Towards the IUBMB Trainee initiative’s aim of providing opportunities for emerging researchers of all levels from all around the world, we hope to highlight the importance of accessibility through our next webinar discussing Open Access Publishing and Preprints, hosted by the PABMB representatives of the Leadership Committee.

International Open Access Week is just around the corner (October 24th-30th), and the IUBMB Trainee Initiative is here to help you celebrate in style, with an informative free webinar featuring talks and discussions with leaders in open access publishing (OAP). OAP is “a broad international movement that seeks to grant free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data.” (What is open access?). OAP strongly aligns with the IUBMB Trainee Initiative’s aims of providing opportunities for emerging researchers from all around the world and democratization of knowledge. Thus, the committee’s PABMB representatives are thrilled to host this event on OAP and Preprints, in which we will provide an introduction to the extensive world of open access: what it is, how it works (especially in the biomolecular sciences), and why it is growing.

Attendees can expect to hear talks by leading figures in scientific publishing, including an editor at the forefront of open access publishing and a leader of BioRxiv. This pioneer in the preprint movement will tell you all about preprint services, which are open-access online databases that host and distribute findings before they are published in a peer-reviewed journal, offering a forum for public access and discourse. Our event will also highlight preLights, a service that spotlights preprints of particular interest.