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PKP Celebrates Open Access Week

October 23, 2024

By Famira Racy

OA Week graphic collage of diverse communities and open locks. OA Week is on until October 27. — From the left, row 1: Wardha Bokhari, laimagendelmundo, Pwani University Library; row 2: Lazarus Matizirofa, laimagendelmundo, FDR Presidential Library & Museum; row 3: Slobodan Radicev, Cancillería Ecuador, Samuel McDermott, Richard Bowman, Kerrianne Harrington and William Wadswort; locks and design by Kim Henze. Download theme graphics from the OA Week website under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

PKP shares what’s on for Open Access (OA) Week and beyond, highlights from Coalition Publica, how PKP software opens access to research and scholarship, opportunities to contribute to PKP communities, and OA news as well as resources.

For the second year in a row, the theme of International OA Week is “Community over Commercialization” organized by SPARC in partnership with the OA Week Advisory Committee.

This theme is near and dear to us, as there is no PKP without the communities that contribute to actualizing our mission of opening access to research and scholarship for the greater public good.

What’s on for Open Access Week and Beyond

We are no strangers to open access – PKP has been making knowledge public for more than 25 years. At PKP, Open Access Week is every week! PKP and friends are taking’ part in several activities centering communities over OA Week and beyond.

SPARC International OA Week Theme profiles – What does “Community over Commercialization” mean to you?

🔓 Theme profile – PKP with Juan Pablo Alperin, Scientific Director, and member of Coalition Publica (the partnership between Érudit and PKP).

This concept of community over commercialization comes into play in how we make our software available so that communities around the world can make their voices and ideas heard – regardless of whether those ideas can be packaged into a profitable product to be sold in the market.

Learn more

🔓 Theme profile – Érudit with Jessica Dallaire-Clark, Senior Coordinator of Open Access Development, and member of Coalition Publica.

We are building community through our work at a bunch of different levels – all with the goal to make open access feasible within Canada… When you can pull together all the elements, the right data, and the right stakeholders… what you get is a community doing great work and great publishing research.

Learn more

OA Week Events

🔓 What are the Paths to Sustainable and Universal Open Access? Hosted by University of Regina Centre for Teaching and Learning, October 22, 1 – 2 PM CST, free, online.

PKP Founder John Willinsky will consider OA rationale, goals, and barriers, as well as call for participants to join him in speeding up sustainable and universal OA.

Learn more

🔓 Regional Workshop on Open Infrastructures. Via the BIREDIAL-ISTEC International Conference on Digital Libraries and Repositories in Latin America, University of Chile, October 22 – 24, free, in-person.

PKP Scientific Director Juan Pablo Alperin will participate in the workshop on October 24 to discuss Open Journal Systems (OJS) and open access publishing.

Learn more and register

🔓 Optimizing the Role of the Peer Reviewer in OJS. Hosted by Relawan Jurnal Indonesia (RJI), October 25, 8 – 10:50 AM Jakarta Time, free, online.

PKP’s John Willinsky, Founder, Kate Shuttleworth, Digital Publishing Librarian, and Patricia Mangahis, Client Services Manager, will join representatives of RJI, Arbain, Dwi Fajar Saputra, and Jamiludin Usman in a workshop to advance the role of peer reviewers using OJS. John will also introduce the Publication Facts Label, and Kate will introduce PKP School.

Learn more and register

This event is part of a series of events that have been taking place with OJS communities in Indonesia, thanks to Maria Lamury, our first Local Liaison in Jakarta, Indonesia. Learn more about Maria and events!

Indonesia on PKP’s News Blog.

Coalition Publica

Coalition Publica is a partnership between Érudit and PKP to advance research dissemination and digital scholarly publishing in Canada. Together, we are supporting the social sciences and humanities journal community in the transition towards sustainable open access.

🔓 Coalition Publica statement on Diamond Open Access

For many years now, Coalition Publica, and its constituent partners Érudit and PKP, have been involved in various national and international initiatives regarding Open Access (OA).

