OA.Works

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?


 The Guardian

reports that top universities are paying too much for access to academic journals. How much did your university pay for your journals?

The Week In Links — June 20

We’re thrilled to share that Wellcome has contracted OA.Report to support data analysis linked to their Open Access Policy! 💡

 About OA.Report

OA.Report is an open-source tool that identifies research outputs organizations have supported, analyzes their openness (including OA policy compliance), and then streamlines taking action to make results more open.

Wellcome is using OA.Report to report OA policy compliance

We’re thrilled to share that The Michael J.Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) has signed up to use OA.Report to help implement its Open Access Policy. 💡

 About OA.Report

OA.Report is an open-source tool that identifies research outputs organizations have supported, analyzes their openness (including OA policy compliance), and then streamlines taking action to make results more open.

MJFF starts using OA.Report to measure OA policy compliance &amp; demonstrate its impact

And awarded a grant to expand RSCVD’s work. In the past month, our partners for RSCVD have received an award and a grant to both strengthen and recognise its achievements! This is critical. RSCVD started as an emergency response to COVID-19 so that, as libraries were forced to close, access to research wasn’t impacted.

RSCVD partner given global award for impact

For three of the past four years we’ve had the honor of speaking to the Forum for Interlending in the UK about our work on integrating Open Access into Interlibrary Loan. This year, RSCVD (powered by InstantILL) took centre stage as it filled over 5000 ILL requests in the UK during COVID. Even if you couldn’t make the talk, the slides alone should provide a helpful update on RSCVD and some of our broader efforts around OA in ILL.

An update on RSCVD at the Forum on Interlending in the UK

If your library’s ability to do resource sharing (i.e. ILL or document delivery) has been impacted by COVID-19, help is at hand. Interlibrary loan professionals at non-profit institutions can head to rscvd.org and volunteer librarians around the world will help to supply materials. If you’re not having trouble filling requests, fantastic!

Supporting Resource Sharing during COVID-19 with IFLA

While building InstantILL, alongside our partners at IUPUI University Library, we documented our engineering work and unusual partnership in a paper that you can read today.

InstantILL Recognized at Premier ILL Conference

As we announced in June, shareyourpaper.org automates the deposit workflow — completing forms, checking what you can archive legally, and verifying the correct version is shared — so that authors can upload their papers without libraries having to check their work. These features can reduce the deposit process for your repository to a single click from your website, saving both depositor and library staff time.

Partnering with Montana State to make self-archiving simple with Shareyourpaper.org.

The University of California (and many other universities) have canceled their large subscription package to Elsevier as part of an effort to make academic publishing better serve science and society. It’s a noble goal that means scholars at UC might not be able to access your work unless it’s Open Access. But good news!

How to support fellow scholars at UC

Successfully encouraging authors to self-archive is difficult. How do you get them to read your emails? Do you tell them everything they need to know at once, or keep it short and succinct? How do you explain what they can share, educate them about their rights, and stop them sending you publisher PDFs? We’ve started to answer these questions while building the Open Access Button’s request system.

Encouraging authors to self-archive with tried and tested templates

We’ve been lucky enough to have many people review our tools over the years, and we appreciate them all.

Alberto Espay’s journey with Shareyourpaper.org

To make it easier for authors to self-archive simply, quickly, and correctly, we’ve created Direct2AAM, a set of guides to turn the often unsuccessful hunt for author accepted manuscripts (AAM) into a simple set of instructions that’ll always bring results.


Announcing Direct2AAM: Helping Authors Find Author Accepted Manuscripts

Delivering Open Access content through interlibrary loan holds enormous potential for cost savings (as this recent study continues to show), as well as the discovery and creation of Open Access content when it’s needed most. However, it comes with new knowledge for practitioners to learn, and challenges to tackle.


Announcing a Practitioner’s Handbook on Open Access in Interlibrary Loan

Photo by Drew Hays. Practitioners, patients, researchers, and caregivers are locked out of the medical research they need. Together with users, the Open Access Button requests paywalled articles to be shared by authors.


How Paywalls Harm Cancer Patients

We listened to your feedback and released an updated site this week. Overall the site is a bit prettier, but there are some good features to highlight:You can now download our plugins with one click from the homepage.


