October 23-29 is Open Access Week! This year's theme is “Community over Commercialization.”
Did you know that scholarly publishing is a “staggeringly profitable” business? More profitable than companies like Apple or Google! Libraries pay high prices to provide access to this literature to their campus communities, but we cannot afford to subscribe to everything. And many students and researchers at less wealthy institutions have even less access. Practitioners, policy makers, or community members unaffiliated with a wealthy university also encounter paywalls when trying to access scholarly literature.
Commercial interests should not be prioritized over the interests of the communities that have funded, participated in, or could benefit from the research.
The Open Access movement seeks to make access to research more equitable.
Open access literature is available online at no cost to the reader and free of most copyright restrictions. This reduces barriers to the results of research and increases its visibility, accessibility, and impact. There are still costs associated with publishing, and there are innovative non-commercial or collaborative publishing models that do not charge readers or authors.
Learn more on our online Open Access guide and our Sustainable Scholarship page.
Let’s take back control and work towards justice and equity for all in publishing and access to knowledge!
The University Library has several events and activities planned this week:
Online workshops:
- Introduction to Open Access: Equity & Sustainability in Academic Publishing (Oct 24);
- Affordable Open Access Publishing: Reduce (or Avoid!) the Author Fees (Oct 25);
- Open Access Repositories: Using HARVEST to Share Your Work (Oct 26).
All three workshops are online from 12-12:30pm. Register here: https://library.usask.ca/studentlearning/workshops/index.php
Online quiz:
Take the Price of Knowledge Quiz to learn more about the truly scary prices we pay to access and publish research 👻
In-person carnival:
There will be carnival games and prizes including popcorn, buttons, and stickers!
- Wednesday, 25 October 2023
- Come by any time from 1:30-4:30pm
- Room G26 Murray Library (ground floor near Starbucks)