What is Open Access Week?
During the last week of October, institutions and individuals use this opportunity to raise awareness of the issues surrounding the difficulties in accessing scholarly literature and resources and to highlight various open access resources, freely available to everyone with access to a computer to find them… which is its own issue.
The theme of Open Access Week this year is “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.” While open access to resources is an admirable goal, we need to question: Open to whom? What do we mean by “open access” in the current context when so many are struggling to access systems and resources and much of that struggle has been put in place either by neglect or deliberate design? Open Access Week provides an opportunity to contemplate how we work, what inequalities are still affecting access to information, and how we can address and repair these inequalities.
This year, we’d like to highlight resources on diversity, equity and inclusion created by the DePaul community available through Via Sapientiae, the university’s institutional repository. The DePaul University Library provides access to and maintains the following open access resources:
DePaul Journal for Social Justice, published by the DePaul University College of Law, includes articles that range from discussing the treatment of transgender women in prison, to racism and police violence in Chicago, to the effect of race on the law school experience, and more.
Diálogo, published by the DePaul University Center for Latino Research, is an interdisciplinary research journal with articles on topics such as queering citizenship, open wounds and indigenous rights, and cinematic representation of Latinas. Note that our online version of Diálogo is a historic archive, running from 1996-2015; for more recent issues, visit the journal via our subscription to Project Muse.
Also available through Via Sapientiae are articles by DePaul University faculty on issues pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as Amber Settle’s “Diversity in the Game Industry,” Dan Hibbler’s “African Americans’ Perceptions of Workplace Equity: A Starting Point,” or Craig Mousin’s “Conflicts, Workplace and Diversity” (video recording).
Our repository also includes theses and dissertations on preparing culturally diverse workforces, examining who exactly is deemed worthy of study in the psychology literature, interventions to reduce gender-based inequality in pay, and the effects of finances and community for students of color with disabilities. Searching the repository for the keywords “diversity,” “equity”, or “inclusion” will help locate other information on these topics.
A few resources available elsewhere include:
- NAACP: Open educational resources: equity and opportunity (naacp.org)
- Equity & Openness: Perspectives from North American colleges and universities (cccoer.org)
- Toolkits for equity: transforming scholarly publishing communities (c4disc.org)
Finally, the DePaul University Library also has a guide on open access, available at https://libguides.depaul.edu/openaccess.
To learn more about open access read:
A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber
What Faculty Can Do To Promote Open Access
What Universities and Administrators Can Do To Promote Open Access