is developing networks between likeminded peers who are continents apart. 

It’s always great to get a general update on the open world, and this month was no different.  Check out the agenda and minutes to hear what was said about Elsevier’s article sharing policy, the Open Textbook Summit and the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication… it’s a lot to squeeze into an hour!

To catch up on everything said, check out the minutes from the call. Even better, you can listen to the recording.

We hope you’ll join us next month (July 29^th, 11am EST, 4pm BST, 5pm CET) – bring your challenges, ideas, concerns, or if you just want to bring your ears, that’s fine too.  We look forward to seeing you there!

- Karin Purshouse 

This article, and the community call recording reflects the views of the author/participants(s) and not necessarily those of the Right to Research Coalition or SPARC.

April’s OpenCon Community Call once again saw a good mix of OpenCon 2014 alumni and new voices looking to learn more about Open Access. 

Nick Shockey, Director of the Right to Research Coalition and SPARC’s Director of Programs and Engagement, updated us on OpenCon 2015, which will open for applications on June 1^st. It was also exciting to hear that so many institutions, including the University of North Carolina and Dartmouth, are committing to developing institutional Open Access policies.  We heard from another OpenCon caller that they had struggled working to pass an institutional policy, so this was a great opportunity to get advice for how to advance discussion around the policy. 

We went on to hear about Paperity, which was developed by an OpenCon alumnus. Paperity aggregates and provides links to Open Access journals and papers in one directory.  Despite being only six months old, it already has approximately 10,000 users, and their current index of around 750,000 articles is growing all the time. Another new platform, Dissem.in, seeks to make it easier for researchers to establish how Open their articles are, and learn to make them more open. A common challenge identified was how to help to devise Open Access policies when advocates are invited to do so at their institution or funding organization.  Supporting each other in devising Open Access policies is just one way we can work efficiently as a community and overcome obstacles more efficiently.

We also heard from a junior doctor who, until recently, was volunteering with the Kings Sierra Leone Partnership (KSLP) as part of the Ebola crisis response. The Ebola epidemic in many ways exemplifies why Open Access is so important, and yet it remains unclear how the vast wealth of research that the crisis has generated can be disseminated openly. Many journals offer fee waivers to authors from low-income countries, but this becomes complicated by multi-author papers.  A key action point from this discussion was to generate a resource outlining which publishers offer fee waivers. 

It was also great to get feedback from recent conferences of interest to the open community.  The Centre for Research Intelligence Leadership Programme in Paris provided opportunities to discuss how to increase communication about Open Access between different stakeholders, and how we can instill healthy research practices from as early as childhood – we need to make open the status quo!  Building on this, the Sage Bionetworks Paris Assembly explored how to use research and education to create social impact.  A key message was focusing on the end user of research outputs – i.e. the general public.  This not only means making our research open, but finding ways to make it more accessible and user friendly, such as developing online tools.  Finally, the Academic Research Communication and Scholarship (ARCS) conference in Philadelphia, which was both coordinated and attended by OpenCon alumni, also focused on communication of scholarly articles and how this can be done sustainably. 

Phew, it’s a lot to squeeze into an hour!  But hopefully OpenCon callers leave reinvigorated and inspired by what is being achieved by their peers in all corners of the globe. We welcome you to join our Community and join the conversation, details can be found at opencon2015.org/community/calls – we’ll see you there!

If you want to find the full minutes from this month’s OpenCon Community Call they can be found here. But at a glance, here are a few of the actions from the call:

• Collate slides from existing resources, which can be used by Community when giving talks?
• Contact Fulbright Scholars about developing an Open Access policy - please let Karin (karinpurshouse[at]googlemail[dot]com) know if you have friends or contacts!
• Develop a document listing journals/publishers with fee waivers.  D/w  DOAJ. Could build on http://cofactorscience.com/journal-selector.  (Liaise with Graham Steel who has links with both).

If you want to discuss these, please use the comments!

Finally, we tested recording the calls, let us know what you think!  

- Karin Purshouse 

This article, and the community call recording reflects the views of the author/participants(s) and not necessarily those of the Right to Research Coalition or SPARC.

In May we welcomed Kevin Smith, Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communication at Duke University Libraries, to the OpenCon Community Call to talk about Elsevier’s recent update to its article sharing policy.  It was great to hear from someone so knowledgeable on what the impact of this policy change could mean for those publishing in Elsevier journals – in summary, the policy claims to increase sharing whilst actually restricting access.  

