International OA Week 2020 at UC San Diego and Beyond

The theme of 2020 OA Week is “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.” Events held around the world during the week of October 19-25 will most likely be virtual and some even open to all – which is exactly how the UC San Diego Library will produce our offerings, online and open access! While we can not meet on campus in-person, we can take the opportunity to collaborate and share across campuses.

Join us for our virtual events described below, follow #OAWeek on Twitter to see the great things happening all over the world, and follow us on Twitter @UCSDScholCom where we’ll post recorded interviews of scholars (faculty, PhD and undergraduate students) talk about OER creation, publishing #openaccess, and the student experience in sharing OA scholarship.

Open Access Week 2020 banner from SPARC

Oct. 20, 2020 from noon – 1:00pm PST

“Predatory” Publishing: Addressing Bias and Avoiding Pitfalls

An open access virtual workshop for researchers given by librarians from University of California at San Diego, Temple University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of California at San Francisco. See this page for a longer event description. Please see this page for recordings, slides, and resources.

October 22, 2020 from noon to 1:00 pm PST 

Building Structural Equity and Inclusion: Open Educational Resources and Affordable Course Materials

An open access virtual workshop for instructors given by UC San Diego Librarians; Allegra Swift, Laura Schwartz, and Dominique Turnbow. See this page for a longer event description. Please see this page for the slides and resources from the presentation.

Openness can be a powerful tool for building more equitable systems of sharing knowledge. Rebuilding research and scholarship to be open by default presents a unique opportunity to construct a foundation that is fundamentally more equitable. Yet today, structural racism, discrimination, and exclusion are present and persistent in places where openness is a core value. As a global community, it is important to understand that the systems and spaces of the present are often built upon legacies of historic injustice and that addressing these inequities is a necessity.  

We need to examine who these spaces and systems are designed for, who is missing, who is excluded by the business models we use, and whose interests are prioritized. As we work together to rebuild these structures, we need to commit to moving from conversations to concrete commitments and to hold one another accountable for making real progress.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion must be consistently prioritized year-round and integrated into the fabric of the open community, from how our infrastructure is built to how we organize community discussions to the governance structures we use. International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress to build more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. 

SPARC 2020 News August 31, 2020

“Predatory” Publishing: Addressing Bias and Avoiding Pitfalls

Oct. 20, 2020 from noon – 1:00pm PST

Find slides, recording, transcript here

#oaweek2020 @UCSDScholComm

An open access virtual workshop for instructors given by Librarians from University of California at San Diego (UC San Diego, Temple University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of California at San Francisco.

“Mind the Gap,” CC BY (2.0) Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom

“Predatory” publishing, especially in the health sciences, is an ongoing concern and it is essential for researchers to be able to recognize deceptive publishing practices. It is important, though, not to oversimplify what constitutes predatory practices. While using tools like “blocked” or “approved” lists helps researchers avoid predatory publishers, these lists can reinforce power dynamics that exclude marginalized, non-western viewpoints. Come to this session to learn how to balance publishing in high quality open access journals while staying aware of the biases in scholarly publishing. This event is geared towards researchers but is open to all.

Learning Objectives:

Following this session, participants will be able to:

1. Identify the characteristics of deceptive publishing practices in order to avoid their tactics.

2. Understand the inherent and hidden biases in the publication industry in order to challenge their own assumptions.

3. Differentiate the limitations of simplistic lists of deceptive journals and publishers.

4. Assess publishing venues using reliable criteria and resources while avoiding bias.

Related UC San Diego Library research guides:

Resources for choosing and evaluating journal publishing venues : Includes the library’s evaluation tool for making values-based decisions without bias..

Resources for evaluating book publishing venues

Related research and information:

Harrison W. Inefuku. “Globalization, Open Access, and the democratization of knowledge.” Educause Review (July 2016). [open access]

Harrison W. Inefuku and Charlotte Roh. “Agents of diversity and social justice: Librarians and scholarly communication.” In Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication: Policy and Infrastructure, edited by Kevin L. Smith and Katherine A. Dickson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). [open access]

Critical Race & Ethnic Studies 101 (Alamri): Privilege & Bias in Scholarly Publishing – a UC Merced Library course guide.

The Knowledge G.A.P. research and publications

Session recordings from the OA Scholarly Publishing 2020 Conference: Open Access in a time of Global Challenge

Scholarly Communication Institute 2019 projects and teams

[We’ll post slides and recordings in November 2020.]