A couple of weeks ago, I posted on the JIDC Blog that JIDC has joined Open Access week (OA week).   We have a group page on the OA week website and hope that JIDC members and non-members will join us in OA week and our OA week group.

As participants of OA week, JIDC members have received OA week T-shirts!  I love these T-shirts.  And to share the excitement with JIDC OA group members, we are giving away OA week T-shirts as well as T-shirts for JIDC!  The JIDC T-shirts will be revealed soon!  For now you can see the design for the OA week T-shirt at the left.

JIDC OA group members will be randomly chosen the first week of October 2011 to receive free OA and JIDC T-shirts.   The winners will be announced Friday October 7^th!  The number of shirts to be given away will depend on the number of members in the group.  More members, more T-shirts!    

To become a member of the OA week JIDC group:

1. Go to the Open Access week website
2. Sign Up for Open Access week
3. Go to Groups
4. Find the JIDC group page
5. Click on Join Open Access JIDC

Being a part of OA week is important to JIDC, as we are an Open Access journal.  We are proud to have Open Access status and agree with the philosophy of Free Knowledge.  I especially like the quote on the OA week T-shirt, “Everybody’s knowledge, 

nobody’s property”.

Here you can see me wearing my OA T-shirt.  In the near future, I will also be posting other JIDC Editors and JIDC members wearing their T-shirts.  You can purchase an OA T-shirt from the Zazzle online store here.  And if you have a picture of yourself in an Open Access T-shirt, we would love to see it! 

Also, if you are interested in the JIDC T-shirts or have ideas you would like to see on the JIDC Ts, please contact me at akelvin@jidc.org or Jeff Coombs at jcoombs@jidc.org.  Jeff is the graphic artist for JIDC and designs the cover art for the monthly issues.

To read more on our interest in Open Access and Open Access week, please see our previous JIDC OA Blog post.  As well, Donna Okubo from PLoS (Public Library of Science) and SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has been incredibly helpful with the organization of JIDC in OA week.  In fact I would call her the SPARC in our OA work....hehe. 

If you have questions about OA week for Donna she would be happy to help.  Her email is dokubo@plos.org  I can’t thank her enough! Thanks Donna!

  Also, if you have ideas for JIDC events during OA week, I would like to hear them.  So far, our planned events include the topics: The JIDC Mentoring Program, Scientific Writing, and the Importance of Open Access Publishing.  Let me know what you think.

Alyson