Seasons are starting to change regardless of which hemisphere you’re on, and it was great that the August Open Con Call enjoyed a swath of new faces joining us for the first time.  Our ‘news’ section at the start of the call, where we hear general events from the open world, was full of new policy developments (not least of which was the continued momentum of the FASTR legislation in the USA which would require that all federally funded research be made freely accessible online) as well as summaries of useful new publications and blogs (including an editorial from the Nature Publishing Group suggesting that trust in open access publications is increasing).

But the really exciting stuff came in the project updates. Much like the OpenCon Community Call, which was born out of a collaboration formed at OpenCon 2014, theOpen Research Glossary has been developed by OpenCon alumni to demystify the world of Open Access, Open Data and Open Education.  The development of SPARC Africa is also taking huge strides; it was clear how passionate callers from all parts of Africa were to use OA to drive the research culture in their continent.  We also heard updates from those trying to develop institutional OA policies and others seeking data mining guidance. We also reviewed what conferences are coming up that might be of interest to the community. As always, the call is a great place to bring new ideas or challenges to the table, and get inspiration from peers who might have encountered similar hurdles.  

The OpenCon Community Call is made by its participants, and August felt like a real community coming together to listen, share and explore.  Come and join us for one of our future Community Calls!  We look forward to seeing you there!

You can see the minutes from the call here and a recording is below.