Your Feedback + New Site = A Better Button

21 October 2014 For Immediate Release Contact: Joseph McArthur, +447732634892 October 21, 2014 media@openaccessbutton.org Open Access Button Benefits Students, Researchers and General Public

 London, England

. The Open Access Button today launched a suite of new apps to help researchers, patients, students and the public get access to scientific and scholarly research.

New Apps Find Free Access to Scientific and Scholarly Research

3 March 2016 The Open Data Button has now soft launched. You can use the Button, see your requests and share them. After a few early hiccups (see tweets) we’re now planning to push the Open Data Button out to people early next week. Stay tuned for more, especially our next post on Open Data Day.


Open Data Button Launch Update

12 January 2016 We are delighted to announce that we have been working on an incubator grant from the Center for Open Science, to help advance openness, integrity, and reproducibility in science. We will be using this grant to build a brand new tool to include Open Data in our work. Like research articles, research data is often not openly available, preventing you from building upon the research and making science reproducible.


The Open Access Button moves into Open Data

Need research? Give us an article url and we’ll find you a legal copy

We have exciting news — you can now search for research directly on the Open Access Button homepage. Visit openaccessbutton.org, paste the url of the article you need, and we’ll find it for you. No account or plug-in needed! Let us instantly and legally connect you to the research you need. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Need research? Give us an article url and we’ll find you a legal copy

28 October 2016 During the past six months we’ve been quiet, but magic was going on behind the scenes. Over the coming months we’ll talk more about what’s happened, what’s changed, and what’ll happen next. But now, we have five major changes to tell you about:1. Find and request articles and data  The Open Data Button has now been combined with the Open Access Button.


Take Action this Open Access Week with the new Open Access Button

30 June 2015 Last Summer, a number of organisations learnt about the case of Diego Gomez. Diego Gomez, a Colombian graduate student, currently faces up to eight years in prison for doing something thousands of researchers do every day: posting research results online for those who would not otherwise have a way to access them. (Photo Credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation.


Diego Gomez stands trial for sharing research #standwithdiego

6 February 2015 Yesterday as Open Access Button Co-founders and Co-leads, we (David Carroll and Joe McArthur) received the SPARC Innovator Award. The Innovator Award recognises individuals, institutions, and groups that challenge the status quo in scholarly communication for the benefit of researchers, libraries, universities, and the public.


Open Access Button Founders Honoured with SPARC Innovator Award

Melanie believes that the use of the Open Access Button will create an important narrative and raise awareness regarding open access. This week we interviewed Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, a permanent researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) Institute for Communication Sciences and a visiting Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science Department of Media and Communications.


“Researchers want to be read, acknowledged and quoted.”

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

Graham Steel, an Open Access Button user and a tireless advocate for Open Access talked with the Open Access Button team about why he believes that paywalls stifle innovation and progress in science. “At the very moment that most of us carry access to a global information network in our pockets, our ability to tap into the world’s knowledge is eliminated.

“At the very moment that most of us carry access to a global information network in our pockets, our ability to tap into the world’s knowledge is eliminated. And it’s not an accident. It’s on purpose.”

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

The Open Access Button’s Launch Coordinator wrote a guest blog post for BioMed Central, “Building the Open Access Button,” discussing the progress the Button has made since its launch in November and the future of the Button. The International Association of Scientific, Technical &amp; Medical Publishers published a set of open access licenses.

The Week in Links — July 13

Behind the Open Access Button is a team of international student volunteers. Get to know them on Team Button Tuesdays! This week meet Luke, one of our secretaries, and Jim, one of our Communications Officers.

 Luke Barnes, Secretary

Hello! I’m Luke, one of the newer additions to team button. I was brought on board in April as a Secretary and so far am really enjoying being part of the team that keeps team button organised!

Team Button Tuesdays: Luke and Jim

Behind the Open Access Button is a team of international student volunteers. Get to know them on Team Button Tuesdays! This week meet Chealsye, the Launch Coordinator and Rachael, a Communications Officer.

 Chealsye Bowley, Launch Coordinator

Hi, i’m Chealsye! I’m the Launch Coordinator for the Open Access Button, but I first joined the team as a Communications Officer working on social media.

