Sustainability in open access scientific publications at the PKP international conference

Specialists from all over the world on open and free access knowledge participating in the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) will meet at the UAB from 20 to 22 November to debate the challenges of a growing number of journals and the open access world in recent years. The conference will take place at Auditorium of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

18/11/2019

From 20 to 22 November, the UAB will host and co-organises the seventh edition of the International Conference on Academic Publications of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). The meeting, which will bring together over 160 specialists in technology and open access publications, will be held at the Auditorium of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit initiative put forth by John Willinsky (Stanford University and Simon Fraser University) which aims to guarantee universal open access to knowledge and an improvement in the quality of research in scientific publications. It is made up of several universities and educational organisations from all over the world and generates debates and computer tools within the "open access" movement, which confronts the leading media publishers and directors of public and private science around the world.

Since 2001, PKP's open-source software Open Journal Systems (OJS) has permitted thousands of users from over 100 countries to produce academic journals. This year's conference will analyse the continuous growth of the project's infrastructure and open access for a global community of users, formed by publishing professionals, software developers, academics, libraries and service providers, among others.

The three days will include over 40 presentations, distributed along three thematical axes: Community, for the exchange of experiences and collaborations; Technology, focused on the latest advances related to software and Open Access.

With regard to Open Access, experts will speak on the sustainability of open access publications and free software, as well as pose alternative models of publication and funding, with the objective of continuing to advance in the improvement of quality and range of academic publications. An unavoidable objective in the implementation of Pla S, a Science Europe initiative which aims to accelerate the process of open access publication and foresees that all publicly funded publications be published in open access journals and platforms by 2021.

The meeting will include the participation of prestigious expert such as John Willinsky, founder and director Public Knowledge Project; Tara Robertson, leader of Diversity and Inclusion in Mozilla; Abel Packer, co-founder in 1998 of the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO); Remedios Melero, researcher at the Institut d'Agroquímica i Tecnologia d'Aliments (IATA-CSIC) and editor of the scientific journal Food Science and International Technology; Katherine Skinner, executive director of the Educopia Institute and Ignasi Labastida, head of the Research Unit of the Centre for Learning and Research Resources (CRAI) of the University of Barcelona (UB).

PKP Project 2019 International Conference website: http://pkpbcn19.net/

Public Knowledge Project website: https://pkp.sfu.ca/