Guest post by Sheetal Saujani, Citizen Science Coordinator, and Christiana McMahon, Research Data Support Officer

This year’s theme for International Open Access Week 2025, “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, asks us to reflect on how knowledge is created, shared, and controlled, and whose voices are included in that process. It’s a question that aligns closely with UCL’s approach to citizen science, which promotes openness, collaboration and equity in research.

Citizen science provides a powerful lens to examine how knowledge is co-produced with communities. It recognises that valuable knowledge comes not only from academic institutions but also but also from lived experience, community knowledge, and shared exploration.

Through initiatives like the UCL Citizen Science Academy and UCL Citizen Science Certificate, we support researchers and project leads to work in partnership with the public, enabling people from all backgrounds to take part in research that matters to them. These programmes are designed to be inclusive and hands-on, helping to build confidence, skills and shared responsibility.

For those of us working in academia, this theme reminds us that open access isn’t just about making papers free to read – it’s about changing how research is produced. Involving citizen scientists in forming research questions, collecting data, and interpreting findings opens up the research process itself, not just access to its outputs.

The Principles for Citizen Science at UCL emphasise respectful partnerships, transparency, and fair recognition. They reflect our belief that citizen scientists are co-creators whose insights – rooted in everyday experience and local knowledge – bring depth and relevance to academic work.

In particular, the fifth principle for Citizen Science at UCL states that CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance should be considered when working with marginalised communities and Indigenous groups. These principles are: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics, which remind researchers that creating knowledge from Indigenous data must be to the benefit of Indigenous Peoples, nations and communities. These Principles support Indigenous Peoples in establishing more control over their data and its use in research. The Research Data Management Team encourage staff and students to engage with the CARE Principles in addition to the FAIR principles.

So, who owns our knowledge? At UCL, we believe the answer should be: everyone. Through citizen science and its principles, we’re building a future where knowledge is created collectively, shared responsibly and made openly accessible – because it belongs to the communities that help shape it.

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

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Guest post by Catherine Sharp, Head of Open Access Services at UCL

“Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, the theme of this year’s International Open Access Week, asks how “communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce”. With commercial publishers continuing to monetise academic content through ever-increasing subscription and open access fees – the costs of so-called “transformative” agreements to UK HEIs is around £140m – and to report substantial and growing profit margins, while at the same time attempting to restrict authors’ rights in their own work, this remains a challenge for all HEIs. Against this background, the UK’s rights retention movement is a vital tool in the effort to free academic research and empower authors to use and share their knowledge.

UCL’s Intellectual Property (IP) Policy has long enshrined the principle that UCL staff own the copyright in their own scholarly materials, and that UCL has the right to use them for academic and research purposes. This year, with the introduction of an updated Publications Policy, UCL has joined a number of other universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Manchester, in taking action to assert this right. This is known as rights retention.

In practical terms, this means that from 2026, having notified publishers of UCL’s pre-existing licence, UCL will make the accepted manuscripts of scholarly articles by UCL staff open access without an embargo in UCL Discovery, UCL’s open access repository, under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) (unless an alternative licence or exemption is requested). The CC BY licence allows widespread re-use and sharing, and is the licence that research funders, including Wellcome, UKRI, NIHR and EC funders, require.

While UCL will continue to provide opportunities for authors to publish Gold open access through transformative agreements and in fully open access journals, articles that are not Gold open access will also benefit from immediate open access, on publication, in UCL Discovery. This will allow all UCL authors to meet their funders’ (including REF) open access requirements while continuing to publish in their journals of choice, and to benefit from open access through higher impact, increased citations and more collaborations.

The policy also benefits co-authors, and UCL authors are encouraged to let their co-authors know about it and to take advantage of it. Aside from that, authors do not need to take any action other than to upload their accepted manuscripts to RPS, on publication.

We are looking forward to seeing the practical effects of the policy as more UCL research is made available, more freely, than ever before.

