Open Access Week

It’s soon upon us: the Ninth Open Access Week

It’s soon upon us! The ninth Open Access Week. This year, the theme is Open in Action, about taking ‘concrete steps to make … work more openly available and encourag[ing] others to do the same’. The theme corresponds nicely with our IDRC-funded Ambassador project where we have Ambassadors working around the world to promote the values of open access and the DOAJ.

On Facebook, over the coming days, I’ll be listing the details all the DOAJ-associated activities that are being held across the globe. I’ve started with a list of links to some of the DOAJ Team’s profiles on the Open Access Week web site. Here’s the post:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FDirectoryofOpenAccessJournals%2Fposts%2F1295485780463658&width=500

Need a flyer or a poster?

What are you doing for open access week? Let us know. If you need any DOAJ promotional material for your event, we have an A5 flyer for printing out, an A4 information sheet (more suitable for a North American audience), and we have a flyer and a poster in French, and the same in Chinese. Don’t forget that we have a collection of presentations on Slideshare, too, which are a great resource for “clipping” (saving a slide), downloading etc. If you need something else, get in touch!

The Open Access Week web site itself also has a great Resources section, where you can download logos, handouts and posters.

Open Access Week 2015 and the DOAJ Volunteer Loyalty Program

What are you doing for Open Access Week 2015 (OAW 2015)? Perhaps you are holding a workshop at your university or giving a presentation in your library? OAW 2015 is the EIGHTH OAW and DOAJ stand firmly behind it.

To honour this year’s OAW, DOAJ is launching a volunteer loyalty program. You may have read about our wonderful volunteers that give a few hours of their time every week to review new journal applications. Our volunteers do fantastic work and are a talented and dedicated bunch. We decided that we should honour the fantastic work that they do with a series of rewards.

We will be awarding a certificate of loyalty and achievement* to volunteers for every 50 applications reviewed and completed. The more applications a volunteer reviews, the more certificates they get. We’re designing the certificate just now but I’ll post an example here as soon as I have one. [UPDATE 15th October: here are the certificates plus the link to the volunteers page!]

Editor's certificate

Sample image of editor’s certificate awarded for a year’s service to DOAJ.

Associate Editor's certificate

Sample image of associate editor’s certificate awarded for 25 applications completed.

We will also be listing all our working volunteers on our site.

We’re exploring the option of awarding Mozilla Open Badges so that a DOAJ volunteer can officially declare their work for DOAJ. we will host an annual virtual volunteer meeting to bring our volunteers together and give them the opportunity to network, exchange ideas or ask questions. Watch this space!

*Credit to Felipe G. Nievinski, one of our volunteers, for the original idea. Thanks Felipe!