Team Button Tuesdays: Chealsye and Rachael

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog, the Open Access Button team is hard at work on Button 2.0! We’re participating in the Jisc Summer of Student Innovation to fund development for a Button 2.0 mobile app. Ideas with enough votes will be considered for funding of £5,000. Vote here and tell your friends to vote too!

The Week in Links — May 23

One year ago, the world lost Aaron Swartz. Swartz was an Internet activist, computer programmer, and political organizer that had relentless optimism for a better and more open world. He helped author the RSS 1.0 web syndication specification at 14, was one of the earliest architects of Creative Commons, co-founded Reddit and supported the Internet Archive’s Open Library project through his software company Infogami.


Remembering Aaron

The Open Access Button team are hoping to create a world where it won’t be needed. Until then, support from amazing people like you ensures Open Access Button can keep fighting to overcome the barriers that block free access to knowledge. Your receipt will reach you as specified by Charity Checkout. If you want to keep in touch with all the latest, make sure you follow us on twitter or like us on facebook.


Donation thank you

The lovely people at PLoS stuck us on their front page.


Open Access Button does speaking of Medicine front page

David and Joseph from the Open Access Button team are in Budapest at the Right to Research Coalition General Assembly. You can watch a short interview with them below.


OA Button Team in Budapest at the Right to Research Coalition General Assembly

This week David was interviewed by Abby Tabor from My Science Work about the how the idea came about, how we developed the open access button prototype and what are the plans for the future. You can read the interview over on the website here.


Interview with mysciencework.com

A screenshot of the map of denials of access from our prototype is the picture of the week in this week’s BMJ. You can check it out in print or at the link to the pdf here.


Picture of The Week in this week’s BMJ

Last weekend’s BMJ Hack has been reported in the BMJ. The article can be found here.


Can they hack it? Yes they can.

Over the course of the BMJ Hack weekend, team member Joseph McArthur was interviewed by the BMJ’s Digital Engagement Editor, Matthew Billingsley. The interview can be found over here on the BMJ’s clinical community doc2doc or can be streamed below.


OA Team interview with the BMJ

If we want to bring about a more open community we’ll need more tools, more information and more engagement around the issue. That’s where our idea comes in. Imagine a browser-based tool which allowed you to track every time someone was denied access to a paper? Better yet, imagine if that tool told gave you basic information about where in the world they were or their profession and why they were looking.


Our project — short version

It’s the weekend we’ve all been waiting for. The Open Access button Hackathon is almost upon us! First you’ve heard about it — click here.

 From this page you’ll find everything you need for the hackathon.

Open Access Button Hackathon — Everything you need to know

This isn’t a post about what we’re doing in response to COVID-19. Instead, we’re sharing how we planned to respond as an act of transparency to our community. It’s also an opportunity to get feedback, and we hope that it’s something that others can use to guide their thinking.

How we planned for a pandemic

We’re thrilled to announce that Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, has generously committed to continue its support of our work with a four-year, $1,870,000 grant.

Arcadia Fund Increases Support for our Work

After an extensive competitive search, we’re proud to announce that cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders working towards making full and immediate Open Access a reality, has chosen Shareyourpaper.org Permissions to supply self-archiving policy data for their new Plan S Journal Checker Tool. Shareyourpaper.org Permissions is our new open source automated permissions checking system.

cOAlition S chooses Shareyourpaper.org Permissions for Plan S Journal Checker Tool

The Open Access Button has just released an updated API that will make it simpler both to find and access an article (through publicly accessible content, subscription content, or an ILL) and to enable access by emailing authors who directly deposit their content.

Streamlined, more powerful APIs for the Open Access Button

The Open Access Button is a browser bookmarklet that tracks and maps the impacts of paywalls. Users can report when they are denied access to research and then search for alternative access to the article using the Button. We launched the Open Access Button in November 2013 at the Berlin 11 Student and Early Stage Researcher Conference. To date the Button has mapped over 5000 paywalls.


Join the Open Access Button Student Team!

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week (or two)?

“Open Access is inevitable,” said Dutch State Secretary for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Sander Dekker at the Academic Publishing in Europe 2014. Dekker also highlighted the Open Access Button and other open access projects. Listen to his talk here.

