Hack4ac – A London Hackday to celebrate CC-BY

RSVP for the event here or learn more about it on the Hack4ac website.

PeerJ is teaming up with eLife to present a day of hacking, with further sponsorship from PLOS , Digital Science , Amazon Web Services (giving away major AWS credits) and SkillsMatter .

Hack4ac, that’s pronounced “Hack – for – Ack” (ac = academia), is taking place on the 6th of July in London to make use of openly licensed materials and Open Source code to build new tools and to teach interested academics the basics of programming.

Kicking off the event is Mark Thorley, chair of RCUK Research Outputs, who will be giving a few brief remarks on the importance of CC-BY licences. In addition, many in the London area who are major contributors to all things Open Access have already registered to attend.

The motivation for the event was two-fold. First, there is no question any longer of the importance and growing acceptance of Open Access and open licenses when it comes to academic literature. With this growth we now have the opportunity to further demonstrate value by working together on new tools to digest, filter, discover, and explore that data and content. Many people are just now learning about Open Access and this is an opportunity to show them how important it is to advancing science.

A secondary motivation for the event is to bring in academics and others who may not have a background in hacking or programming, but wish to learn. It can often be intimidating to join hackdays or know where to get started, but at the same time learning to program or design tools can benefit anyone in their projects and careers. This is a chance to feel comfortable about being new to something. We warmly welcome all to this event. Programming on the day is not a requirement, and in fact most hack events involve people with different sets of skills who work together to build better tools.

We’re looking forward to hacking with you!

Space is limited, so RSVP for the event now or learn more about it on the Hack4ac website.