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.

UPDATE: Venue: Find everything you need to know for the day here! http://oabutton.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/open-access-button-hackathon-everything-you-need-to-know/ UPDATE: Venue: Top Office Machines, 133–135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG London, United Kingdom Millions of people a day are denied access to the research they both need and paid for because of paywalls.

Hey there! Welcome to the first of many Open Access Button Weekly updates. Throughout this project we’ve been blown away by the response of the OA community. Through twitter, blogs and chatting to folk the button is going to so much better than it ever could’ve been. We’d like these updates to be a window into what we’re doing — the successes and the challenges we’re facing.

If someone hits a paywall in the forest, does it make a sound?: The Open Access Button | The Student Blog.

We’ve all been there, dissertation pending, deadline approaching and coffee being demolished faster than is probably healthy. Then it happens. You hit a paywall — deadend. Frustration ensues, but no time, gotta move on. But wait, did you know you probably paid for that research. Millions of pounds of taxpayers money each year goes on publicly funded research. So why can’t you access it? The answer is the broken scholarly publishing system.

David and Joseph from the Open Access Button team are in Budapest at the Right to Research Coalition General Assembly. You can watch a short interview with them below.

This week David was interviewed by Abby Tabor from My Science Work about the how the idea came about, how we developed the open access button prototype and what are the plans for the future. You can read the interview over on the website here.

A screenshot of the map of denials of access from our prototype is the picture of the week in this week’s BMJ. You can check it out in print or at the link to the pdf here.

Last weekend’s BMJ Hack has been reported in the BMJ. The article can be found here.