Forum on open access mandates set for March 26

A public forum on the impact of recent developments in scholarly publishing will take place on Wednesday, March 26 from 3 to 5 p.m. in Konover Auditorium at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

The event, titled, “Mandatory Open Access: Friend or Foe? Coming to Terms with National Institutes of Health and Federal Research Public Access Act legislation,” will explore the newly passed NIH public access mandate which became law in December 2007.

The NIH mandate requires that journal articles resulting from NIH-funded research be made freely available to the public 12 months after publication.

The forum will also look at proposed legislation, such as the 2006 Federal Research Public Access Act, that would expand the mandate to include research funded by other U.S. government agencies.

Scheduled speakers include: Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and former president and chief executive officer of BioOne, a non-profit collaboration to bring biology society journals into the digital realm; Kent Holsinger, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, past president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a member of the Board of Directors for BioOne; and Gregory Anderson, vice provost for research and graduate education and dean of the graduate school at UConn, also a past president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, who will serve as moderator.

The forum is sponsored by the University of Connecticut Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Team.