Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

At the recent LIASA Annual Conference held in East London from 3-7 October,  LIASA announced its commitment to the Open Access Movement.

The President, Naomi Haasbroek, signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.   View the signed declaration here.

As a signatory, LIASA, commits to:
      implement a policy of publishing its official publications in an open access forum; and
      actively advocate and promote the Open Access Movement.

LIASA also announced that the official accredited academic journal “South African Journal for Libraries and Information Science”  (SAJLIS) will be published in an open access platform from 2012.

The LIASA magazine,  LIASA-in-Touch,  was made available in full-text on the LIASA website from the September 2010 issue.   LIASA members receive the magazine quarterly and only LIASA members has access to the latest issue.

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fifth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.

For a video clip of the signing ceremony, click here.