 

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

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Guest post by Christine Daoutis, Copyright Support Officer at UCL

The theme of this year’s International Open Access Week is a question – and a call for collaboration. By addressing ‘who owns our knowledge’, it invites diverse communities to recognise and challenge existing assumptions about how scholarship is created, disseminated and built upon; to recognise power dynamics that shape these assumptions; and to make decisions that best serve the interests of the public and the academic community.

Understanding how copyright frames these assumptions, power dynamics and decisions is essential. In the strictest sense, who ‘owns’ scholarship (perceived as the IP rights in the outcomes of research – publications, research data and any other outputs created in the life of a research project) is, after all, defined by legislation and by the terms of publishing agreements and other contracts. In a broader sense, ‘owning’ can determine the ‘what’, the ‘how’ and the ‘who’ of scholarship in the first place: what is selected to be funded and published? How will the outcomes be disseminated? And crucially, who is able (or not able) to access, understand, benefit from and possibly build on the outcomes of a work? While many of these questions depend on IP rights, other factors (including criteria of research quality and impact, academic freedom, linguistic and cultural barriers to access) also influence how we address them.

Keeping close to this year’s theme, this post will focus on three key approaches related to copyright which should help adopt practices that support open scholarship.

 

1. Understanding authorship and copyright ownership
   To make a work as open as possible, it is first necessary to establish who the rights owner is, as it is the rights owner who has control over reproducing and disseminating the work. It is natural to assume that the author(s) of a work should be its owner(s). However, this is determined by copyright laws and by contract. In the UK, the first owner of a work is its author. However, if the work was created in the course of employment, the employer is the owner unless there is an agreement that says otherwise (CDPA 11). Understanding – and where necessary, negotiating – ownership empowers authors to make their research widely available and reusable. This involves reading and understanding institutional IP policies and the terms of grant agreements, publisher agreements and collaboration/co-production agreements. In terms of publishing, rights retention policies (covered in another post this week) ensure that authors and their institutions keep key rights enabling them to make their research articles immediately available under the terms of an open licence.
2. Addressing authorship and ownership in collaborations
   Moral rights – which include the right to be attributed as the author of a work – are just as important as economic rights when addressing copyright. Deciding who is co-author in a work and in what order they should be credited is essential. Further, contributions to a research project that may or may not also involve direct authorship of a publication should also be established and acknowledged. This includes acknowledging contributions by research participants, citizen science participants and anyone who has played an advisory or supporting role in the research by applying standards such as the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CrediT).
3. Understanding and using open licences
   Open licences, including Creative Commons licences and open source licences, support the dissemination and reuse of a wide range of works. While research funders have requirements around the use of licences (for example, the CC BY licence for research publications) researchers can also apply licences to a broader range materials (educational resources, images, preprints, datasets). Particularly in the age of AI, understanding how licences such as Creative Commons work is important, both for authors and users of scholarly works. Creative Commons are also introducing ‘preference signals’ to support transparency and reciprocity in how scholarly works are used by AI.

Further Support

The UCL copyright service helps you navigate these issues through training, discussion and opportunities to follow and participate in current debates. To engage with copyright at UCL:

• Join one of our sessions, which include addressing copyright in publishing agreements and discussing copyright and open access issues via our Copyright for Humans game.
• Join our UCL Copyright Community Teams channel for discussions, events and opportunities to share and develop your copyright knowledge.
• Contact copyright@ucl.ac.uk for support.

 

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

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The theme for this year’s Open Access Week is ‘Who Owns Our Knowledge?’ – a fundamental question in the world of Open Access. Here at the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship, we will be joining the global conversation around this question with blog posts from the perspectives of Copyright, Rights Retention, and Citizen Science, as well as a webinar with a panel discussion between four experts.

The Open Access Week website unpacks the theme by first asking ‘how communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce’. Increasingly, knowledge is being used without the permission or even awareness of those who produce it, through AI scraping, politicisation of research, and lack of attribution. What can be done to prevent this? The temptation may be to retreat from Open Access, as a means of protecting knowledge from inappropriate and indiscriminate use, however this is not the solution.

