Democraticize scholarship! Happy Open Access Week!

Let’s celebrate and promote open access to academic research! It’s Open Access Week!

There hasn’t been much publicity around this event here in Norway, not in the anthro-blogosphere either.

So, to start with, here some videos!

Here’s a quick, simple and funny introduction to the concept of open access in universities by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and McGill University Library.

A very interesting interview with Vincent Gerbaud (University of Toulouse) about his motivation to publish his papers online in public repositories and his experiences

Several Open Access scholars and editors discuss the benefits of open access publishing

The London School Economics has made a nice contribution - the Open Access Week awards.

One of the awards went to anthropologist Deborah James. She has written the most downloaded book chapter in 2009/10: ‘I dress in this fashion’ transformations in sotho dress and women’s lives in a Sekhukhuneland village, South Africa (1996).

The lucky winner of The Departmental award for most improved full text deposit is the Department of International Development, who saw an increase from less than 3 full text open access papers per member of staff in 2008/09, up to 8 per member of staff in 2009/10.

The London School of Economics has an impressive number of anthropology publications in its online repository, but most of them cannot be downloaded, and open access articles are not highlighted.

See also a guest post from the Open Access week 2009: Anthropologists ignore Open Access Week - a report from Wellington and check antropologi.info’s overview over open access anthropology journals