“By gathering community support for non-commercial, scholar-led journals, Diamond Open Access is best placed to achieve the objectives of the Open Access movement and to reclaim research as a public good.”

Learn more about the Canadian context, international momentum, and CP’s actions for Diamond OA on CP’s News Blog in English and in French.

🔓 Celebrating 10 years of the Partnership for Open Access (POA)

The POA partnership between Érudit and the CRKN (Canadian Research Knowledge Network), provides financial support to non-commercial scholarly journals through the ongoing commitment of library partners and is based on a close collaboration between all stakeholders of the research ecosystem.

Part of the diamond open access movement, the POA is a pillar of Coalition Publica, building a collective, equitable, and robust path for the dissemination of knowledge.

More than 250 non-commercial journals are supported financially through the POA. Learn more about the POA in numbers, its approach, its Canadian and international Community, Partner Libraries, timeline of OA successes, and how to get involved by visiting the POA page.

🔓 Support for the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information

By signing the Barcelona DORI, PKP and Érudit reinforce their commitment to open and transparent research information to ensure availability, quality and control of such information by academic communities.

The Barcelona DORI was motivated by “the observation that much of the research information essential to the advancement of knowledge, decision-making and public policy is inaccessible, locked up in proprietary infrastructures.”

As the first Canadian supporters of the Barcelona DORI, PKP and Érudit hope that this action will encourage others to do the same. To learn more about our commitment, and how to support the initiative, visit Coalition Publica’s page.

PKP Software Opens Access to Research and Scholarship

When it comes to scholarly publishing platforms that open access to research and scholarship, PKP software is trusted by more than 44,000 active journals around the world. These journals using Open Journal Systems (OJS), the most widely used journal publishing platform in the world, are currently publishing in 148 countries in more than 60 languages.

Because PKP software is free and open, scholars and researchers can take control of their publishing according to their community needs. Being developed and maintained by scholars, for scholars, there are several features of OJS that allow for meeting these needs, including features that enable open access journal publishing.

Beyond journal publishing, PKP communities develop, maintain, and sustain other avenues for community control and opening access to scholarly publishing, including Open Monograph Press (OMP) and Open Preprint Systems (OPS). Both OMP and OPS are built on the same powerful foundations as OJS.

Between OJS, OMP, and OPS, scholars and researchers have the opportunity to take control of access, reach, diversity, inclusivity, and quality of their publishing. Those who choose PKP software for their publishing needs can center community over commercialization without compromising their needs or values.

Explore PKP software

Not only does PKP provide free and open software for advancing research and scholarly publishing, it provides open educational resources for getting it done.

Check out PKP’s resources for taking control of your publishing, yourself, your way:

✅ PKP School – learn how to control your scholarly publishing

✅ PKP Documentation – take the steps to accelerate your scholarly publishing

✅ PKP Digital Preservation – DOI’s are not enough – preserve your journal forever

✅ PKP GitHub – understand PKP’s development roadmap and contribute

✅ PKP Community Forum – make inquiries to solve your scholarly publishing questions, and contribute to help others

If you would like an extra boost, upon request from PKP Communities, PKP also offers the following:

✅ PKP Hosting & Other Services (all income goes back to developing PKP infrastructure)

Opportunities to Contribute to PKP Communities

The concept of community is an important one for PKP, as it speaks to what connects us in a common cause and a deeply held commitment. This commitment is to people’s right to knowledge, within which public access to research and scholarship is vital. Community is at the heart of PKP.

Within this community are a good number of institutions and organizations that contribute directly to support PKP’s work, whether through journal development initiatives, direct financial support, strategic alliances, or in-kind community contributions to translation, documentation, education, and more.

Opportunities to contribute to PKP Communities include:

🤝 Join an interest group

🤝 Participate in usability testing

🤝 Raise the profile of PKP locally

🤝 Attend a PKP Sprint

🤝 Respond on the PKP Community Forum

🤝 Contribute code

🤝 Become a Development Partner, Financial Contributor, or Community Contributor

🤝 Check all PKP Community opportunities