Open Meetup Matinée: Paywall Screening and Discussion

Paywall the movieUW Open Meetup closed out September with a meeting that featured guest speakers Yogesh Chawla, Dane County Board Supervisor in District 6, and Kara Kratowicz, Data Projects Coordinator for the City of Madison, spoke about the uses and benefits of open civic data. The next UW Open Meetup event will be a screening of the documentary Paywall: The Business of Scholarship on October 22. Does the high cost of access to scholarly literature interfere with the advancement of research and innovation? Join Open Meetup and the UW-Madison Libraries for a film screening and discussion on the business behind for-profit scholarly publishing and the rise of open access options.

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship documentary “focuses on the need for open access to research and science, questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers, examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher Elsevier and looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google.”

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship Trailer 1 from Paywall The Movie on Vimeo.

In the spirit of open access, the film screening and popcorn will be provided free of charge!

Following the film, there will be a Q&A panel of scholarly publishing experts from UW-Madison. The panel will be moderated by Carrie Nelson, Director of Scholarly Communication. The panel will be:

  • Doug Way, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Research
  • Dorothea Salo, Faculty Associate, Information School
  • Karl Broman, Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics

Date: Monday, October 22, 2018

Time: 3:30-5:30 p.m.

Location: The Marquee Cinema, Union South