Open Access Week 2023: Community over Commercialisation
This year’s theme 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.
The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, embraced by 193 Member States, emphasizes prioritizing community over commercial interests in scientific endeavours. It calls for preventing unjust profit extraction from publicly funded research and endorsing non-commercial and collaborative publishing models without article processing charges. This approach aligns with the original vision of open access, aiming to provide an unprecedented public good.
When commercial interests overshadow community needs in research, several concerns arise. Open Access Week serves as a platform for discussing local issues, such as the impact of corporate control on knowledge production, profit-focused business models, the erosion of academic freedom through data collection, and the compatibility of commercialization with the public interest. It also encourages exploring community-controlled alternatives like preprint servers, repositories, and open publishing platforms, shifting the default preference toward these community-driven options.
Selected by the Open Access Week Advisory Committee, this year's theme focuses on community control of knowledge sharing systems.