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Open Access Publishing

What Is International Open Access Week?

Founded in 2008, International Open Access Week is an annual event organized by SPARC in partnership with the Open Access Week Advisory Committee to promote Open Access to the academic and research community. According to the International Open Access Week website: 

"Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

Open Access to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

Open Access Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward the open sharing of knowledge with the advancement of policy changes and the importance of social issues affecting people around the world. The event is celebrated by individuals, institutions and organizations around the world."

Text from https://www.openaccessweek.org/about 

International Open Access Week 2024: Community Over Commercialization

The theme for International Open Access Week 2024, October 21-27, is "Community over Commercialization" in recognition "of the need to prioritize approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community." 

SPARC has highlighted some questions to consider:

  • What are the consequences when a small number of corporations control knowledge production rather than researchers themselves?
  • What are the hidden costs of business models that entrench extreme levels of profit while exacerbating inequity?
  • When does the opaque collection and use of personal data by commercial platforms begin to undermine academic freedom?
  • When and in what ways can commercialization align with the public interest?
  • What community-governed infrastructures already exist that better serve the interests of the research community and the public (such as preprint servers, repositories, and open publishing platforms)?
  • How can we shift the default toward using these community-minded options?

Text adapted from https://www.openaccessweek.org/theme/en