Knowledge is a human right.

Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, gave this statement in 2020, ‘Worldwide people need States, international bodies, science and medical institutions and practitioners to ensure the broadest possible sharing of scientific knowledge, and the broadest possible access to the benefits of scientific knowledge. This is key to any effective public health policy. It is essential to the combat against climate change. And it is a fundamental matter of human rights.’

With this in mind, we should consider knowledge not owned solely by its producers, but by humanity collectively, to be accessed, used, and built upon.

At the same time, the considerable amount of effort that individuals and groups dedicate to producing knowledge needs to be appropriately recognised. A very pressing concern is that this is not something that AI tools are currently doing, with considerable discussion in the media covering concerns about materials being ingested into large language models and then regurgitated, often inaccurately, without attribution to the original authors.

In response to this, Creative Commons are working on ‘CC Signals’ – a project still very much in its early stages, which hopes to improve author attribution from AI. This topic, and Copyright in general, are complex areas within knowledge ownership. To explore further, we will have a dedicated blog post later this week from our Copyright Support Officer, Christine Daouti.

Ultimately, most researchers want their knowledge to be used for the greatest benefit – to enhance people’s lives, improve how things are done, and find solutions to our biggest problems. Reasserting control to ensure this can happen, by making knowledge open and accessible, is crucial.

Therefore, whilst publishers might want to monopolise knowledge to maximise profits, authors are increasingly retaining control over their knowledge thanks to Rights Retention policies. At UCL, the Publications Policy has been updated this year to include a Rights Retention statement, and our Head of Open Access services, Catherine Sharp, will be explaining this in more detail in another blog post this week.

It’s also important to consider who has ownership over the production of knowledge. If knowledge should be for the widest possible audience, then the production of this knowledge should involve the widest possible community. This is where Citizen Science and Co-Production come in. These initiatives open the doors of knowledge production to include people with a broad range of backgrounds and experiences, who might otherwise have been excluded from the process. To unpack this topic in more depth, our Citizen Science Coordinator, Sheetal Saujani, will be contributing a blog post later this week.

We are looking forward to the conversations and insights which this Open Access Week will generate, and we hope you end the week with a desire to delve even deeper into the complex question of ‘Who Owns Our Knowledge?’

Read along with our upcoming blog posts and join the conversation on social media!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

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With only a few weeks to go until Open Access Week 2025 (20th-26th October), we are looking forward to what it will hold. This year’s theme is the vital question, ‘Who Owns Our Knowledge?’, which is guaranteed to provoke insightful discussions and provide a lot to reflect on. Whether from the perspective of Copyright, Open Access Publishing, Data Sharing or Citizen Science, the question of who owns knowledge underpins the ethos of Open Science, and we can’t wait to delve into this subject.

One way in which we will be doing this is through a webinar with four speakers from UCL who will be sharing their perspectives and considering how knowledge is created, shared and controlled.

The speakers are:

• Christine Daouti – Copyright Support Officer
• Catherine Sharpe – Head of Open Access Services
• Lauren Cantos – Research Integrity and Assurance Officer
• Muki Haklay – Professor of Geographical Information Science

It will be fantastic to have these UCL staff members in the same (virtual) room, and we are excited to hear from them. As well as a panel discussion, there will be opportunity for audience questions, so come ready to ask about anything you want further information or opinions on.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday 22nd October 11am – 12:30pm and will be hosted on Teams, so sign up today and it will be added to your outlook calendar.

We will also be exploring the question ‘Who Owns Our Knowledge?’ in different blog posts throughout the week. As well as a discussion of the theme, one will focus on Rights Retention, one on Copyright and another on Citizen Science and Research Data.

Written by staff working in these areas, these pieces promise to be informative and applicable. Watch this space!

Finally, a quick note to say we are delighted to be hosting the annual UCL Open Science and Scholarship Awards Ceremony during Open Access Week. Keep an eye out for our next blog post which will announce the award winners and provide all the details about the event and how you can attend.

