About International Open Access Week

Every year, SFU Library participates in International Open Access Week, to raise awareness of open scholarship and celebrate the work that the SFU community is doing to make knowledge public.

This year’s theme continues with last year’s focus on Community over Commercialization, highlighting the importance of this conversation and providing an opportunity to engage in a candid conversation about which approaches to open scholarship prioritize the best interests of the public and the academic community—and which do not. 

Ongoing questions to consider, some of them even more pressing in 2024 given recent developments, such as the rush to integrate artificial intelligence into commercial academic systems without community consultation, may include:

• What is lost when a shrinking number of corporations control knowledge production rather than researchers themselves?
• What is the cost of business models that entrench extreme levels of profit? 
• When does the collection and use of personal data begin to undermine academic freedom? 
• Can commercialization ever work in support of the public interest? 
• What options for using community-controlled infrastructure already exist that might better serve the interests of the research community and the public (such as preprint servers, repositories, and open publishing platforms)?  
• How can we shift the default toward using these community-minded options?

Established by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and partners in the student community in 2008, International Open Access Week is an opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems.

Upcoming events for Open Access Week 2024 at SFU:

 Attend a workshop

 Attend the Open Education community of practice launch event 

Open education is a growing movement that seeks to advance affordable and accessible teaching and learning worldwide through the development and use of open educational resources (OER) and practices (OEP). In celebration of International Open Access Week, consider joining the new SFU Open Education Community of Practice to explore and learn about using OER and OEP in the classroom with a group of supportive colleagues. Attend the launch event at 10am on October 23rd to learn more.

Any interested faculty, staff or students are invited to join the Library and Centre for Educational Excellence (CEE) for this special event.

 Listen to a podcast, watch a film or a talk, or learn more about PKP

Creative Commons' Open Minds podcast  
On this episode hear more about the Open Access movement from Heather Joseph, the Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).

Paywall: the Business of Scholarship  
Learn about the major academic publishers and open scholarship in this 2018 documentary.

OER at SFU 
An introduction to Open Education Resources at SFU, filmed for Open Access Week 2020.

Public Knowledge Project (PKP)

SFU Library is a long-term partner and proud supporter of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). Based at SFU, PKP develops open source tools for scholarly publishing and is best known for Open Journal Systems which is used by over 25,000 journals worldwide and is available in over 40 languages. For more information about using PKP's open source software at SFU, contact our Digital Publishing team. 

 Read more at Radical Access: the Scholarly Publishing Blog

The latest news and answers to your questions about scholarly publishing and open access, including two of the most recent blog posts, on fair dealing and OER, and on responsible research assessment respectively.