The editors of New Proposals, a transnational peer-reviewed journal hosted at The University of British Columbia in collaboration with the UBC Library eJournal Project, are pleased to announce that the third issue, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2008) is now available.

This issue contains four articles and two commentaries, including a paper by Brian Thom on treaty negotiations in BC, Diane Grant on sex workers and regulation as well as two interdisciplinary papers on theory (questions of regulation and Gramsci’s idea of hegemony).

The journal is online at http://www.newproposals.ca

UBC Library has joined SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture and 65 other institutions in the First International Open Access Day.

What is Open Access?

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.
(From: http://openaccessday.org/what-is-open-access)

To help us celebrate this event we are proud to present a number of distinguished speakers in our community who will be describing how they participate in the open access movement.

Schedule of Events

Introduction to Open Access & cIRcle: UBC’s Information Repository
11am– 12:20pm
Joy Kirchner and Hilde Colenbrander (UBC Library)

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom: an OA medium for research and student work
1 pm – 1:40 pm
Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray (Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies, UBC)

The Public Knowledge Project: providing open source software for OA publishing
2 pm – 2:40 pm
Brian Owen (SFU Library)

Open Medicine: a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access general medical journal
3 pm – 3:40 pm
Dr. Anita Palepu (Internal Medicine, UBC)

OA Day Worldwide Webcast: taxpayer access to publicly funded research
4 pm – 5 pm
Keynote address: Sir Richard Roberts, Ph.D., F.R.S

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dodson Room (302)

(Photo by dullhunk)

Seats are still available for tomorrow’s (free) talk on “Transformative Change in the System of Scholarly Communication & Publishing Worldwide: the Case for Open Access to Research“. The 3-member panel will speak on the following topics:

Dr. John Willinsky – Why the fuss over open access?
Dr. Francis Ouellette – Why are grant funding agencies advocating for open access to research?
Dr. Carl Bergstrom – Eigenfactor.org: A new methodology for evaluating influence rankings of scholarly articles and journals.

The event takes place on Thursday May 3 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories. To register, please sign up at http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=3980.

Presented by the BC Research Libraries Group.