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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.

About Open Access Week

Open Access Week 2023 runs from October 23rd to 29th, with flexibility for local adaptation and year-round action.

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.

International Open Access Week is organized by SPARC in partnership with the Open Access Week Advisory Committee. It was founded in 2008 by SPARC and partners in the student community.

For more information about International Open Access Week, please visit openaccessweek.org. The official hashtag of Open Access Week is #OAweek.