Haiku for "The Spirit of Open Access"

Introduction | The Winning Haiku | Highly Recommended | The Competition

Introduction

In the build up to Open Access Week 2009, SHERPA launched a global competition for a Haiku which summarised "The Spirit of Open Access".

We were delighted with the response - well over 100 entries from around the world. Our thanks go to all that entered! We very much enjoyed reading through these, which varied from the witty, through the descriptive, to the quite strange. Our thanks also to those who sent left-field entries not for competititon, but for the fun of it.

All of the entries were invited under a CC by-nc-sa licence, so do feel free to use any of the Haiku below, with attribution and in line with the licence, in any advocacy work that you do.

All of the entries were read and considered in a blind judgement by the SHERPA Team at the Centre for Research Communications at the University of Nottingham.

The Winning Haiku

Many congratulations to Miggie Pickton, of the University of Northampton, for her winning entry -
	Set your research free As flowers offer nectar To the passing bee Miggie Pickton, University of Northampton, UK
Miggie will be getting a Winners Certificate from us and a SHERPA goody bag. We hope that the Haiku will amuse and inspire others!

Highly Recommended

In addition there were many runners-up! The standard of entries was very high: here are some which particularly appealed to us - in no particular order:

Like birds, authors' rights fly away from their control never to return Nancy Stimson, University of California, San Diego		A candle under a bushel is wasted light try open access Rob Szarka, szarka.org
Empowerment comes To those who share their knowledge With the world beyond Allison Brown, University of Otago, New Zealand		Enlightenment is The addition of full text To metadata Neil Stewart, LSE, UK
Opening access connected and well-informed research moves forward Jon Mason, InterCog		The locked door opens And brilliant autumn sunlight Pours into the room. Padraig Manning, HSE Ireland
Subscriptional woes - A winter of discontent. If research were free! Lisa Martin, BioMedCentral		Oh! This article! I don't have to pay for it! That's incredible! Lisa Martin, BioMedCentral
Stuffy old journals - Away with your subscriptions! Open Access Rules! Lisa Martin, BioMedCentral		Golden sunlit leaves Of open access pages Shimmer into view Dr Nicky Cashman, Aberystwyth University
Help barriers fall Repositories blossom An open age dawns Jessie and Tony Hey, University of Southampton and Microsoft Research		Hard discoveries Should not perish, closed, within a domain price-locked. Hélène LeBlanc, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
OA is worldwide bringing scholars together and spreading their words Nancy Stimson, University of California, San Diego		Publicly financed Publicly accessible Open Access please Sally Curry, RIN, UK
		In the autumn rains open access means no trudge to the library Kate Hodgson, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

 

The Competition, October 2009 - (now closed)

Original Invitation for Submissions
We all know the definitions or descriptions of Open Access given in the Berlin/Bethesda/Budapest texts: likewise we have all heard and used other definitions of Open Access veering from the tersely functional to the wordily inspirational. But what about poetic? This has been an under-used side of advocacy! What we would like to hear is what colleagues think is the spirit of Open Access - as a haiku!

To coincide with the activities taking place during Open Access Week http://www.openaccessweek.org/, it is with great pleasure that SHERPA http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/ announces the launch of a light-hearted global competition to write a 'Haiku' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku on "The Spirit of Open Access".

Entrants should seek to sum up open access using the haiku form, or at least its modern English version: three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively that encapsulate a mood, feeling, insight or poetic summary of the subject. The traditional reference to a season would be an elegant, but optional, inclusion. Entries can be inspirational, reflective, humourous or plain wierd!

This is a competition for a haiku as an encapsulation of open access. Limericks, couplets, sonnets and sagas will also be read by us with pleasure and may get a special mention, but its a haiku that will get the prize! :-)

Entries, in English, should be emailed to bill.hubbard@nottingham.ac.uk and the closing date is *BEFORE* Open Access week, on 5pm GMT on Friday 16th October 2009.

Anyone may enter, and the winning entry will be picked as the most fitting by the SHERPA Core Team and its Directors, whose decision is final. The winning entry will be announced during Open Access week. The winner will receive a modest award, as well as a SHERPA 'goody bag' and, I am sure, the applause of their peers :-)

The winning entry and other entries will be publicised during Open Access week and likely used by colleagues in advocacy during the week and in the future, so, need we mention, entries should be submitted as Open Access - a CC by-nc-sa licence please!

 

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