Since 2008 every year a week in October is announced as International Open Access Week – a global, community-driven week of action to open up access to research. The week is an opportunity to take action in making openness the default for research.
This year’s theme intentionally aligns with the recently released UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. The Recommendation was initiated by the decision made at the 40th session of UNESCO’s General Conference by 193 Members States to develop an international standard-setting instrument on Open Science in the form of a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science which will have to be adopted by Member States in 2021. The Recommendation is being developed through a regionally balanced, multistakeholder, inclusive and transparent consultation process.
UNESCO recommendations are legal instruments intended to influence the development of national laws and practices. As the first global standard-setting framework on Open Science, the UNESCO Recommendation will provide an important guide for governments around the world as they move from aspiration to the implementation of open research practices.
Open Science should embrace a diversity of knowledge, practices, workflows, languages, research outputs and research topics that support the needs and epistemic pluralism of the scientific community as a whole, diverse research communities and scholars, as well as the wider public and knowledge holders beyond the traditional scientific community, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and social actors from different countries and regions, as appropriate. (UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, Page 7)
The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science is aimed to define shared values and principles for Open Science, and identify concrete measures on Open Access and Open Data, with proposals to bring citizens closer to science and commitments needed to facilitate the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge around the world. However, the main emphasis is on the equity in science aiming to achieve that Open Science openness would become the default for research and to ensure that equity is at the center of science in general. Accordingly, this year’s OA week theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation for all producers and consumers of knowledge.
Open Science should play a significant role in ensuring equity among researchers from developed and developing countries, enabling fair and reciprocal sharing of scientific inputs and outputs and equal access to scientific knowledge to both producers and consumers of knowledge regardless of location, nationality, race, age, gender, income, socio-economic circumstances, career stage, discipline, language, religion, disability, ethnicity or migratory status or any other grounds. (UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, Page 7)
International Open Access Week is a time for the wider community to coordinate in taking action to raise the visibility of scholarship, accelerate research, and turn breakthroughs into better lives. The openness of science is especially important in accelerating the solving of global problems, such as COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress to build more equitable foundations for opening knowledge. However, Diversity, equity, and inclusion must be consistently prioritized year-round and integrated into the fabric of the open community, from how our infrastructure is built to how we organize community discussions to the governance structures we use.
More information on this year‘s International Open Access Week is available at openaccessweek.org
