Saturday 4 October 2008

Open Access Day on FriendFeed



Readers of this blog and/or people who know me are aware of my ongoing involvement in the Open Access Community although some of what I do is behind the scenes.

Back in April, thanks to suggestions in this thread at Nature Network, we came up with the idea of Open Access Week. You can find a summary of that on McBlawg here. As a result of that, McDawg has already been consulted over plans for next year's Open Access Week. Further details to follow nearer the time.

In the meantime, after some behind the scenes work, on August 28th, seconds after the official announcement was made about Open Access Day, I spread the word here on FriendFeed.

In the lead up to the day itself, there's been loads of coverage in the blogosphere already (simply Google open access day) so I don't intend to expand upon that.

It just so happens that McDawg is off work during the week that the event is being held. I'm particularly glad to see that the suggestion of live worldwide broadcasts of events has become a reality. Kudos to the organisers.

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Cut to the chase. There's going to be a frenzy of OA related items taking place on or around 14th October such as video, audio, synchroblogging etc.

As has been done recently to great effect, a brilliant way (this is simply one) to capture all of this and archive it, is to set up a dedicated room over at FriendFeed (FF).

Recent examples (FF Rooms) are BioBarCamp and Science Blogging 2008: London (now Called Science Online at FF).

As such, as of today, I've set up a Room at FF called "Open Access Day". Not just because they were the first two to join, but Martin Fenner and Michael Nielsen have been handed Administrator status like McDawg.

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I, or should I say we have no idea how successful or not this concept will be. That said, like the other Rooms mentioned above, providing we can attract a reasonable amount of room members, the idea is:-

Open Access Day is on October 14th. This day is organised by SPARC, Students for FreeCulture and PLoS. This room has been set up to capture events before during and after the day on FF.

Feel free to join the Room, participate and join the discussion that will gather in pace over the next ten days.

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