CEE/Newsletter/Newsroom/Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova celebrated Open Access Week 2024
- By: MagdaBarascu
Open Access Week 2024 took place in Romania between 21 and 27 of October. It was marked by various events and activities related to this year's subject Community Over Commercialization organised by academic institutions and non-governmental organisations. The topic for this year comes to stimulate an open dialogue on prioritizing the interests of the general public and the academic community regarding approaches to academic education and open research, identifying priority issues.
At Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (UBB), events included Wikipedia page editing training sessions for students, open sessions of the scientific council and workshops for PhD students on open access practices. There was also a Science Café on the subject of radon.
The Association for Technology and Internet (ApTI) organised a workshop on editing articles on Wikipedia, in partnership with Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova. The participants were invited to contribute to completing articles about open access in Romanian.
These events were an opportunity to promote the benefits of open access and encourage wider participation in the Romanian academic and research community.
Open Access Week is an annual scholarly communication event dedicated to open access and related topics, coordinated by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). It is held globally in the last week of October, both online and in physical format. Typical activities include discussions, seminars, symposia, but also the establishment of open access policies.
Universities, colleges, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries and think tanks use International Open Access Week as a platform to persuade community members to accept OA policies, to present the social and economic benefits of OA and to attract new financial sources in support of Open Access publishing.