Open Access Week 2025 will be a great opportunity to continue the conversation about making our research and knowledge open and accessible – we hope to see you there!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

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As part of our Open Access Week celebrations, we were delighted to host the second annual Open Science & Scholarship Awards presentation. This event gave us the opportunity to gather in person, congratulate the awardees, and celebrate their achievements after announcing the winners a few weeks ago.

The event began with certificate presentations, followed by a showcase of the award-winning projects.

First, Enny van Beest and Célian Bimbard, who received an honourable mention in the Open Source Software/Analytical Tools category, shared their project UnitMatch. Designed to track neurons across extensive Neuropixel Recordings, this software accelerates the analysis of large datasets, proving a valuable resource for researchers handling high volumes of neural data.

Next, winners of the Student category, Sophie Ka Ling Lau and Divya Balain, presented Diverse Voices, a website emerging from their project on the impact of COVID-19 on East London communities. Sophie and Divya, both Master’s students from UCL’s Departments of Brain Sciences and Life Sciences, respectively, created this collaborative platform to share insights gained from their research.

In the Advocating for Open Science & Community Building category, Joseph Cook shared his work with the UCL Citizen Science Academy, housed within the Institute for Global Prosperity. The Academy empowers citizens to participate in research projects, offering a structured learning programme and a certificate that recognises their contributions and learning.

The Professional Services Staff category award went to the Understanding Disability Project, presented by Eirini-Christina Saloniki and William Lammons. This project combines lived experiences with broad representation to document perspectives of people living with disabilities across North Thames, aiming for a comprehensive view that highlights the unique challenges they face.

Finally, in the Open Publishing category, Emily Gardner discussed her work with the NCL Mutation Database. This essential resource supports Batten Disease research and therapeutic development, with Emily’s work ensuring metadata accuracy and database reliability for researchers.

In the Open-Source Software category, we also recognised Alessandro Felder and the BrainGlobe Initiative, a collaborative project focused on creating open-access tools that support neuroscientific research worldwide. Although Alessandro couldn’t attend the ceremony, we were proud to recognise this initiative’s impressive accomplishments. Founded in 2020 to advance the handling and analysis of neuroimaging data, the BrainGlobe tools have been downloaded over 2.7 million times around the world!

After the presentations, the audience had a chance to network and enjoy refreshments provided by UCL Press, the event’s generous sponsor.

We would like to extend a special thank you to our other honorable mention recipients: Beth Downe, Gabrielle Pengyu Shao, Deborah Padfield, Dr. Adam Parker, Hengrui Zhang, Mathilde Ripart, Justyna Petke, Claire Waddington, and Fan Cheng. Representing a range of departments, teams, and centres across UCL – from the Slade School of Fine Art to the Dementia Research Centre – we were thrilled to celebrate your work and dedication to advancing open science across disciplines. Thank you for being part of this event!

Our heartfelt thanks go to UCL Press for their support, the Office for Open Science & Scholarship team for organising the awards, and Sandy Schumann and Jessie Baldwin, UKRN local network leads, for managing the submission and peer review process. Special thanks go to Paul Ayris, Head of the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship, and David Shanks, UCL’s Institutional Lead for Reproducibility, for their continued support of these awards.

Watch this space for the next Open Science and Scholarship Awards!

As we conclude International Open Access Week, we have been inspired by a wealth of discussions and events across UCL! This week, we have explored balancing collaboration and commercialisation, highlighted the work of Citizen Science initiatives, discussed the role of open access textbooks in education, and addressed key copyright challenges in the age of AI to ensure free and open access to knowledge.

Today, we are excited to introduce the UCL Statement of Principles of Authorship. This new document, shaped through a co-creation workshop and community consultation, provides guidance on equitable authorship practices and aims to foster more inclusive and transparent research collaboration across UCL.

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The team at the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship is pleased to launch the UCL Statement of Principles of Authorship. These principles have been built up from a co-creation workshop and developed in consultation with our academic community and are now available for wider use, linked from our website.

