# Open Access at IgniteAlberta


I was asked last minute to fill in for [Nick
Shockey](http://www.arl.org/sparc/about/staff/shockey.shtml) of The
Right to Research Coalition to give a talk about Open Access at
[IgniteAlberta](http://ignitealberta.ca) in Edmonton. I spoke at a
session about Open Access and OER, shared with [Cable
Green](http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27223) from [Creative
Commons](http://creativecommons.org/) who participated remotely.

The conference was put together by the three student associations in
Alberta to bring together student leaders, faculty, administrators and
people from the province to discuss the future of Alberta's higher
education system. The sessions were a mix of large plenary presentations
and smaller break-outs where everyone were seated around small round
tables, and were much of the time was spent discussing in groups, and
then summarizing back to the larger group. I really liked this way of
organizing, and learnt a lot from the professors and students that I sat
next to.

I also realized how little I know about the higher education context
outside of Ontario. In Toronto, it's easy to assume that Alberta has
lot's of money and few problems, but I heard about provincial cuts, and
also the challenge of low high school and post-secondary completion
rates.

I've [given many
talks](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/10/22/open-access-week-2012/ "Open Access Week 2012: Looking back at five years of OA talks") about
Open Access, and when I am asked to speak, I usually remix slides from
older slide decks, but it's always a challenge to organize it in a few
that will make sense to the audience, fit within the timeframe etc. This
time, I only had about 20 minutes, and I wanted to convey both a basic
understanding of what Open Access is, and some of the excitement that I
feel for it. I came up with a basic framework of "what, why, how", and
think I was able to cover a lot of basics in the 20+ minutes, together
with some neat examples, and updated news, such as

-   articles from the University of Toronto repository being accessed
  from Wikipedia articles ([slide
  link](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/ignite-alberta-feb-22-2013/31))
-   [an upcoming
  MOOC](https://class.coursera.org/aboriginaled-001/class/index) on
  aboriginal education from OISE, University of Toronto already has
  more than 20,000 learners signed up, and will incorporate Open
  Access publications
-   [researchr](http://reganmian.net/wiki/researchr:start) - an open
  academic workflow, and [making OA more
  visible](http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/01/25/making-open-access-articles-much-more-visible-automaticall/ "Making Open Access articles much more visible, automatically")
-   [Nature Encode](http://www.nature.com/encode/), making the
  information from a "big science" project that resulted in more than
  41 peer-reviewed articles more accessible, ["only possible with Open
  Access"](http://partiallyattended.com/2013/01/30/euan-birney-data-publishing-talk-plos-elife/)
-   [the great news from the White
  House](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/02/us-white-house-announces-open-access-policy.html)
  about mandating Open Access for research funded by the government

([slides](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/ignite-alberta-feb-22-2013/31))

Stian