The Student Statement on The Right to Research, which we wrote about earlier, has been getting attention!

See stories about the Student Statement in:

• Inside Higher Ed
• Research Information
• Library Journal

See also Nick Shockey’s op-ed in Research Information.

Plus see the announcements posted by statement endorsers Students for Free Culture and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, and the news as tweeted by Prof. Lawrence Lessig!

A coalition of national and campus student organizations has released the Student Statement on The Right to Research:

… Learning and inquiry are impeded when scholars lack access to fellow researchers’ work, and when students lack access to the work of scholars before them.

At the same time, digital technologies have opened new opportunities for research. New tools facilitate faster discoveries, speed the development of new technologies, and accelerate the progress of science. Patients could have access to the latest medical research, citizens could evaluate scientific information on environmental impacts, and developing countries could apply the most recent scholarship to public health and development efforts. But access barriers leave these opportunities under-explored. …

The statement ends with a call to action:

… We hereby:

Call upon universities to support Open Access

• We believe universities should adopt policies that ensure Open Access to their faculty’s research, such as the policies adopted at Harvard University and Stanford University.

Call upon governments and research funders to support Open Access

• We believe research agencies should adopt policies that ensure Open Access to publicly funded research, such as that of the National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
• We believe charitable funders likewise should adopt policies that ensure Open Access to their funded research, such as that of Autism Speaks and the Canadian Cancer Society.

Call upon researchers to support Open Access

• We believe researchers should publish in Open Access journals, and/or deposit their peer-reviewed manuscripts in Open Access repositories.

Commit to support Open Access in our activities

• We will undertake activities, in our membership and on our campuses, to educate students about Open Access and to engage them in efforts supporting Open Access.

The statement is endorsed by the American Medical Student Association, the Student PIRGs, Students for Free Culture, and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, as well as the California Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council and the Trinity University Association of Student Representatives. Your organization can join, too!

• A story about open access on National Public Radio’s Marketplace quotes Duke University student Josh Sommer and Harvard University student Laura Janneck.
• An ABC News story on open access quotes Harvard medical student Carolina Solis. The story suggests the next generation of doctors will expect free access online to medical information.
• The Sparky Awards are adding a People’s Choice Award for this year’s contest and encouraging colleges to host their own local contests.
• The editorial board of the University of Maryland’s student newspaper calls for open access to its faculty’s research.
• An essay in a student magazine at Columbia University calls for open access to research.
• An article in eCampusNews covers Scitable, Nature’s free educational site on genetics for undergraduates.

• University of Michigan librarian Molly Kleinman writes that undergraduates have an important role to play in advocating for open access.
• An op-ed in a University of California, Berkeley student newspaper calls for students to use Creative Commons licenses for their theses and dissertations.
• A blog at Georgetown University profiles Kevin Donovan of Students for Free Culture and the chapter’s hopes to support open access and open educational resources at the school.
• Students at the University of New Mexico are criticizing traditional textbooks and calling for open textbooks.
• Uwe Thomas Müller’s dissertation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin examines peer-review processes at open access journals.
• Martin Boosen’s master’s thesis at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne looks at institutional repositories in Germany.
• Claudio Marconi’s undergraduate thesis at the Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” looks at open access as a new method of diffusion for scientific literature.

• An op-ed in Georgetown University’s student newspaper criticizes Rep. John Conyers’ bill to overturn the NIH Public Access Policy and calls for open access to publicly-funded research.
• The Göttingen Journal of International Law is a new student-edited open access journal published by the University of Göttingen.
• Two students at the University of California, Berkeley used Creative Commons licenses for their dissertations. See the story in the Daily Californian and blog posts by Creative Commons and one of the authors.
• An op-ed in the University of Maryland’s student newspaper calls for open textbooks.

After a bit of hiatus, here’s some recent news on students and open access:

• The winners of the Sparky Awards contest for videos on information sharing have been announced. The contest, sponsored by SPARC (which also sponsors Open Students), invited students to create a short video on the value of sharing information. The grand prize winner was created by a group of students from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Check out the winners here!
• Benjamin J. Keele, a law student at Indiana University - Bloomington and editor in chief of the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, published an op-ed in Student Lawyer magazine calling for open access to student-edited law journals. The student newspaper at Virginia Tech editorialized in favor of open access, medical students at the University of Michigan published an op-ed supporting open access, and a Ph.D student at Queensland University of Technology published a letter to the editor extolling the school’s open access repository.
• Instructors at several colleges, including Michigan State University, University of Toronto, San Jose State University, had their students produce an open access journal as a class assignment. We previously posted a similar assignment for students at the University of British Columbia.
• Several new open access journals published by students launched: Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics (by students at Erasmus University Rotterdam), New Social Inquiry ( Carleton University), PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication (University of Melbourne), Amsterdam Law Forum (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), aspeers (University of Leipzig), and Public Knowledge (Virginia Tech).
• Temple University adopted a requirement that its doctoral students’ dissertations be made open access. Meanwhile, at Lund University students may choose to make dissertation open access, and 43% of them do. A survey of open access repository managers found that they expect theses and dissertations to be a top trend for repositories in 2009.
• Mary Anne Kennan, a student at the University of New South Wales, wrote her dissertation on Reassembling scholarly publishing: open access, institutional repositories and the process of change. The dissertation is available open access.
• A collection of papers by students at the University of British Columbia on libraries and publishing, including on open access, was published (and is itself open access).
• Concern about unauthorized downloading of textbooks by students continued to grow: see e.g. articles in the Toronto Star and Times Higher Education. But Flat World Knowledge, a company dedicated to publishing open textbooks, released its first books. Nature also launched an open access educational site, Scitable, focused on genetics. Finals Club is a new open access, Creative Commons-licensed site for students to share lecture notes and discuss class topics.
• The UK Serials Group announced the winners of its essay contest for library and publishing students, on the topic of accessing academic information in the Google Era.

Are you fired up by Open Access Day and ready to get involved to support Open Access? Check out the ideas on the Right to Research site, sign up to get updates, and if you’re really ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work, email me at gavin@arl.org to find out about joining the student Open Access leaders squad!

October 14, 2008 will be the world’s first Open Access Day.

Open Access Day is being launched by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for Free Culture, and the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

Open Access Day will help to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access within the higher education community and the general public.

It builds on the National Day of Action for Open Access, led February 15, 2007 by Free Culture and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.

The highlight of Open Access Day will be a live call-in from campuses across the U.S. and Canada with an eminent researcher. Dozens of campuses have already signed up to participate, including several overseas — has yours?

Students can work with their librarians to organize an event, or can host their own — find out more!

SPARC, sponsor of Open Students, is hosting a free Webcast for librarians about reaching out to students on the topic of Open Access. See the announcement here. The Webcast will be on August 6, 2008; registrations are due August 1.

Recent news about students and open access:

• Graduate students at the California Institute of Technology are drafting a resolution in support of open access.
• Graduate students at Simon Fraser University launched a new open access journal, called Stream: Culture/Politics/Technology.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on controversy about open access to student creative writings.
• Heather Morrison blogged about the benefit of open access to creating a class list of reserve readings for students.
• Sean Kass, a Harvard law student, released a video on Open Access to Scholarly Publications, originally prepared for class.
• Students at the University of British Columbia had an interesting assignment: produce an open access journal as a class project.
• Oxford Journals launched Bioscience Horizons, an open access journal publishing bioscience research by undergraduate students from the UK and Ireland.
• Oberlin College’s student newspaper published an editorial in support of open access, calling on the college to adopt a policy similar to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

P.S. If you spot a story about students and open access, let me know!