by Caroline Winter | 27 January 2023 | English, Observations, Observations and Responses
The 15th annual International Open Access Week ran from October 24–30. This year’s theme was “Open for Climate Justice,” acknowledging that the widespread effects of climate change are experienced differently by different groups of people. One of the ways this injustice manifests is through inequitable levels of access to knowledge and information about climate change, so open access (OA) “can create pathways to more equitable knowledge sharing and serve as a means to address the inequities that shape the impacts of climate change and our response to them” (“Theme” 2022).
by Caroline Winter | 22 October 2021 | Community News, English, Observations, Observations and Responses
The 14th annual International Open Access Week runs from October 25–31, 2021, and this year’s theme is “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity.” This theme was chosen to align with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (see “UNESCO’s Recommendation on Open Science”), which “powerfully articulates and centers the importance of equity in pursuing a future for scholarship that is open by default” (Fandel 2021).
by Caroline Winter | 27 November 2018 | English, Observations and Responses
October 22 to 28, 2018, marked the 10th annual International Open Access (OA) Week. Founded in 2008 by SPARC and its partners, Open Access Week is now recognized around the world as an opportunity to start conversations about OA, plan collective action, and build a presence of OA in the scholarly community and beyond. This year’s theme—Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge—emphasizes the community-driven nature of the OA movement and the importance of local action.
by Caroline Winter | 28 July 2023 | Observations, Observations and Responses
The intersection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and open scholarship has long been an issue of interest for the research community and for industry. Intellectual property policies and legislation aim to balance the moral and economic rights of creators in their works with the rights and interests of the broader public. The need to understand how IPR and open scholarship interact has become more pressing as the open scholarship movement has advanced. This is particularly true in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the power of open, collaborative research to address complex, global challenges (see “Open Scholarship and COVID-19”).
by Caroline Winter | 9 December 2022 | English, Observations, Observations and Responses
On August 25, 2022, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memo called Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Researchand an accompanying media release. This memo, dubbed the Nelson Memo after Alondra Nelson, then acting Director of the OSTP, outlines public access (open access, OA) policy guidance for US federal agencies that fund research and development. Also released in August 2022 was the OSTP report Economic Landscape of Federal Public Access Policy, which examines potential economic effects of making federally funded research open access upon publication.
