Open Access (OA) refers to the practice of making scholarly research freely available online. This approach allows research outputs, including journal articles and books, to be accessed, downloaded, shared, printed, and used without any financial, legal, or technical restrictions. The primary goal of OA is to eliminate the paywalls that restrict access to academic research, thereby democratising knowledge and fostering greater collaboration and innovation across disciplines and sectors.
International Open Access Week is an annual global event which aims to promote and celebrate OA. When looking into the history of the event, I was surprised to find out that its origins date back to 2007 when a single day event was organised in the US by Students for Free Culture and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. It expanded to become a week-long event, celebrated globally, and from 2012, themes for the week have been selected, including ‘Open for Collaboration’ (2015), ‘Open For Whom: Equity in Open Knowledge’ (2019) and ‘Open for Climate Justice’ (2022). This year’s theme will be ‘Community over Commercialisation’, in growing recognition of the need to prioritise approaches to open scholarship that best serve the interests of both the public and the academic community.
Many institutions mark International Open Access Week by organising events and activities, including workshops, webinars and round tables, which aim to raise awareness and explore different aspects of OA such as open data and the beneficial impacts of OA. Alternatively some people bake OA cakes! Organisations and institutions have also used this time to announce new OA policies or initiatives associated with OA. For example, during OA week back in 2011 the Royal Society announced that they would release the digitised backfiles (from 1665-1941) of their archives. It was also this time last year that our new repository at Lincoln was launched.
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There are a number of events being held across the globe to celebrate this year’s theme, ‘Community over Commercialisation’, many of which are online and open to all to take part in. You can keep up-to-date on social media by using the official hastag #OAweek. We are also celebrating International Open Access Week here at the University of Lincoln. Building on the success of last year’s Open Access poster conference organised by Research and Enterprise, the department will be holding an Open Access Showcase. Entries will be displayed in the Freezone, UL001, located at the front of the University Library, from Monday 21 October. Please do come along to find out more about OA practices across our institution or to chat to the Repository Team during their drop-in session on Wednesday 23 October, between 11:30 and 4:30! There will also be some online webinars which will explore different aspects of OA, and keep an eye on the blog pages too for more posts on Open Access. Maybe you could mark International Open Access Week by coming along to one of the events of even baking a cake!
