From: Jennifer McLennan <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:32:26 -0500 For immediate release January 31, 2011 For more information, contact: Jennifer McLennan (202) 296-2296 ext. 121 KU chancellor leads international slate of presenters for March SPARC Open Access meeting Washington, DC – Bernadette Gray-Little, chancellor of the first public U.S. university to adopt a campus-wide open-access mandate, will be the feature speaker in the opening ceremony of the SPARC Open Access meeting this Spring. The meeting, which will showcase thought-leaders, publishers, faculty, technologists, and librarians – announced today – is expected to draw attention from policy makers on campus, as well as at the federal and international levels. The event is set for the Kansas City Intercontinental Hotel, March 12 & 13, 2012. The SPARC Open Access meeting expands on the popular SPARC Digital Repositories meetings, hosted biennially since 2004, and will provide a North American-based complement to the popular “Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI)” workshop held in Geneva, Switzerland in alternating years. The SPARC meeting will be a regular forum for a full discussion of Open Access as an emerging norm in research and scholarship, and will emphasize “Collaborative strategies for advancing scholarship,” for all stakeholders to help effect positive change. Presenters will examine recent developments and track key trends in the growth of open-access practices and policies across four areas: National and institutional policy adoption, digital repositories, author rights, and open-access publishing. John Wilbanks, Fellow of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and recent Vice President of Science at Creative Commons, will offer a keynote on the intersection of open movements. Other featured speakers include: * Kevin Ashley, Director, Digital Curation Centre * Michael Carroll, Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University * Timothy S. Deliyannides, Director, Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing and Head, Information Technology, University of Pittsburgh Libraries * Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing and Licensing, MIT Libraries * Charles Eckman, University Librarian and Dean of Library Services, Simon Fraser University * Peter Murray-Rust, Reader in Molecular Informatics, University of Cambridge * James Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University * Stuart Shieber, Director, Office for Scholarly Communication, Harvard University * Thornton Staples, Director, Office of Research Information Services, Smithsonian Institution * Caroline Sutton, Publisher, Co-Action Publishing and President, OASPA, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association ·* Neil Thakur, Special Assistant to the Director for Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health ·* Tyler Walters, Dean, University Libraries, Virginia Tech The full program and additional background on the speakers are available on the meeting Web site. The SPARC Open Access Meeting is generously supported by: @mire, Microsoft Research, Symplectic, ePrints, Wiley Open Access, Association of College and Research Libraries, Boston Library Consortium, Co-action Publishing, Coalition of Open-access Repositories, Copernicus Publications, Duraspace, Greater Western Library Association, Longsight, and the Northeastern Research Library Consortium. Information on sponsorship opportunities is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/oa12/oa12-sponsor. Register now through http://sparc.arl.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=94. On-site rates apply March 5, 2012. Hotel reservations are available for the conference rate of $139 per night and must be made by February 17, 2012. For more information, visit the meeting Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/oa12. ### Jennifer McLennan Conference Director The SPARC Open Access Meeting March 11 - 13, 2012 Kansas City http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/oa12