The 2017 International Open Access Week. “Open in order to…”10th International Open Access Week was held from October 23-27 at Nazarbayev University. The event gathered NU professors, researchers, students and librarians to critically discuss the importance of open access and share opinions and ideas on raising its awareness in Kazakhstan. Open Access Week at NU featured three days of activities including talks by NU professors, guest speakers, a debate session by Nomad Debate Club and a movie screening with NU Cinema Lectures student club.
The event has started with a short speech by General expert for Library Piotr Lapo, who also introduced the panel discussion. Panelists included: Tsediso Michael Makoelle (Research Director for Ph.D. in Education Program and Associate Professor, GSE), Phillip Montgomery (Instructor, GSE), Dmitriy Beznosko (Assistant Professor, SST) and Aziz Iskakov (IT Expert, JSC "Institute for Economic Research").
The first presentation given by Tsediso Michael Makoelle focused on what open access is and what benefits it can bring to the scientific society. He also discussed the potential risks of open access and explained the reason why many researchers avoid publishing in Open Access Journals.
Phillip Montgomery in his talk made a SWOT-analysis of Open Access, assessing the internal and external factors that influence the development of Open Access. Thus, he highlighted its main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threads. Phillip organized an interactive game with the audience where people had to work in groups and critically discuss the issues of Open Access.
Following the panel, Dmitriy Beznosko made important conclusions on Open Access in a national context. He argued that Open Access Initiative may be less supported by post-Soviet society due to the established cultural norms and mentality of the people.
The last guest speaker, Aziz Iskakov, provided an overview of Open Access situation in Kazakhstan. Based on the research he conducted Aziz highlighted the main factors preventing Open Access development in Kazakhstan.
After the series of talks Nomad debate club conducted a session on the topic “Open Access: Yes or No?” The debate followed British Parliamentary style, where one team argued for Open Access while the other was against it. The students demonstrated a great knowledge and deep understanding of the main issues related to Open Access initiative. By the end of the debate session, all participants were given prizes – they received cups with Open Access logo.
The second day featured a movie screening of “The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz”, which is an American biographical documentary film about Aaron Swartz. He was an Open Access activist who tragically died in his fight for information freedom. The film raises a lot of challenging questions on human rights to open education, violation of intellectual property and moral imperatives. The movie screening was organized in collaboration with NU Cinema lectures student club.
The Library Roadshow event, which is dedicated to Open Access, International Global Media and Information Literacy, was held on October 26. During the event “Spin the Wheel” - a Q&A game was organized to raise the awareness among NU Community of Open Access and Institutional Repository. For the correct answers to questions on open access and repository, participants could win tangible rewards. Thus, through the arranged activities people could learn and get actively involved in Open Access Week.
For more information about International Open Access Week, please visit www.openaccessweek.org.
