Knowledge for all: our open access event was a massive success | Brisbane, 8 June | INSight

"Last month, on Friday 8 June, researchers and university staff from across Brisbane gathered at the Ship Inn, South Bank to listen attentively to five early researchers talk about Knowledge for All: Designing equitable foundations for open knowledge. This is the topic for Open Access Week 2018, which will be held in October—as we are in the Southern Hemisphere, we decided to get the discussion rolling earlier. Professor Ginny Barbour from the Australasian Open Access Support Group facilitated the speakers and panel discussion.

Antony Ley, our university Information Policy Officer, told us that the biggest take away for him was the passion these speakers had for the open sharing of research and knowledge. He provided us with brief snapshots of the speakers’ presentations:

University of Queensland’s Dr Loic Yengo Dimbou (Postdoctoral ResearchFellow, Institute for Molecular Bioscience) Dr Dimbou examined the interesting practice of posting of pre-prints online for open peer review before publication.  Watch this space, as I think we will see more of this happening.

University of Queensland and Griffith University’s Dr Jo Pauls (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Prince Charles Hospital Northside Clinical Unit Faculty of Medicine) It was interesting to see how this Open Heart project (which has been supported by Griffith) for open research into a Heart Pump for use across developing nations has progressed and morphed.  Dr Pauls is now moving to the idea of open educational resources to upskill the knowledge of researchers in this area, so they can better communicate to each other about the research across the globe.

Griffith University’s Dr Eric Cavalcanti (Senior Lecturer, Centre for Quantum Dynamics, School of Natural Sciences) Dr Cavalcanti spoke about the OA journal Quantum of which he is an editor.  It is interesting that the journal holds only the metadata of the articles which are linked to from elsewhere.

QUT’s Jessica Stevens (PhD candidate, Faculty of Law) Jessica is a passionate researcher and advocate of open educational resources as a means of facilitating change. Interestingly, in comparison to other countries, Australia is lagging behind in the government support of these.

QUT’s Anisa Rowhani-Farid (PhD student at the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation) Anisa is passionate about data publication and sharing.  She shared her research into the incentives (such as Badges) that encourage the sharing of data, particularly in the health and medical areas.

This event was part of Research Bazaar 2018 (ResBaz), which was hosted by Griffith University. Many thanks for Jenny Jo who, supported by Antony Ley, did much of the organisation."