Elon celebrates Open Access Week with workshop and faculty panel

This year’s theme of "Community over Commercialization" encourages prioritizing open scholarship that serves the best interests of the public and the academic community.

Elon University is celebrating International Open Access Week from Monday, Oct. 14 to Friday, Oct. 18.

Open access (OA) is a movement in academic publishing that makes scholarly content available free of charge and allows scholarship to be disseminated as widely as possible. Authors retain their intellectual property rights, and scholars across the world have immediate access to new research. Learn more on the Belk Library’s open access guide.

Belk Library is hosting a workshop and faculty panel on Oct. 23 at 10 a.m. titled “Community over Commercialization: Open Access and Publishing for All.” Learn about open access publishing, opportunities for OA funding available through the library and hear from a panel of faculty who have published OA.

As part of the library’s membership in the Carolina Consortium, the library has agreements with several large publishers (Wiley, Sage, Springer Nature, Cambridge University Press and others) that allow researchers to publish their articles open access for free or at a reduced cost. In 2023, seven articles were published by Elon researchers through these deals, saving the university over $21,000.

During the session on Oct. 23, Jessie Moore, professor of English and director of the Center for Engaged Learning; Brian Pennington, professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society; and Jen Hamel, professor of biology and associate director of Undergraduate Research will share their experiences publishing open access and answer questions about the process.

Please register for the workshop where there will be coffee and donuts available for all attendees. The library will also be tabling at College Coffee on Oct. 22, so stop by to test your knowledge of OA and win some swag.