Before the new policy, authors could immediately deposit their work into repositories in most cases (the major exception being a clause that punished institutions with open access policies by disallowing authors who were required by the institution to make an article accessible through the repository). With the new policy, authors may have to wait up to four years to make their work available through most repositories (including those hosted by their institution). The new policy also requires authors to use the most restrictive of the Creative Commons licenses (CC-BY-NC-ND) when sharing an Elsevier-published manuscript. There are additional features that create an impression of sharing, such as Sharelink, which would provide an expiring 50-day link to a paper that could litter the web with broken links to articles. 

On its surface, Elsevier’s summary of the policy would suggest it is easy to navigate, but the truth is quite the opposite.  A lengthy document weaves a complicated web that would challenge even the most ardent publishing fan to navigate, with differing embargo periods and caveats at every turn.  Further, Kevin shared the contradictions contained within the proposals amidst all the complexity, such as the ability to publish manuscripts on private websites but not institutional repositories – after all, the internet is not a series of boxes!

Depressing?  Well, there are things we can do – key amongst those is to encourage organizations, such as our institutional libraries, to sign the COAR-SPARC Statement.  Further, Elsevier have already made some changes in response to the wave of criticism from the academic community, so it is important our community engages with the arguments against what Kevin calls a ‘complicated and draconian’ policy. 

Many thanks to Kevin Smith for taking the time to talk to the OpenCon Community, and we hope you can all join us for another engaging, fun hour with the OpenCon Call.

You can find a recording of the call embedded below, while the minutes can be found here.

- Karin Purshouse 

This article, and the community call recording reflects the views of the author/participants(s) and not necessarily those of the Right to Research Coalition or SPARC.

On June 1st, we hosted Dr. Meredith Niles for an OpenCon Community webcast to discuss how you can use being open as an asset for your career.

OpenCon is a global meeting and aims to represent the diversity of the Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data communities in the conference program. To achieve this, we have an organizing committee of students and early career academic professionals representing key groups and issues, but we also need community input—we need your input.

You can suggest individual speakers, panels, or one-hour workshops. Suggest the best speakers you’ve seen on the topics of Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, or if you’re a frequent speaker on these topics and want to address OpenCon, suggest yourself. You can even suggest broad themes or ideas that you’d like to see addressed during OpenCon 2015. However, to be considered for the OpenCon 2015 program, you must submit your suggestion before June 26.

If you’ve been following our blogs, emails and taken a look round the website you’ll be familiar with some great reasons to apply for OpenCon. Namely,

• an excellent program of keynotes, panels, workshops and unconferences;

• the opportunity to connect with the best and brightest peers from around the world;

• time connect with global leaders; and,

• if selected, we’ll cover your costs to attend.

If you’ve been following our blogs, emails and taken a look round the website you’ll be familiar with some great reasons to apply for OpenCon. Namely,

• an excellent program of keynotes, panels, workshops and unconferences;

• the opportunity to connect with the best and brightest peers from around the world;

• time connect with global leaders; and,

• if selected, we’ll cover your costs to attend.

But last week, we decided to ask the OpenCon 2014 alumni what they thought the best reasons to apply were.

Here is what they said:

Apply because you care about Open Access, Open Education and Open Data, and you want to be part of the revolution. It’s an intense three days: you’ll have a lot of fun, meet amazing people, be inspired, find collaborators, and get a fresh wardrobe. It’s probably the best conference ever, and that’s just the beginning... it might just change your career. So what are you waiting for?

1) Apply because you care about Open Access, Open Education and Open Data

If you care _at all_ about the future of research & you're an early career researcher - you should DEFINITELY come to @open_con next year

— Ross Mounce (@rmounce) November 18, 2014

2) and you want to be part of the revolution

“... we just marked a revolutionary point in making the fundamental right to research a reality.” - Laura

"OpenCon 2014 was the Best and Most Important Meeting of My Life; the Revolution is launched" - Peter Murray Rust 

3) It’s an intense three days:

“There's no apathy in this room. It's jam-packed with idealistic, clever, and deeply committed young people energetically working to transform science and academic life” - Hilda

We take that energy to policy makers on the final day, but don't leave anything other than your information packet behind. "OpenCon is a wild ride, hang onto your scarfs" - Karin

"What OpenCon might not give you a lot of is sleep. But it most definitely will be an amazing time." - Georgina

Some participant projects aren't always related to the conferences issues...

