California State University, Northridge celebrated its third annual Open Access: A Day of Data event on Oct. 25 at the Jack and Florence Ferman presentation room in the Delmar T. Oviatt Library.

Open-access data is free, published research information available to anyone connected to the internet. In the past, such information was mostly accessible through subscription payments. For example, more and more academic or scientific journals have opened their access to the general public for free.

The daylong conference featured discussions from CSUN faculty and other open-access data experts.

DataFest founder and UCLA professor Rob Gould opened the event with a keynote speech about open methods and tools. CSUN faculty Jussi Eloranta (chemistry), Rachael Mackelprang (biology), Regan Maas (geography), David Medeiros (linguistics), Mark Schilling (mathematics) and Crist Khachikian (associate vice president, research and graduate studies) then shared presentations on their use of open-access data.

Mark Stover, dean of the Oviatt Library, presented CSUN biology professor Steven Dudgeon with an award for his research achievements using open-access data.

“[Dudgeon] is a strong advocate and early adopter of data management and open-access data,” said Stover, who handed Dudgeon the award, along with a certificate of merit and a check for $500.

Trisha Cruse, executive director of DataCite — the leading global provider of digital object identifier systems — gave the afternoon keynote address, speaking about creating data and downstream impact, which is the process of combining data to complete an end result.

“Data is everywhere,” Cruse said. “It has always been part of scholarship.”

The event concluded with two more faculty presentations from Andrew Weiss (Library Collection Access and Management Services) and Charissa Jefferson (Library Research, Instruction and Outreach Services).