In August 2023, the OOSS Team posted a discussion about the challenges of equity in authorship and the co-production workshop held during that year’s Open Science & Scholarship Conference. We outlined some preliminary considerations that led to the workshop, summarised the discussion and emerging themes, including the need to more widely acknowledge contributions to research outputs, the power dynamics involved in authorship decisions, and ways to make academic language and terminology accessible for contributors outside the academic ‘bubble’.

The outcomes of the workshop were then used as the basis for developing the new Statement of Principles of Authorship. This document provides general advice, recommendations and requirements for authors, designed to complement the UCL Code of Conduct for Research and align with existing published frameworks, such as the Technicians Commitment or CRediT. The document outlines four core principles and a variety of applications for their use across the broad range of subject areas and output types that are produced across the institution. It also proposes standards for affiliations and equitable representation of contributors.

While it is true that academic publishing is a complex and changing environment, these principles are intended as a touchstone for discussions around authorship rather than explicit expectations or policy. They can guide decision making, help understand how affiliations should be presented for best consistency and traceability in the long term, and empower people to request inclusion or make plans to include citizen scientists or other types of collaborators to their work.

We look forward to hearing the many ways that these principles can be used by the community!

For a full overview of our #OAWeek 2024 posts, visit our blog series page. To learn more about the Principles of Authorship and stay updated on open science initiatives across UCL, sign up for our mailing list.

 

As we continue celebrating International Open Access Week, it’s inspiring to see how open access is shaping research and collaboration across UCL! Earlier this week, we explored the balance between collaboration and commercialisation, and highlighted the important work of Citizen Science initiatives.

Midway through the week, Dhara Snowden, Textbook Programme Manager at UCL Press, shares her insights below on the growing significance of open access textbooks and their role in the broader landscape of open access publishing.

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UCL Press is the UK’s first, and largest, fully open access university press. We have been publishing books and journals for almost ten years, covering a wide range of subjects and formats. In 2021, the press launched a new programme focusing on open access (OA) textbooks. I joined at that time, and over the past three years, I’ve been responsible for managing our progress in this area. As part of this year’s International Open Access Week, I wanted to share some of our thinking and planning around this activity and offer some musings about OA textbook publishing in general and what the future holds.

What are Open Access Textbooks?

Firstly, it’s useful to clarify what we mean by “textbooks.” Through conversations with academics across faculties, I’ve realised this term can mean different things depending on the context and level of study. In the broadest sense, a textbook is a resource that supports the delivery of a course or module. Textbooks can provide a wide-view survey of a field or subject, to be “adopted” as the main guide for study, or they can be part of a reading list that includes chapters from various sources, like journal articles.

Although textbooks were traditionally published in print, there has been increasing demand for digital versions of commercial textbooks, which can be purchased by individuals and licenced to institutions for use for multiple users.

Open access publishing, meanwhile, involves making scholarly content freely available online, removing subscription or purchase barriers. In the context of textbooks, this means students and educators can access high-quality educational resources without significant costs. OA textbooks are typically published under a Creative Commons (CC) licence, which allows for redistribution, adaptation, and modification, promoting a collaborative and inclusive educational environment.

The creation and uptake of OA textbooks has seen a sharp increase in recent years, particularly in the US and UK, with non-profit-funded publishers like OpenStax, collaboratively funded projects like CORE Econ, and platforms like Pressbooks. The Open Textbook Library, supported by Open Education Network, currently indexes 1,542 published open textbooks.

Why do we create them?

The UCL Press textbook programme was set up in direct response to issues around pricing for institutional access to essential e-textbooks, which were exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. The current ecosystem presents an unstable and unsustainable financial model for institutional libraries, as well documented by the eBooks SOS campaign, which calls attention to the lack of regulation in pricing by commercial publishers.

An article published by Insights in 2022, ‘Perspectives on e-books and digital textbooks and the way ahead’, claims that ‘combined spending on book across nationally negotiated library purchasing frameworks increased from £55M in 2019/20 to £73M in 202/21, with e-textbook provision increasing by 281% to £25.1M during that time’.

