The week of March 4th is Open Education Week, an annual celebration of the global Open Education Movement. This year we invite the UBC community to join us and our colleagues from other higher ed institutions from the Lower Mainland at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Richmond campus for a one day “Open in Action” event on March 6th from 8:30-3:15.

More information about the schedule and registration are available on BCcampus’s website.

We hope to see you there.

In response to a growing concern about the increasing concentration of control of research communication functions by a small number of players, SPARC and COAR have developed a list of seven Good Practice Principles for Scholarly Communication. The List is meant to “provide a framework to ensure that services are transparent, open, and support the aims and values of the scholarly community” (SPARC).

To learn more about the principles and download a copy, refer to the SPARC website.

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week is an annual celebration of the doctrines of fair use and fair dealing — a perfect opportunity to reflect on what is quickly becoming a pivotal period in the history of copyright in Canada. York University has appealed the decision in its case with Access Copyright, the statutory review of the Copyright Act is still underway, and the USMCA free trade agreement promises to extend the term of copyright protection by twenty years. In this climate, building increased awareness about user rights such as fair dealing is more important than ever before.

This Fair Dealing Week, SFU, UBC, Langara, KPU, Douglas, VCC and JIBC invite you to an afternoon of presentations and discussion aimed at demonstrating the value of fair dealing in a modern Canadian context and highlighting the perspectives of diverse copyright stakeholders.

You are also invited to join us for a pub night hosted by the BCLA Academic Libraries Section, to unwind and play Copyright the Card Game.

Details and registration for both events are available here.

UBC Library is proud to support International Open Access Week through an exciting series of events happening during the week of October 22-28. Please refer to the Library’s Open Access Week page for information about individual events and how to register.

ScholComm@UBC looks forward to seeing you there!

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office was awarded a Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund grant for the 2018/2019 cycle. With this grant funding, we have in turn granted out smaller amounts to support faculty creation of OER and open textbooks.

We are now proud to introduce the first product to come out of this project, Digital Meijis: Revisualizing Modern Japanese History at 150. This collection of visual essays has been adapted from The Meiji at 150 Project. Led by Tristan Grunow, Assistant Professor without Review, History Department and Naoko Kato, Japanese Language Librarian, Asian Library, this initiative celebrates the 150th anniversary of Japan’s 1868 Meiji Restoration and seeks to increase collaboration between scholars at universities across Canada, Japan, and the United States, strengthening UBC’s ties to Japanese studies programs around the region in disciplines including, and beyond, history, as well as magnifying the presence of UBC and UBC’s Japanese collections in the field of Japanese studies in North America.

Recently the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office released its 2017/2018 Impact and Activity Report, showcasing some of the year’s highlights and accomplishments.

For more information, or to share feedback please contact scholarly.communications@ubc.ca

Read the Report.

Knowledge Unlatched, a prominent publisher of Open Access monographs, recently announced the achievement of an important milestone – Over 950 open access titles from the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) have been accessed more than 1 million times by users worldwide in the past 8 months of this year alone. This achievement represents a significant increase in downloads over the previous year.

UBC Library is a proud supporter of Knowledge Unlatched, and, along with over 500 other libraries worldwide, helps make academic monographs openly accessible online, for free. This partnership demonstrates the Library’s commitment to open access and providing academic materials to as wide an audience as possible.

The three federal research funding agencies—the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (the agencies)— have put forward a draft Research Data Management Plan and are currently soliciting feedback from researchers and institutions. According to information on the CIHR website, the proposed policy “aims to support Canadian research excellence by fostering sound digital data management and data stewardship practices.

The draft policy includes suggested requirements related to three primary areas:

1. Institutional data management strategies
2. Researcher data management plans
3. Data deposit”

UBC Library is already very active in providing research data management services and you can learn more about what is already available at: https://researchdata.library.ubc.ca/, or by contacting Eugene Barsky, Research Data Services Librarian.

Individuals interested in providing feedback on the Policy can either respond directly to the Tri-Agencies’ call, or they can submit their feedback to the Office of the Vice President, Research & Innovation via their online form and responses will be consolidated and sent in on behalf of UBC.

Recently, the 2018 Open Access Week Advisory Committee revealed the theme for this year’s Open Access Week to be “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge”.

In the words of the Advisory Committee, “This year’s theme reflects a scholarly system in transition. While governments, funders, universities, publishers, and scholars are increasingly adopting open policies and practices, how these are actually implemented is still in flux. As open becomes the default, all stakeholders must be intentional about designing these new, open systems to ensure that they are inclusive, equitable, and truly serve the needs of a diverse global community. This year’s Open Access Week invites all interested stakeholders to participate in advancing this important work.”

Open Access Week is a great opportunity for the Scholarly Communications Office, the Library, and the greater UBC community to engage in dialogue around open access and foster greater participation in Open Access initiatives happening both on and off campus.

In collaboration with various partners, internally and externally, UBC Library has been celebrating Open Access Week for several years and looks forward to working with this year’s theme to continue the important conversations surrounding Open Access.

If you would like to catch up on last year’s “Exploring Tension and Risk in Open Scholarship” panel, co-sponsored by UBC, SFU, BCIT, and BCcampus, watch the recording, available on the Open UBC website.

Also look to UBC Library’s Open Access page for more information in the Fall.