Thursday, November 4, 2010 3:00 - 3:45 PM Speakers: Betty Landesman - NIH Library; Bob Schatz - BioMed Central The open access movement is possibly the most discussed and debated topic in scholarly publishing today, with the discussions sometimes generating more heat than light. More and more publishers are announcing the availability of new open access journals – good news for acquisitions people, since “open access” is the same as “free”. Or is it? What can librarians and/or users do with open access content? What are authors/publishers required to do with their content in order to comply with public access mandates? What is the difference between a “RoMEO Green” publisher and a “RoMEO Gold” one? This session will define the various terms and models used to describe open access publishing and what they mean in the context of the scholarly communication chain. The objectives of the session are to provide some background and definitions for a term that is often used but less often explained. We need to understand it better in order to work with our users, who want to know if the library can help them pay for getting their articles published or with posting their articles to PubMed Central; with our institutions, as we populate institutional repositories; and with our publishers, so that we understand what we may be acquiring. The audience will be encouraged to ask questions and to discuss. Attendees can expect to learn in detail about open access and how it affects librarians, publishers, and users.