In addition to concerns about affordability and sustained access, the Insights article outlines that post-pandemic, “shifts in teaching practice are accelerating demand for features that enhance blended learning”, with more flexibility and adaptability in resources being required, which isn’t being delivered by traditional academic publishing.

UCL Press’s aims to disrupt the current academic publishing ecosystem, offering authors and readers an alternative to the commercial model. This connects the theme for OA Week 2024, which calls for community over commercialisation. Bringing publishing back to the hands of academy, we can provide sustainable and high-quality textbooks to facilitate hybrid teaching and remove barriers to access for our content thereby reaching the widest possible audience and increasing chances to impact in scholarly communities.

How do we create them?

The UCL Press textbook programme commissions and publishes textbooks for undergraduate and postgraduate students across a wide range of subjects and topics. Every new proposal (and final manuscript) undergoes a rigorous peer-review process to ensure high-quality and relevant content.

Our approach is to collaborate with lecturers to create resources that provide high-quality guidance for students. Taking a personal and flexible approach to each project, we avoid rigid templates or a one-size-fits-all mentality, tailoring our textbooks to the needs of students and subject matter.

To date, we’ve published two textbooks. The first, An Introduction to Waste Management and Circular Economy, came out in December 2023. This textbook supports a module taught at UCL but also has global relevance for courses in environmental engineering, resource efficiency, bioenergy, and waste-to-energy technologies.

More recently, we published  Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies, an edited collection exploring the disciplinary debates, intellectual legacies, and practical innovations that shape contemporary understandings of heritage value.

 

 

Together, these two titles have been downloaded over 12,000 times in 152 countries and territories. Our forthcoming titles include, A Guide to Performing Systematic Reviews of Health and Disease and Fundamentals of Dark Matter, both due to publish early next year.

What are the benefits of writing or using OA textbooks? Where’s the value?

There are many benefits to writing and using OA textbooks and the European Network of Open Education Librarians have created a toolkit to encourage use of OA materials and Open Educational Resources (OER). Some key points are listed below.

• Reaching a Global Audience: downloads and views from readers across the globe, particularly the Global South.
• Cost-Effectiveness: One of the most significant advantages of OA textbooks is their cost-saving potential for both library and student. OA resources can alleviate this burden, allow to redistribution of saved funds and make education more accessible for all.
• Adaptability: open licences enable reuse, modification and adaptation, enabling educators to make the content work best for teaching.
• Showcase Teaching Excellence: OA textbooks can help platform new approaches or area of study, and celebrate examples of teaching excellence.
• Encourage lifelong learning: Provide students with resources they can use and reference after their studies and into their careers.
• Accessibility and Inclusivity: Open access textbooks are available to anyone with an internet connection, supporting diverse learners, including those in remote or under-resourced areas, and those outside academic institutions(e. professionals and policy makers)
• Up-to-Date Content: Traditional textbooks can quickly become outdated. OA textbooks can be updated and revised more readily, ensuring that students have access to the most current information.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Open resources encourage collaboration among educators, fostering a community of shared knowledge and innovation.

To measure impact, we use both qualitative and quantitative measures. Our Statistics dashboard shows the readership and reach of our books, including a map of access. In addition, we are collecting testimonials and feedback from academics and students and engaging with the societal impact of our books (as discussed in a recent article in The Scholarly Kitchen). We interrogate our user analytics to understand which communities are interacting with our content and how they are using it in their own work.

Value in this context is calculated not only in terms of cost-saving on commercial provision, but also in the added value student experience. This includes showcasing teaching excellence to encourage enrolment in a particular course or providing a teaching and learning resources for a module that are underrepresented in commercial provision (i.e. those with smaller cohorts/interdisciplinary topics/less mainstream perspectives).

What does the future hold?

