Open Access Week 2023: Community over Commercialization

International Open Access Week (October 23-29) is an opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems. This year’s theme “Community over Commercialization” encourages a candid conversation about which approaches to open scholarship prioritize the best interests of the public and the academic community-and which do not.

As part of Open Access Week our University of Westminster Press Manager, Philippa Grand, will be participating in a one hour webinar where Jisc and the Open Institutional Publishing Association will join forces to discuss how libraries can come together as a community and support open access publishing initiatives.
In this webinar, they will ask ‘what’s stopping us?’ and will consider the levers that are at our disposal, as a strong and active community, including library and publisher perspectives.
Support community led open access publishing: Help shape the future of scholarly communications Thursday 26 October, 2pm to 3pm Online Event, book now

Adopted by its 193 Member States, the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science highlights the need to prioritize community over commercialization in its calls for the prevention of “inequitable extraction of profit from publicly funded scientific activities” and support for “non-commercial publishing models and collaborative publishing models with no article processing charges.” By focusing on these areas, we can achieve the original vision outlined when open access was first defined: “an old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good.”

When commercial interests are prioritized over those of the communities that research seeks to serve, many concerning issues arise. Open Access Week provides an opportunity for individuals to discuss questions that are most relevant in their local context. These might include: What is lost when a shrinking number of corporations control knowledge production rather than researchers themselves? What is the cost of business models that entrench extreme levels of profit? When does the collection and use of personal data begin to undermine academic freedom? Can commercialization ever work in support of the public interest? What options for using community-controlled infrastructure already exist that might 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?

Selected by the Open Access Week Advisory Committee, this year’s theme provides an opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems. Open Access Week 2023 will be held from October 23rd through the 29th; however, anyone is encouraged to host discussions and take action whenever is most suitable during the year and to adapt the theme and activities to their local context.

For more information about International Open Access Week, please visit openaccessweek.org. The official twitter hashtag for the week is #OAWeek.

The above text was borrowed from the Open Access 2023 theme page, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Further Resources

The follow on RKEO Blog post – Open Access Week 2023: Resources Available and External Events Coming Up gives further resources and live events taking place over Open Access Week 2023, which you may wish to join.