Join the University of Derby and the University of Essex as we celebrate Open Access Week 2023! 

This year’s Open Access week gives us, as a community, a great chance to discuss and implement what we want to see for the future of academic publishing. Open Access is more than 20 years in the making; however, through recent developments with researchers and libraries pushing towards 100% Open Access, we can now implement structures that create value for our communities and ourselves.

This session will begin with an introduction of how Abeni and the team at SciFree set out on a mission to create a company to change the business model of academic publishing, listened and then built workflows to reduce the cost burden of university libraries, and are now implementing a similar process for researchers with university publishing infrastructure where no one ever pays to publish or read. This will be followed by a discussion with all in attendance centred around, as a community, what we want, what we are good at, what we love, and what we can get rewarded for.

Abeni holds a BA from Tufts University, a MSc from University College London, and a PhD in Molecular Physics from Linköping University, Sweden, with 15y+ experience in academia and industry. Now, as the founder and CEO of SciFree, she is building teams and software with a mission to make highly vetted peer-reviewed research open to the public for free through empowering the University Library’s Brand.

SciFree currently serves 45 University Library customers in Sweden, Denmark, the UK, and the USA. Besides building new tech platforms for university publishing infrastructure, Abeni volunteers on the NASIG Digital Preservation committee, helps PhDs transition in their careers, and enjoys surfing both actual waves and the Open Access wave worldwide.

The event is open to everyone, and attendees are encouraged to sign up to learn more about SciFree and engage in the discussion! For more information about Open Access and Open Research, please see the University of Derby's Open Research SharePoint pages and the Library's information on Open Research at the University of Essex.