Join us for a Panel Discussion during Berlin Science Week
Increasing visibility for Open Access publications
The open access (OA) movement continues to make great strides in reshaping the established parameters for scientific communication and access to scholarly information. Even traditional publishers have begun to seek out ways of adapting to this rapidly shifting landscape. At the heart of the OA movement is the aim of removing barriers to information, so that research can be freely accessible by everyone. Openly available research helps accelerate the pace at which advances in research may be made, both within and across the boundaries of specific fields, and sparks public dialogue rooted in the latest findings on a given issue. But how visible is open access really? Establishing the infrastructure to make scholarly information freely accessible has been critical to getting open access on its feet, but where does it go from here? Is research that is neither easily discovered nor readily understood by most people actually “open”?
ScienceOpen and OpenD organize a Panel Discussion about the OA landscape
ScienceOpen and the new open access publication platform for dissertations, OpenD, have organized a Berlin Science Week event to discuss the above themes and more. This event gathers a panel of industry insiders who will discuss best practices for making research stand out in an open-access landscape. This panel discussion will examine ways of building on open access to enhance the discoverability, visibility, and comprehensibility of research for specialists and nonspecialists alike with the goal of more broadly redefining the concept of “openness” anchored within the OA movement. This event will take place over Zoom on November 2nd at 16:00 CET. Go here to register. We hope you will be able to join us, and we look forward to seeing you there!
Meet the Panelists
Stephanie Dawson, ScienceOpen CEO
Stephanie Dawson grew up in northern California, studied Biology at Yale University and received a PhD in German Literature from the University of Washington. She spent over 10 years at the academic publisher De Gruyter in Berlin in the fields of biology and chemistry in both journals and book publishing. In 2013, she joined ScienceOpen as managing director.
Russell Alt-Haaker, Product Manager for OpenD
In 2019, Russell Alt-Haaker joined DUZ Academic Publishers, where he manages OpenD—an open-access dissertation publication and science communication platform. He is responsible for helping to raise the profile of young scholars and their research in a growing OA landscape. Russell earned his PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Washington University in St. Louis and also lectures on German-Jewish literature and identity at Humboldt-Universität.
Christina Riesenweber, Organizational Development
Dr. Christina Riesenweber is currently managing a change project at the university library of Freie Universität Berlin. She has previously worked in the fields of open access advocacy, open science and in academic publishing.
Agata Morka, European Coordinator of Open Access Book Publishing
Agata Morka holds a PhD in Architectural History from the University of Washington, where she completed her dissertation on contemporary French train stations. For the past nine years, she has been working with OA books. As the European Coordinator for Open Access Books at Open Books Publishers, she is responsible for coordinating efforts between two European projects focusing on OA monographs: the OPERAS-P and the COPIM projects.
Erzébet Tóth-Czifra, Open Science Officer
Erzsébet works as the Open Science Officer of DARIAH-EU, where she is responsible for fostering and implementing policies and practices related to the open dissemination of research results in the humanities. She received her PhD in Cultural Linguistics and also has a background in scholarly communication.
More about our Partner OpenD
OpenD is a new open-access publication platform for dissertations from Berlin-based DUZ Academic Publishers. Through a variety of different promotional features, OpenD seeks to redefine open access by making academic research more visible and comprehensible to a wider audience, including people from outside the academic community. The platform therefore offers the next generation of scientists and scholars an effective stage on which to present their findings to society at large and to engage in discussion with peers and the public alike.
Imagine, you spend a quarter century jumping to heights of achievement you never dreamed yourself able to achieve. And, a PhD in some science, 25 years of self-denial and focused struggle later, you get your own grant. But you find that the funded hypothesis needs retweeting, even abandonment, as the data leads you in another direction. But your grant is up for renewal in this “publish or perish environment” and your ten years old needs new shoes……So what do you do, keeping in mind that no grant renewal and you become an Uber Driver to get your child those shoes. MD’s have their pick of jobs. They also can get grants totally devoted to the study as they are paid by the hospital or their practice. I have seen many 1st class PhDs leave science for want of funding. Maybe this or that grant was not worth it. But was it worth it that 25 years of training go down the toilet? Perhaps, given how much our planet’s survival depends on ever bigger and better science, time has come for our society to assure at least a RESEARCH TENURE to all PhD graduates. Otherwise, it will continue to be, as one famous PhD described it to me: “Dog eat dog.” Good science is very often accidental, but a good scientist is a slow, painful building process. It is no less a waste to lose such a scientist for lack of funding as to close down a journal because of one typo. Open access will mean nothing unless scientists are rewarded for their collaborative sense, disciplined methodologies and constant truthful accounting of data and expenditures. I am told that 32% of today’s PUBLISHED research is crap because of the good old “publish or perish” philosophy of old. Starving artists may make masterpieces but scientists cannot do good science as grants gladiators. We must reward Doctoral degrees with a modest but assured income, not from modern Medicis but from the public treasury. So long as a scientists meets the high bar of a PhD, he/she must be free of worry for the basics to focus on HONEST and OPEN data reports. No one joined the community to become a gladiator. Yet, what else can they do once in the field? By repaying propriety and honesty and effort with security we provide ourselves good science and ONLY THEN does “open access” amount to anything!
Hello responding to email inquiry
Nice to bring this issue as a panel discussion, according to me , open access helps young researches to explore the previous research in that area and get themselves a clear picture of what and how to go ahead in their research. and certainly open access will be a boon. it should be linked all the universities websites to prevent access barriers.
Its pleasure for me to be associate with ScienceOpen forum.