UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries will participate in the 12th annual global celebration of Open Access Week, Oct. 19-25, by hosting a series of free virtual events via Zoom. Open to the public, the events aim to increase awareness of Penn State’s open access (OA) initiatives, which remove the barriers of the traditional academic publishing model, making scholarly works freely available to readers.

Events include brief book talks on monographs authored by Penn State faculty in the College of the Liberal Arts that were made open access through the Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) initiative; a presentation on the technical infrastructure used to implement the Penn State open access policy, with demonstrations of the platforms and services; and an overview of ScholarSphere 4.0, to be launched this fall.

Advance registration is required. Registration links are provided with the information for each event. For more information about Open Access Week events, or if you anticipate needing accessibility accommodations or have questions about the access provided, please email the contact listed with each event description.

Technical Implementation of Penn State’s Open Access Policy

Tuesday, Oct. 20, noon to 1 p.m. — Register here. For more information, contact Ana Enriquez, aee32@psu.edu.

Join University Libraries personnel for a discussion of the technical implementation of Penn State’s open access policy. We will explain how to deposit your scholarly articles or get a waiver of the policy. This session will include an overview of the Research Metadata Database, a demonstration of Activity Insight’s new post-print upload feature, and a demonstration of deposit via ScholarSphere.

TOME Author Discussion: Highlighting Open Access Monographs

Join the Libraries for two panel discussions with Penn State authors who have published Open Access monographs through the Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) Initiative. TOME is supported by funds from the Office of the Provost, providing up to $15,000 per monograph to make versions of these works openly available. The authors will share about their research and discuss the impact of having their work made open access through the TOME Initiative. 

For more information, contact Ally Laird, alaird@psu.edu.

SESSION 1
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 3 to 4 p.m. — Register here.

Session 1 will feature the following authors and their work:

• Hester Blum, "The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration" (Duke University Press)
• Errol Henderson, "The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized: Cultural Revolution in the Black Power Era" (SUNY Press)
• Mark Sentesy, "Aristotle’s Ontology of Change" (Northwestern University Press)
• Adrian Wanner, "The Bilingual Muse: Self Translation among Russian Poets" (Northwestern University Press)

SESSION 2
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 11 a.m. to noon — Register here.

Session 2 will feature the following authors and their work:

• Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott, "Beyond Philosophy" (Indiana University Press)
• Errol Henderson, "Scriptures, Shrines, Scapegoats, and World Politics: Religious Sources of Conflict and Cooperation in the Modern Era" (University of Michigan Press)
• Nicolas De Warren, "Original Forgiveness" (forthcoming from Northwestern University Press)

What's New in ScholarSphere 4.0

Thursday, Oct. 22, noon to 1 p.m. — Register here. For more information, contact Dann Bohn, djb44@psu.edu.

ScholarSphere is an open access institutional repository managed by the University Libraries. This fall, the Libraries will launch version 4.0 of the platform, which introduces new technical features and policy changes supporting open access and open science. This session will provide a brief introduction to ScholarSphere and outline changes coming to the platform and plans for future work.