 Cultural Anthropology

is now fully open access with its February 2014 issue!

The Week in Links — February 8

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

It’s been a bumper week here at the Open Access Button, with us announcing our collaboration with Cottage Labs on Button 2.0 and launch coordinator Chealsye guest-blogging for Biomed Central on building the Open Access Button.

The Week in Links- July 18th

Behind the Open Access Button is a team of international student volunteers. Get to know them on Team Button Tuesdays! This week we have Joe, one of the Open Access Button Co-Leads, and Margaux, our Communications Officer.

 Joe McArthur, Open Access Button Co-Lead

I came to university with a mission to make people healthier and a love of the scientific method.

Team Button Tuesdays: Joe and Margaux

Privacy is a key concern to everyone at the Open Access Button, indeed it has sparked a lot of fears and debate within the team from day one. In that sense this is a long overdue blog, as we’re yet to make several simple decisions and safeguards clear.


Privacy and the Open Access Button

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week? The Open Access Button’s very own Joe McArthur wrote a guest post for PLOS Opens on OpenCon 2014 and building student communities. Facebook was a hot topic of conversation all week, in the wake of concerns about the methods used by its data scientists in recent research.


The Week In Links — July 4

Open Governance

The Open Access Button strives to be an open project that strengthens the Open movement. The source code of the Button is open and freely available through GitHuB, the data gathered by the Button will be open and freely available, and now the guiding and main documents of the project will be open and freely available to the public. The guiding documents are now available through our Open Governance page.

Open Access Button Update: April 21

Behind the Open Access Button is a team of international student volunteers. Get to know them on Team Button Tuesdays! This week we have Juan, one of our Secretaries; and Sarah, one of our Community and Advocacy Coordinators.

 Juan Carlos, Secretary

Hi. My name is Juan Carlos and I’m an OAddict.

Team Button Tuesdays: Juan and Sarah

We’re thrilled to announce the addition of six professionals to the Open Access Button Steering Committee. Our Steering Committee now holds expertise in advocacy, fundraising, copyright law, programming, governance, communications, and technology in the Global South. The Committee will provide long term perspective to the project and serve as a guide to our international student team that runs the Open Access Button.


New Steering Committee Members

A Bigger Button Team

The main growth for the Open Access Button lately has been recruiting new members for our student team and Steering Committee.

 Student Team

We have welcomed 11 new team members to team Button! This brings our international student volunteer team to 19 members. We’ve expanded our Communications, Fundraising, Secretary and Technology teams.

Open Access Button Update: April 1

The Open Access Button is a browser bookmarklet that lets users report when they are denied access to research, then search for alternative access to the article. Each time a user encounters a paywall, they simply click the Button in their bookmark bar, fill out an optional dialogue box, and their experience is added to a map alongside other users. Then, the user receives a link to search for free access to the article.


Join the Button’s Steering Committee!

Since 2013, the Open Access Button has been working to build and support efforts to make free, fast, legal tools for discovering free papers in one click from a paywall and making more articles Open Access. This year, we saw that work expand, accelerate, and mature! Still more to do, so see you in 2018 to get it done, but for now enjoy some GIFs.

 Before we kick off, there are lots of opportunities to get sneak peaks at new tools coming soon.

A year of crushing paywalls in GIFs

Notice anything different? We’ve moved to a new blogging system, welcome! It’s more than twice as fast, aligns with our values by protecting your privacy, and most importantly is a better place to learn about our work.

Our new blog is a lesson in controlling our own infrastructure.

A great blog post by Mozilla software engineer and Open Access Button Steering Committee member Vic on an Open Access Button upgrade coming soon.


Upgrading the Open Access Button

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

The Open Access Button launched the Open Access Button Action Centre this week. Want to help the team promote open access initiatives and combat paywalls? Join us: sign up today! Are you at Wikimania 2014 in London this weekend? Open Access Button team members David Carroll, Chealsye Bowley, and Megan Waples are there too! Feel free to ask them about the OA Button.

THE WEEK IN LINKS — AUGUST 8

For the past few months, like chickens on eggs we have been sitting on what we think is a game changing idea. We’ve been sitting on it because despite trying as two student activists, we just haven’t found the help we need to make it a reality. So to preface what you’re about to read — we need your help. It almost goes without saying that the current model of scientific publishing needs a rethink.


