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04.01.2016 | SSP News & Releases

New England regional event tackles open access and institutional repositories

Registration is open for the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s next New England regional event, a panel discussion entitled “Open Access and Institutional Repositories: What Publishers, Librarians, and Researchers Need to Know” and to be held on April 14 at the offices of Wiley in Malden, Mass.

The session will focus on open access policies and how libraries and publishers work to support their success. When providing centralized outreach to supporting compliance, librarians must be responsive to faculty and publisher concerns. Publishers, too, must educate authors and even facilitate repository deposits. Every institution has a part to play and is different in its approach to adopting open access policies. Panelists will discuss workflows and policies at their organizations that have been developed to support open access policies adopted by faculties.

The evening’s panel will be moderated by Hillary Corbett, Director, Scholarly Communication and Digital Publishing, Northeastern University. Corbett’s panelists will include Kyle Courtney, Copyright Advisor, Harvard University; Katharine Dunn, Scholarly Communications Librarian, MIT; and Robert Boissy, Director, Institutional Marketing and Account Development, Springer US.

“I feel very fortunate to have lined up such a great panel of speakers for this event,” said Corbett of the participants. “I know it will be a lively and informative discussion!”

This event was designed specifically to draw a wide variety of people. Each of the panelists has unique experience and expertise related to the planned discussion. 

Courtney works closely with faculty at Harvard, where he speaks and writes on issues of copyright and fair use in higher education. As the Scholarly Communications Librarian at MIT, Dunn provides support for administration of the faculty open access policy.  Boissy, who works at Springer, has a particular interest in developing and sustaining relationships between libraries, publishers, and vendors.

Asked about who should attend the upcoming event, Corbett said, “Anyone who is interested in learning more about open access policies, from the philosophy behind their development to the mechanisms by which they are enacted, but particularly the ways in which libraries serve their faculty and publishers serve their authors and customers through the implementation of these policies.”

Small scale SSP regional events made their debut in Boston last spring and have thus far offered lecture and networking events.  This will be the first panel discussion.

“The organizing committee in Boston wanted to select a topic that was very relevant for the industry and the area. Given the amount of colleges and universities in the Boston/New England area, we decided that a panel discussion about open access and intuitional repositories would be ideal,” said Mike Mozina, chair of the Regional Programming Committee.  

He continued to explain that regional programming is still very new for SSP and that the committee in Boston wanted to try a new format.

“Given the success that regional programming in Durham has had with a panel discussion, we felt that it was time for Boston to try this format,” he said.

Doors open at 6 p.m. with light appetizers and beverages to be served prior to the 7:30 p.m. start of the session.  The panel is the latest in the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s (SSP) slate of regional programming to hit the Boston area.

The Wiley offices are located at 350 Main Street, Malden, accessible from I-93, the Commuter Rail and the Orange Line.  Time for networking is planned both before and after the panel discussion.

There is a $20 registration fee for SSP members, $25 for non-members.

For more information about the event and to register please visit the event’s page on the SSP website. Future SSP regional events are planned, including an April 25 event in Durham, North Carolina.

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