Open Access Week 2012 will be kicked-off at 4:00 PM on Monday, October 22, 2012, in Washington, DC by The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the World Bank. The event will consist of a 90-minute panel discussion with Open Access experts from a variety of stakeholder groups – including students, researchers, and policy makers – as well as representatives from the World Bank and SPARC. As this year’s Open Access theme is “Set the Default to Open Access”, the panelists will touch upon what that means to them, their institutions, and their work. Speakers will be announced in early September.

You can follow the live event on worldbank.org via Liveblog and Webcast.The discussion will also be recorded, and made available to the community.

Open Access Week

The Open Access Week is a global, annual event with the objective of raising awareness of Open Access, highlighting its advantages and benefits, as well as exchanging experiences. Organizations involved in scholarly and scientific communication showcase their activities, experiences and good practices in support of Open Access.

During the week AIMS will organize a series of webinars and highlight on the AIMS website stories on Open Access in the agricultural domain.

World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

The World Bank was recently named as SPARC Innovator for its implementation of a new open access policy, which included the launch of the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) in 2012. The World Bank opened its data to the public in 2010.