The 2020 Open Access Week Advisory Committee has announced that the theme for this year’s International Open Access Week, to be held October 19-25, will be ‘Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.’
Openness can be a powerful tool for building more equitable systems of sharing knowledge. Rebuilding research and scholarship to be open by default presents a unique opportunity to construct a foundation that is fundamentally more equitable. Yet today, structural racism, discrimination, and exclusion are present and persistent in places where openness is a core value. As a global community, it is important to understand that the systems and spaces of the present are often built upon legacies of historic injustice and that addressing these inequities is a necessity.
Building on the discussions in 2018 (Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge) and 2019 (Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge), 2020 marks the third consecutive year the theme for International Open Access Week will focus on the urgent need for action on equity and inclusion, underscoring the urgency of continuing to center this work.
International Open Access Week is a time for the wider community to coordinate in taking action to make openness the default for research and to ensure that equity is at the center of this work. This year’s Open Access Week will be held from October 19- 25. However, organisers are encouraged to host discussions and take action around this year’s theme whenever is most suitable during the year and to adapt the theme and activities to their local context. This is especially true for this year with the varying levels of disruption due to COVID-19.
International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyse 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 -discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out.
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