UCT welcomes NRF’s position paper on Open Access

Professor John Willinsky, founder of the Public Knowledge Project and by default a pioneer of the library as publisher service, will be one of the keynote speakers at the Symposium. Prof. Willinsky and Kevin Stranack will be hosting the Library as Publisher Workshop which will be convened at the University of the Western Cape.

Another keynote speaker is Professor Herbert van de Sompel who is known, amongst others, for his role in the development of the Open Archives Initiative and standards such as OpenURL, Object Reuse and Exchange, and the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Herbert van de Sompel’s research, Memento, focuses on web archiving examining integration of web archives in regular web navigation. He is also part of an international team investigating the next generation of repositories. Over and above sharing the research findings on the next generation repositories project, van de Sompel will be speaking at the institutional repository workshop which will be hosted by Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

Professor Bernard Rentier is a keynote from the University of Liège. The open access mandate at the University of Liège is considered as the ideal exemplar of a mandate. It inspired a unique collaboration among researchers, university management and library. Professor Harnad describes Bernard Rentier as the first rector/VC to fully grasp and fully act on OA. Harnad adds that “Bernard understood, implemented exactly the right mandate at Liège (Immediate Deposit/Optional Access, linked to performance evaluation) and, in addition, immediately assumed the leadership in university OA policy, not just in Europe but worldwide.” Prof Rentier will be presenting on Open access: challenging the norm in the academy.

Another feature of the Symposium is the OpenCon session. Young, vibrant academics from developing and developed worlds share their experiences of pushing the boundaries of openness and challenging current conventions relating to the dissemination of research and research data.

The blend of inspired engagement lead by international experts with practical workshops is intended to provide the delegates with a full openness learning experience.

Registration: R4 000.00

Click here to register for the Symposium and Click here for the programme.

Enquiries can be directed to:
Jill Claassen, Email: openuct@uct.ac.za Tel: +27 21 650 1263
Jeremiah Pietersen, Email: Jeremiah.Pietersen@uct.ac.za Tel: +27 21 650 3132