Open Access Week is October 19–23, 2015!  This is an annual event to build awareness of the open access (OA) movement.

What is open access?

Put briefly, OA is free, online access to scholarly research along with the rights to save, share, and use that research.*  Making scientific research available for the benefit of all is at the core of the OA movement.  For example, OA enables researchers throughout the world to share research about diseases and treatments.  OA began as a reaction to the escalation of scholarly journal prices.  When a subscription to a single journal costs five figures, these valuable publications are cost-prohibitive for many libraries!

Now, the OA movement has expanded to include open textbooks, which can save students hundreds of dollars each year!

*For comprehensive information about OA, see Peter Suber’s blog and book, which is OA itself.

What does this mean at an arts and media school like Columbia College?

OA Week is an opportunity to discuss copyright law and legal options for sharing work.  These conversations often lead to big ideas: individual values, concepts of fairness, and the (re)generation of culture.

Some artists share their work freely with Creative Commons licenses, believing they are contributing to a larger culture and free sharing may lead to paid commissions.  Other artists retain all rights to their works, which they’ve struggled hard to create. Between these attitudes lies a spectrum of possibilities.

Where can you find open media?

Try this guide to open content that you can use without worrying about copyright!  Do you know of additional sources for Creative Commons content?  Please tell us!