The future of open access textbook publishing in the UK looks promising, with increasing institutional support and growing awareness among educators. As the demand for affordable and accessible educational resources continues to rise, the potential for OA textbooks to reshape higher education is significant.

Open access textbook publishing represents a vital shift in the academic landscape, providing a sustainable, equitable, and collaborative approach to education. As more institutions and publishers embrace this model, we hope to create a future where quality educational resources are accessible to all, empowering students and educators alike.

Significant sea change in the status quo requires a long-term outlook, and significant investment and commitment. If educators, students, and policymakers continue to discover and advocate for the adoption of open access resources within institutions, there is potential to foster an educational environment that fully supports and values accessibility, collaboration, and innovation.

UCL Press will continue to develop its programme of OA textbooks and to keep up to date with our publications, please do sign up to our mailing list or take a look at our website.

Today marks the start of International Open Access Week 2024! Throughout the week, we’ll be sharing insights from UCL staff on how open access is shaping research, collaboration, and scholarship across the university. To kick off the series, Kirsty Wallis explores the significance of this year’s theme and the challenges and opportunities of balancing openness with commercialisation in ways that benefit both research and society.

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The theme for this year’s International Open Access Week (OA Week), “Community over Commercialisation,” intends to provide a starting point for us to reflect on the importance of community in the work that we do relating to Openness, rather than letting financial or commercial interests take focus.

This is the second year focusing on this theme, which shows its significance in Open Science and Scholarship and the growing interest in these discussions.

The UNESCO Recommendations on Open Science highlight the issues of groups profiting from publicly funded research and advocate for non-commercial, collaborative publishing models.

This year’s OA Week invites reflection on critical questions around commercialisation, corporate control of knowledge and what we can do to encourage a shift towards more open practices. This post will focus on the progress in opening up research worldwide, but also bring to the fore some areas where commercialisation may be able to serve the public interest. Can commercialising research ever be for public good?

Last year in support of the theme, we launched our Citizen Science Community! It was the culmination of a lot of work from the team in the Office for Open Science and Scholarship. Our approach to Citizen Science at UCL foregrounds the need to prioritise community interests and aiming to make everything we do as inclusive as possible and integrate as many subject areas as we can.

We also explored how Creative Commons (CC) licences promote open, reusable research, making scholarly outputs accessible to a wider audience—from researchers to the general public.

International Open Access Week has created a list of profiles of global institutions showcasing how Open Science communities are embedding principles of shared knowledge and equitable access into their practices: visit the International Open Access Week list of Theme Profiles.

Continuing the Discussion in 2024:

As we move forward, OA Week 2024 offers the opportunity to build on the 2023 theme and further explore how community-based approaches can coexist with commercial interests in ways that serve both the research community and the public. Turning this dialogue into concrete action is essential for achieving the goals of Open Science—making knowledge accessible and equitable for everyone.

So, is there ever a scenario where commercialisation of research can work for community? After all, it is possible to share the outputs of research openly while also selling them as a product, for example in software. It is possible and even fairly common in some areas to make the underlying code open source but sell access to supported versions or additional features that can be used by companies and businesses that are unable to support products themselves. There are many examples of this, from the underlying code supporting Android phones and Chrome browsers to the Linux operating system and, also the ePrints repository software that we use here at UCL.

As another example, this time from within UCL itself is the Ventura CPAP Machine developed during 2020 at the height of the pandemic. The designs for the machine were made available free of charge via the UCLB licensing system. This enabled limitations to be put in place for who could use the designs, preventing companies from profiteering from the design while making it available to hospitals and other charitable organisations to build and test their own free of charge. It has always been UCL’s position that profit is not the end game, going back as far as Jeremy Bentham, the spiritual founder of UCL, who believed that education should be more widely available, a core underpinning value of UCL and the Office for Open Science and Scholarship today.

This year’s Open Access Week theme aligns with some of the behind-the-scenes work we’re doing to explore the relationship between openness and commercialisation and investigate scenarios where they may not be as much in conflict as the theme suggests. Keep an eye out for the report and recommendations coming later this academic year!