Open Access 2012 at Purdue

The Libraries celebrated Open Access (OA) week by recognizing a graduate student who has contributed to promoting “global access to knowledge” by advocating that authors retain rights over their articles so they can deposit them in publicly accessible repositories like e-Pubs. Mel Chua, a PhD student in Engineering Education is shown here accepting an award presented on behalf of the Libraries by Mark Smith, dean of the Graduate School and Michael J. and Katherine Birck Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Chua became an advocate of open access after working with Amy Van Epps on a project to expand the capability of Olin College (Chua’s alma mater) to create a repository similar to e-Pubs. Chua has even blogged about open access issues she’s discussed with Donna Ferullo, director of the University Copyright Office.

Mel Chua
Smith, Chua, Ferullo and Ada Emmett


Also, a group of graduate students came to watch videos on open access topics (such as http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1533), eat pizza and ask questions during a panel after the award was presented. Panel members included Smith, Chua, Ferullo and Ada Emmett, special assistant to the dean for scholarly communication. Students learned how easily they could be barred from posting their own work on the web IF they didn’t negotiate rights with publishers.

Open Access Week 2012 closed with Interim President Timothy Sands presenting Professor Darcy Bullock with the 2012 faculty award for Leadership in Open Access on October 26, 2012. This award is given in recognition of his commitment to broadening the reach of scholarship by making publicly-funded research freely accessible online in collaboration with Purdue Libraries. Several members of the Library staff joined Jim Mullins, Dean of Purdue Libraries and Charles Watkinson, Head of Scholarly Publishing Services, in celebrating the successful JTRP/Library collaboration.

Timothy Sands

During the past two years, JTRP has collaborated with the Purdue Libraries to digitize technical reports that date back to 1956. Currently, over 1,500 JTRP reports are freely accessible on Purdue e-Pubs. These reports have been downloaded over 410,000 times. Recently, one of the JTRP reports written by Professor Emeritus Sidney Diamond was recognized as the 3-millionth download. Other notable JTRP Alumni with technical reports in the e-pubs collection include Delon Hampton and Essam Abdel-Aziz Sharaf, former Prime Minister of Egypt.

To listen to November 21, 2012, WBAA’s Mike Loizzo interview with Darcy Bullock and Ada Emmett click here.

A big thank you to those who helped make the OA event successful, including Jim Mullins, Carole Tolley, Jamie Seebald and the OA Week Committee members Emmett, Ferullo, Beth McNeil, Dave Scherer, Maribeth Slebodnik, Charles Watkinson and Scott Brandt.