SPARC has selected Melissa Hagemann, the Program Manager of the Open Access Initiative at the Open Society Institute (OSI), as the newest SPARC Innovator. Hagemann was chosen in recognition of the new possibilities that now exist for scholars, institutions, and the public since the introduction of the Open Access movement and in honor of Hagemann's seminal role in launching the movement with her OSI colleagues.
For Hagemann, the Open Access movement is the realization of an ideal that can benefit thousands of institutions and millions of people, including those in transitional and developing countries who would otherwise have to do without the benefits of critical research findings. To achieve her goal, Hagemann has worked closely with OSI colleagues, deploying critical resources to launch the Open Access movement. Most significantly, OSI convened the December 2001 gathering in Budapest that culminated in the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Since that landmark meeting, OSI has funded about $3 million in individual and institutional grants related to Open Access.
Despite the grant and funding assistance, however, Hagemann's contributions to the Open Access movement are not primarily financial. Her intellectual creativity and far-reaching vision led her to strategize on a way forward within OSI to unify the Open Access movement by linking together open access journals with open archiving strategies, an idea conceived by the participants in Budapest.
"Melissa's recognition in 2001 that the time was right to bring people together to create the Open Access movement was critical," said SPARC Director Heather Joseph. "The initial BOAI gathering set out the principles of OA to foster change on a systemic level, rather than on a journal-by-journal basis. Her clear focus was on defining this new concept, and then supporting education to plant the concept of OA around the world. Open Access would simply not have had the tremendous impact it has had so far without this crucial first step."
"It is an immense honor to be profiled this way, along with my colleagues at OSI and those who participated in the meeting in Budapest which lead to the BOAI," Hagemann said.
Hagemann's strategic, behind-the-scenes planning on behalf of the Open Access movement during the past five years set in motion a series of events that have affected scholarship around the globe. To read the complete SPARC Innovator profile detailing Hagemann's role, please see [this page]....
Individuals can nominate potential SPARC Innovators at [this page].
Comment. This honor is much-deserved. I'm especially glad to see it because Melissa's many contributions have been behind the scenes and are not widely known. To appreciate them, do see SPARC's longer account of her role in the OA movement. (Disclosure: I gratefully acknowledge that I'm funded by OSI and that the funding decisions have been Melissa's.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/06/2006 11:16:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
