WVU Libraries

As part of International Open Access Week, Oct. 22-28, West Virginia University Libraries will host an Open Access publishing panel on Monday, Oct. 22, from 4-5:30 p.m. in the Milano Reading Room.

Open Access (OA) refers to free online access to digital full-text scientific and scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

“The current scholarly publishing system is economically unsustainable for libraries, and this makes it very difficult for us to provide our patrons with access to the materials they need,” said Ian Harmon, scholarly communications librarian. “OA publishing is an alternative to this system, one that can remove barriers to research, such as paywalls, and increase the rate of scientific progress.”

The panelists will focus on the current state of scholarly publishing and the ways in which the OA movement affects how researchers disseminate their work. They will also address how publishing OA can affect tenure and promotion decisions.

Panelists will include:

• Steven Kinsey, associate professor and coordinator, Behavioral Neuroscience Doctoral Program, Department of Psychology;
• Elizabeth Engler-Chiurazzi, research assistant professor, Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute;
• Christopher Plein, Eberly Family Professor for Outstanding Public Service, John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics;
• Nick Bowman, associate professor, Department of Communication Studies;
• Angie Maranville, director, Knowledge Access and Resource Management, WVU Libraries.

Making research available in OA journals, or through the Libraries’ Research Repository, increases citations of the researcher’s work, promotes public access to federally funded research, and shares the findings with scholars within West Virginia and around the world who may not be able to afford high journal subscription fees.

The Research Repository @ WVU, a service of the WVU Libraries and the WVU Office of Research, provides an online, openly available, home for the scholarship, creative work and research of West Virginia University faculty, students and researchers. The repository can be visited at researchrepository.wvu.edu.

More information about OA is available on the Libraries website and from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), or contact Harmon at ian.harmon@mail.wvu.edu.