Changing the game in the search for open access

In 2022, our focus was on building OA.Report (a blog on that coming soon! Join our mailing list to be notified). But, as 2022 becomes 2023, we wanted to take the chance to celebrate the other work we did to help make Open Access easy &amp; equitable. So, without further ado: Our governance got an update as we joined Code for Science &amp; Society (a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit), and our new advisory committee got to work.

In the works at OA.Works in 2022

Journalcheckertool.org helps you understand how you can make your work Open Access and comply with Plan S for your personal combination of publishing venue, affiliation, and funder. It’s released in beta today, and we’d love your feedback! One important part of this is finding out if you can self-archive your work, which is where we’re proud to say Shareyourpaper.org Permissions comes in. More on that here.

Plan S releases Journalcheckertool.org beta backed by our data.

After hundreds of hours, many sleepless nights and a whole lot of coffee on November 18th, the Open Access Button launched it’s beta product. The Open Access Button is a tool designed to track and map paywalls, while helping the user get access to the research they need and building support for the open access movement.


The Open Access Button Launch Roundup

“

 What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week ?

” Ernesto Priego, a lecturer in Library Science, City University London and Open Access advocate, pointed out at his interview with the Open Access Button the importance of libraries in Open Access.

Our first six months using Shareyourpaper.org for Libraries

We’re thrilled to share that Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) is investing in new OA.Report features and increasing it’s usage of the tool after a successful 6-month pilot. 💡  About OA.Report  OA.Report is an open-source tool that identifies research outputs organizations have supported, analyzes their openness (including OA policy compliance), and then streamlines taking action to make results more open.

OA.Report gets investment from Aligning Science Across Parkinson's

After a couple of years of working to support institutions implementing their OA policies, we're so proud to see OA.Report, our development partner, and one of our collaborators featured in Nature. We appreciate Nature bringing attention to the progress being made in more effectively implementing OA policies. Read the full story on Nature's website.

Nature features OA.Report's work putting OA policy into practice!

We’re excited to say OA.Works has received a one-year grant of 100k from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to continue developing OA.Report. This investment builds on our partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to enable more organizations to use OA.Report to discover, analyze, and unlock papers covered by OA policies or supported by their funding and staff.

OA.Works' receives grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

We’re thrilled to announce OA.Works has joined Code for Science and Society (CS&amp;S), a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit empowering communities to build technology for the public good.

OA.Works joins Code for Science &amp; Society

Besides building the tools that make OA.Works work, team Data Wrangler Natalia Norori also uses the tools as she explores research in migration and epidemiology. In this talk at the UN, Norori dives into the difference between open and equitable, using her life experience as a Nicaraguan scientist who has been impacted by migration.


 Video

Fast forward to hour 3, minute 35 to see Natalia’s talk.

OA.Works’ Natalia Norori Goes Back to the UN to Talk about Equity and Open

We’re thrilled to announce that OA Works (formerly Open Access Button) has received a grant of $1.9M USD over the next three years from the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. The investment expands OA.Work’s efforts to streamline self-archiving through ShareYourPaper, and forges a new partnership with the foundation to develop tools that help put OA policies into practice.

OA.Works receives $1.9 million to bolster OA policies

This week, a group of the largest publishers launched a new service, GetFTR, ostensibly designed to help readers get easier access to the full text of journal articles from their sites. Sounds good, but hang on — there’s a reason why commercial players are scrambling to launch such services: to maintain control. The pioneers in doing this have been non-profit, open source initiatives: ourselves and Unpaywall.

Get To Fulltext Ourselves, not GetFTR.

In April we shared the incredible response we’d seen in RSCVD’s first week


 supporting resource sharing for those affected by COVID-19 having built and launched it in partnership with IFLA.


 Today, we’re reposting an update


 from IFLA’s blog


 as the service has gone from strength to strength, and transitions into becoming not an emergency response, but long term

InstantILL powers global COVID-19 response in partnership with IFLA

Today we’re treated to a post by Leila Sterman, our partner at Montana State, on using user testing to build Shareyourpaper.org. If you don’t know shareyourpaper.org, first


 check out the website


 and our


 earlier blogs


 , as we’ll focus on sharing our progress today.

