The lovely people at PLoS stuck us on their front page.

This post was originally posted at http://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2013/10/22/oa-button-launch-if-someone-hits-a-paywall-in-the-forest-does-it-make-a-sound/ . Thanks to PLOS for publishing. Co-leads of the Open Access Button Project, David Carroll and Joseph McArthur announce the launch of the Open Access Button. 18th November 2013. 10 years ago today.

Originally posted at http://bma.org.uk/news-views-analysis/news/2013/november/fight-for-open-access-research-in-joint-thunderclap-protest . Thanks to the BMA for the story. 1 November 2013 Students are being asked to take part in an online ‘thunderclap’ this month to highlight the difficulties of gaining access to research.

Next week is Open Access Week. Open Access Week is a global event which is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. As part of Open Access Week.

Welcome! We know what you’re all thinking, and we’re sorry. We know we missed a week. One of us went on holiday (how dare he), the other got ill so we didn’t manage to write this. What has happened since we last time, we’ve decided when to launch the button. More to come on that soon. We’ve made nice progress on our design for launch and our development work is very nearly at the minimum viable product stage.

Everyone has hit a paywall. Each person hitting a paywall is an indictment of our current scholarly publishing system. We can’t settle for living in a broken system, where people are denied access to research they need, and ultimately paid for. Our project is a browser-based tool which tracks how often people are denied access to academic research.

The biggest thing that happened this week was our OA Button Hackathon (#oabuttonhack) at Top Office Machines, Shoreditch, home of Original Content London. After having been organised in just under 2 weeks the weekend aimed to bring our developers together to work on the project. We spent the hackday finishing troubleshooting and fixing problems from our python port and made a lot of good progress.

Day 1 of the OA Button hack kicked off at the home of Original Content London, Top Office Machines over the day we were joined by developers, OA Policy people and even a turtle. Most of the first day we spent troubleshooting after our Python port from a few weeks ago and made a lot of good progress. David and Joe worked on strategy for the button and design for the button. We even had a visit from Gulliver, the Open Access turtle.

It’s the weekend we’ve all been waiting for. The Open Access button Hackathon is almost upon us! First you’ve heard about it — click here. From this page you’ll find everything you need for the hackathon.

Hey there! Welcome to the second of many Open Access Button Weekly updates. This past week we have organised on Open Access Button Hackathon in this weekend the 7th and 8th of September. The venue is Top Office Machines, 133–135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG London, United Kingdom. You can find out more and sign up here.