"Great beards! http://beardsofopencon.tumblr.com/" - Sarah

"Amazing people!! Amazing environment!! Amazing sessions!!" - Meggie

"Fantastic people gathered together with incredible energy for important work. The people are welcoming and as open as the access they promote. ;) " - Heather 

"You will meet people face to face for the first time that you've heard of, admired, tweeted, seen in a webcast, emailed, campaigned with and even worked closely with on projects. It's seriously exciting putting names to twitter handles, faces to names and bodies to faces (my suspicion that pretty much everyone I work with is taller than me was confirmed) and shaking hands and introducing yourself to the people who inspire your work. And I guarantee that every single one of them from fellow delegates to speakers will be happy to hear who you are, what you're doing and take the time to talk." - Georgina

“OpenCon was inspiring and moving” - Lorraine

“Opens you to a world of innovation and possibilities” - Meggie

"OpenCon will make you more a more cape-able Open Access advocate" - Juan

9) It’s probably the best conference ever 

#opencon2014 is the most amazing thing I've ever a been part of. Literally a life-changing weekend.

— Matt Menzenski (@menzenski) November 18, 2014

"OpenCon... was certainly the best conference I’ve ever been to." - David

Shucks. Gotta board the plane now. So long D.C. -- @open_con was the best conference I've ever been to #opencon2014

— Ross Mounce (@rmounce) November 18, 2014

“OpenCon 2014 was the best conference I have ever been to. The presentations, speeches, and workshops as well as all the connections I made at OpenCon educated me about the exciting developments occurring not only in Open Educational Resources, but Open Access and Open Data as well. I left informed and inspired to continue on as an open advocate. Full of word class attendees, organizers, and presenters, OpenCon was a once in a life time opportunity that I will never forget.” - Chardaye  

#Opencon2015, the best conference I've ever attend, is coming to Europe. Apply for it @open_con web site. https://t.co/HjcR6Vuj2L

— Ivo Neto (@ivocamposneto) June 9, 2015

10) and that's just the beginning...

OpenCon doesn't end when you go home, through satellite events, webcasts, calls, and the discussion list the community works year round to fight for change.

Back home in Hong Kong after 2 days of sharing at opencon2014.. it all begins now! #opencon2014

— Aloysius Wilfred Raj (@Aloysiuswilfred) November 18, 2014

“OpenCon was the most energetic and intellectually stimulating conference I have attended. Meeting people so immersed in Open Access, Open Data and Open Education was inspiring and has since motivated myself and Martin Bentley to start Open Access South Africa: A Student Network. I am honoured to be a part of a community so fully committed to access to education and research across the world.” - Uvania Naidoo

It's a packed house here at Imperial for #opencon2014 ... getting a bit toasty warm too! #openwindows pic.twitter.com/6q5nrmVvtc

— John Hammersley (@DrHammersley) November 26, 2014

“You should apply for OpenCon because meet you will meet the most incredible group of people, and have intense experiences with them—like going to war or touring with a band. But unlike most conferences, you don’t just get on a plane and leave that all behind, it continues and those experiences persist in the OpenCon Community, both online and offline.” - David 

#openconcall @open_con #opengeneration that was flippin awesome. Renewed motivation and inspiration,I'm off to get on with those projects!

— Karin Purshouse (@KarinPurshouse) February 25, 2015

Always feel pretty pumped after an @open_con conference call...even though I come in desperately late. Great knowing you guys are out there!

— Uvania Naidoo (@uvanianaidoo) April 29, 2015

11) it might just change your career.

Applications open now for #OpenCon 2015 - it's a career changer of a conference, seriously. https://t.co/DdlDUZgkqr

— Karin Purshouse (@KarinPurshouse) June 1, 2015

So what are you waiting for?

Applications to attend #OpenCon are now open! Those accepted will receive full travel scholarships if needed! http://t.co/dwNwHVVHCr

— OpenCon (@open_con) June 1, 2015

We'd like to thank all the OpenCon 2014 alumni who contributed to this, sorry we couldn't include everything.

Applications to attend OpenCon 2015 on November 14-16 in Brussels, Belgium are now open! The application is available on the OpenCon website at opencon2015.org/attend and includes the opportunity to apply for a travel scholarship to cover the cost of travel and accommodations. Applications will close on June 22nd at 11:59pm PDT