[@OKFNau] Join the Open Access Button Steering Committee!

Thu Mar 13 10:18:12 UTC 2014

Join the Open Access Button Steering Committee

Below is an opportunity that may be of interest to the OKFN-AU community to
be involved in steering an innovative student-led Open Access project,
applications are accepted from all around the world and you may nominate
either yourself or someone else for a position.

Read on below for all the information about the Button, the roles, and
experience being sought.

--

The Open Access Button <http://openaccessbutton.org> is a browser
bookmarklet that lets users report when they are denied access to research,
then search for alternative access to the article.  Each time a user
encounters a paywall, they simply click the Button in their bookmark bar,
fill out an optional dialogue box, and their experience is added to a map
alongside other users.  Then, the user receives a link to search for free
access to the article. The Open Access Button hopes to create a worldwide
map showing the impact of denied access to research.

We launched the Open Access Button in Berlin in November 2013 and to date
there have over 5500 paywalls mapped. What we have now is just a taste of
what we are now building but we need to expand the team in order to create
the Button 2.0.

What is the Steering Committee?
The Open Access Button project is led by extremely competent students from
across the world, from different subjects and at different stages of study.
However, we appreciate that for a project  of this scale close guidance
from professionals is a requirement for success - this is where the
Steering Committee comes in. The Steering Committee has been created to
provide this guidance to the team and ensure we're as effective as possible.

As a Steering Committee member, you'll be joining and supporting an
exciting project with a strong track record and even more exciting future.

What does a Steering Committee member do?
As a Steering Committee member for the Open Access Button team you will be
required to be intimately familiar with the project in order to effectively
guide the student team in the project's next phase of development. Steering
Committee members should be willing to aid students on the week to week
running of the project as well as provide a longer term perspective.

Steering Committee members will be expected to give 2 hours a week to the
project over the course of 2014; however, the input may vary depending on
needs at the time. Included in this will be regularly attending
coordination calls, which are currently held on a weekly basis, and
proactively identifying areas where you may be able to aid the project. In
addition to calls with other steering committee members, liaison directly
with students may be required in some cases to advise on specific issues or
to provide training.

Applying
We are looking for nominations from the community of who to appoint to the
committee. Our current steering committee has experience with project
management, student leadership and Open Access advocacy but we are
interested in adding expertise in the following areas:

Fundraising

Governance

Programming

Law - specifically copyright

Communications including media and press

Technology in Global South

If you would like to nominate someone for the committee (you may self
nominate) then please email us at openaccessbutton at medsin.org with their
(or your) name and email address (you may want to double check with them
first!). Nominee's will be requested to confirm an interest in joining the
project and to send a CV. Nominations are due 20th March.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-au/attachments/20140313/985c3c0a/attachment-0003.html>