First European Student Summit on Open Access

Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest;
but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.
(Wilhelm von Humboldt)

Right to Research Coalition has announced the first European student summit on Open Access. The event will be held on May, 20-21 at the Humbold University of Berlin, in Germany. “The goal of this meeting is,” according to the press release, “to bring together students from leading European and international student organizations to discuss how the issue of access to research affects each organization and to create a strategy for getting European students engaged in opening access to the results of research.”

Wilhelm van Humboldt statue, Berlin

From the agenda, some background knowledge on open access will be presented as well as the status of open access in Europe today. R2RC, SPARC and Max Planck initiatives will be discussed, their advocacy efforts on international, national and local level. They will also examine how open access can fit the educational program of each organization. Plans for Open Access Week 2011 (October 24-30) will be presented and a survey will be done on global student engagement in open access movement, with a focus on connecting European students with Right to Research Coalition.

Other than representatives from leading European and international student organizations, the speakers will include some leading figures of Open Access movement:

• Heather Joseph, executive director at SPARC
• Astrid van Wesenbeeck, executive director at SPARC Europe
• Christoph Bruch, Head of Open Access at Max Planck Digital Library

Young people on campuses are what made open access movement grow into a global scale revolution and each of their gatherings, summits, i.e. collaborative effort to find new solutions, signifies one step forward, and another two steps forward.

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