Self-archiving has a reputation for causing confusion.

Testing the Future of Self-Archiving

In March, we announced InstantILL, a new, powerfully simple library tool that delivers articles — no subscription needed. Since then, over 250 libraries, of all sizes have joined the waiting list to save money, improve services, and advance Open. Today, we’re debuting the first iteration with our partner, IUPUI University Library.

InstantILL is being rolled out at IUPUI. Here’s how it works.

For change, not for profit.

We’ve come a long way from our start as rag-tag volunteers out to change the world. As a founder and the director of the Open Access Button, I want to share how we hope to go further, and faster, with the support of libraries. Unveiling your business model is a big moment for any project. So, thankfully, I’m not tasked with justifying how we’ve sacrificed our values to be sustainable.

Sustainability Without Scarcity: Our New Business Model with Equity at the Core.

We’re beginning InstantILL’s Beta, and releasing a new website at InstantILL.org. Now you can learn about InstantILL and try it yourself, with a step by step demo that walks you through all the features. During the Beta, we’ll invite the over 300 libraries on our waiting list to test InstantILL’s simple, self-setup process to roll out the tool.

InstantILL released in beta, with a new website.

Today, we’re sharing our draft plan for succession and contingency planning: openaccessbutton.org/contingency-and-succession-plan. But, fear not, we’re not going anywhere soon. Recently, we responded to the Invest in Open census, an excellent initiative, which included answering the better part of 100 questions on everything from our impact, governance, and funding to the management of our organization, product, and community.

Planning for good things to come to an end

Together with librarians, we’re building a new way to perform permissions checking that is backed by a modern approach and informed by a decade of experience and open, community-editable, machine-readable data.

New tool and dataset make permissions checking easier, faster, and clearer for libraries.

This year, we released DeliverOA to make it easier to find self-archived Open Access versions of articles and deliver them inside ILL workflows in major tools. Today, we’re releasing an update to make it easier to deliver Open Access content for practitioners using Alma, by Ex Libris. Alma is a major tool for document-delivery practitioners around the globe.

Alma users get a new tool to make it easier to deliver Open Access in ILL

“

 What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

” The Open Access Button has joined with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons and the Right to Research Coalition to launch a petition in support of Diego Gomez who currently faces up to eight years in prison for posting research results online for those who would not otherwise have a way to access them.

THE WEEK IN LINKS — SEPTEMBER 19

“

 What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

” The Royal Society, the national academy of science in the UK, has launched Royal Society Open Science, a new open access journal covering science, engineering and mathematics. The society is offering an introductory waiver of APCs for accepted papers.

THE WEEK IN LINKS — SEPTEMBER 26

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

Building Button 2.0: The Open Access Button from Co-Lead David Carroll for PLoS Blogs. PLoS’ new open data policy was announced in December.

The Week in Links — February 28

Yesterday we launched our crowdfunding campaign. A few hours after launch, visitors to our main website openaccessbutton.org recieved a message of “502 bad gateway error”. On the list of things you’d like to happen during the launch of a crowdfunding campaign this wasn’t exactly high.


Indiegogo Features Update

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

Graduate student Patricia San Jose talked with the Open Access Button team about why she joined the fight for open access and why open science is essential. Look for more conversations with Open Access Button users on our blog in the coming weeks! TODAY is the last day to apply for the Open Access Week competition. INASP is giving $500 to ten successful applicants.

THE WEEK IN LINKS — AUGUST 15

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week (or two)?

The Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology (FIRST) Act was introduced into the United States House of Representatives. Section 303 of the FIRST Act would be a leap backwards for open access to United States federally funded research articles.

The Week in Links — March 14

The last year and a half has been incredible. We have gone from nothing to a really useful, workable bookmarklet which has helped track thousands of people running into paywalls. Most of it thanks to volunteer developers (and others), who poured their souls into getting this project off the ground.


Help make the Button more awesome dev.openaccessbutton.org

We’re incredibly proud that one of our tiny team, Natalia Norori, has been profiled by Forbes as a young leader for her work with us and her project Health Data Sharing Is Caring. We’ve been lucky to work with Natalia for years to lead implementation of our request system and self-archiving work, including Shareyourpaper.org.

