On March 15, 2022, the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) celebrated its 20th anniversary by releasing four new high-level recommendations—along with detailed sub-recommendations and further elaborations—focusing on community-led open access (OA) and global equity, and addressing key challenges for the coming decade (BOAI 2022).
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”).
Over the last decade, Open Access (OA) has gained support among researchers and policymakers, with increasingly vocal advocacy for free online access to scholarly work. While incorporating Open Access policies in Canada reflects a rapidly changing publishing landscape, with the rise of digitalization and the pressing need to broaden access, the barriers to making Open Access a widespread reality are many and complex.