Forbes profile one of our team, Natalia Norori.

Last weekend, we took our open access button idea to the BMJ Hack and we built a protoype. We storify’d the weekend here. Who knew you could have so much fun? Indoors, on the hottest weekend of the year.Open Access Button@OA_ButtonHello.Sat, Jul 06 2013 04:03:43rewiredstate@rewiredstateKicking off in a few minutes #BMJHackSat, Jul 06 2013 02:17:34David Carroll@davidecarrollThe Open Access button, we need your help!


#bmjhack Storify

Here are three quick things we think you should know
 

This week, our Advisory Committee approved OA.Works' Articles of Governance. Articles of Governance set the rules for how organizations like ours are run, and so, despite the unusual name, they’re critical to understand. Today, we’re sharing ours with the community as we deepen our commitment to building open-source, values-driven, non-profit tools for the long term.

Introducing our Articles of Governance

Paywalls are frustrating. We’ve all been locked out of research, whether we’re writing a paper or researching the disease of a loved one. Our request system asks authors to share their work with researchers, journalists, students, and the curious. We’ve received almost ten thousand requests for paywalled research.


10 Reasons Why We Need to Smash Paywalls Now

Four years ago this week two undergraduate students had the idea for what became the Open Access Button — a browser extension for people to report paywalls and share why they needed access to the paper.


Celebrating the Open Access Button’s Fourth Birthday!

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

The Open Access Button has announced that it will be launching the new Button during Open Access Week 2014 and is looking for partners to host launch events.

 Science Advances

, a new Open Access journal, responded to the open letter from researchers expressing their concerns with the journal’s policies, with a FAQ.

Week in Links — August 29

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

SPARC announces the theme for the 2014 International Open Access Week in October to be “Generation Open.” The event will highlight the importance of encouraging the younger population to become involved with the mainstream adoption of Open Access publishing. Young adults are a critical and vital target demographic for the Button.

The Week in Links — May 9

What has been happening in the world of Open Access in the last week?

The European Research Council (ERC) has signed an agreement with Elsevier to encourage ERC-funded researchers to make their findings freely available by open access. This measure will be mandatory for all research funded under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

The Week in Links — June 7

Behind the Open Access Button is a team of international student volunteers. Get to know them on Team Button Tuesdays! This week we have David, our co-founder; and Georgina, our fundraising coordinator.

 David Carroll, Open Access Button Co-Lead

Over the last six months, I’ve been constantly amazed at the progress of the Open Access Button.

Team Button Tuesdays: David and Georgina

Open Access Button Co-Lead Joe McArthur gives the weekly video update for January 13–19. This week Joe talks about consultation, integrating the Button with Wikipedia, implementing referral codes, and our plans for February.


Weekly Update: January 13–19

We are looking for two volunteers with general graphic design skills to work with the Open Access Button team. The Open Access Button is a browser plugin that maps and tracks the impacts of scholarly journal paywalls. The Button beta launched on November 18 and gained international media attention, including from The Guardian.


Are you a graphic designer? Join our team!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 18, 2013

 Contacts:

openaccessbutton@medsin.org

 Students Launch “Button” to Put Denied Access to Research on the Map

BERLIN — Today, at an international meeting of student advocates for expanded access to academic research, two undergraduates from Great Britain announced the highly-anticipated launch of The Open Access Button — a browser-based tool to map the

Students Launch “Button” to Put Denied Access to Research on the Map

If someone hits a paywall in the forest, does it make a sound?: The Open Access Button | The Student Blog.


If someone hits a paywall in the forest, does it make a sound?: The Open Access Button | The Student Blog

We’ve all been there, dissertation pending, deadline approaching and coffee being demolished faster than is probably healthy. Then it happens. You hit a paywall — deadend. Frustration ensues, but no time, gotta move on. But wait, did you know you probably paid for that research. Millions of pounds of taxpayers money each year goes on publicly funded research. So why can’t you access it? The answer is the broken scholarly publishing system.


OA.Works Blog

OA.Works receives $1.9 million to bolster OA policies